“Well, you see, it’s jest this way, Westerfelt,” he began, with an effort.  “I’ve bought this blamed hoss frum Bill Stone an’ I want to leave ’im heer with you.  I want you to put ‘im through any sort o’ work you see fit; he’s too blam’ fat an’ frisky anyhow.”

Westerfelt comprehended the whole situation, but he did not want to accept the horse.  “Why, Mr. Hunter, really—­” he began.

“Oh, we’ll take yore hoss,” laughed Washburn.  “We kin take the kinks out’n his mane an’ tail an’ make ’im wish he never wus born.  Oh, Lordy, yes, we want ‘im, an’ ef you’ve got a good saddle an’ bridle ur a buggy hustle ’em around.”

“Well, you’d better ’tend to ’im.”  Hunter tossed the halter to Washburn.  “I’ll be blamed ef I want ’im.”  And he turned and without another word walked away.

“It’s wuth three o’ the one they shot,” was Washburn’s laconic observation.  He looked the animal over admiringly and slapped him so vigorously under the belly that the horse grunted and humped his back.

Cartwright, like nearly every other Georgian village, had its lawyer.  Bascom Bates was a young man of not more than thirty, but he was accounted shrewd by many older legal heads, who had been said to have advised him to move to a larger place.  When business did not come to his office, Bates sometimes went after it.  If a woman lost a husband in a railway wreck or was knocked off the track where he had no right to be, Bates called as early as possible and offered to direct a suit against the corporation for damages at half the usual price—­that is, as Bill Stone once put it, the widow got half and Bates half, which nobody seemed to think exorbitant, because it cost a lawyer a good deal to get his education, and court convened but twice a year.  He was among the first to call on Westerfelt that morning, and with a mysterious nod and crooking of his fingers in the air he induced the young man to follow him into one of the vacant stalls in the back part of the long building.

“Thar’s something that has jest struck me, Westerfelt,” he began, in the low voice of an electioneering candidate, and he possessed himself of one of Westerfelt’s lapels and began to rub his thick, red fingers over it.  “I wouldn’t have you mention me in the matter, for really I hain’t got a thing ag’in any of these mountain men, but I thought I’d say to you as a friend that this is a damageable case.  Them men could be handled for what they done last night, and made to sweat for it—­sweat hard cash, as the feller said.”

Westerfelt stared at him in surprise.

“Oh,” he said, “I never thought of that.  I—­”

“Well, there ain’t no harm in looking at the thing from all sides,” broke in the lawyer, as deliberately as his professional eagerness would permit.  “A good price could be made out of the ring-leaders anyway.  Old Jim Hunter’s got two hundred acres o’ bottom land as black as that back yard out thar, an’ it’s well stocked, an’ I know all the rest o’ the gang an’ their ability to plank up.  Maybe it wouldn’t even get as far as court.  Them fellers would pay up rather than be published all over creation as—­”