"Well, she's up and skipped out with the horse thief. Austin says she
tried to protect him, and I guess they had a regular family row over the
affair. She's gone an' the man's gone, an' it looks darned suspicious.
He was a good-lookin' feller, Austin says, an' she's dead crazy to git
another man, I've heard. Dang me, it's jest as I said to Davis: I
wouldn't put it above her to take up with this good-lookin' thief an'
skip off with him. Her husband's been dead more'n two year, an' she's
too darned purty to stay in strict mournin' longer'n she has to---"
But just then something strong, firm, and resistless grasped his neck
from behind, and, even as he opened his mouth to gasp out his surprise
and alarm, a vise-like grip shut down on his thigh, and then, he was
jerked backward, lifted upward, tossed outward, falling downward. The
wagon clattered off in the night, and a tall man and a woman looked over
the side of the wagon-bed and waited for the next flash of lightning to
show them where the official gossiper had fallen. The long, blinding,
flash came, and Crosby saw the man as he picked himself from the ditch
at the roadside.
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