The Bad Man Part 36

Suddenly Uncle Henry, who had been looking at Morgan Pell's huddled form, cried out;

"Hey, what's comin' off?" Had the darkness deceived him?

"Red" jumped at the question. "What's the matter?" His nerves were on edge.

"He moved!" cried Uncle Henry, excited now, and rising in his chair, which he wheeled out into the room.

"Moved!" cried "Red." "You're crazy! He's stone dead, if ever anyone was."

"I seen him--I swear I seen him!" Uncle Henry's eyes were almost popping from his head. "Why didn't someone do something? Why didn't they see what he saw? Oh, to be able to walk, and not sit forever like a dried mummy in this chair!

"But how could he have moved?" "Red" exclaimed. "He's dead, I say!"

"I don't know how he could!" Uncle Henry cried, "but he did! Look at him!"

He could scarcely control himself now.

"Maybe Lopez didn't kill him after all," "Red" said, and knelt down to examine Pell's body again.

"Now don't tell me that!" Uncle Henry yelled. "Ain't we got trouble enough here without him comin' back?" He could have stood any calamity, it seemed, but the return to life of this wretched Morgan Pell.

"By golly!" "Red" exclaimed, on his knees, his hand on Pell's white face.

"Was I right?" Uncle Henry said.

"Red" rose slowly. His voice was almost a whisper. "He's alive!" he breathed.

Gilbert, who had not taken Uncle Henry's word seriously, could not doubt "Red's" verdict.

"Alive!" he said. "Oh, it can't be!"

For the first time Lucia moved. Her lips opened. "Alive!" she managed to say. Again the world crumbled for her.

"It was only a flesh wound," "Red" said. "The bullet just grazed his head."

Lucia looked up. She was ashen. She was older, and her eyes seemed to have lost their fire. "He's--really--alive?" she got out. She stared down at her husband.

"They should of shot 'im in the stomach!" Uncle Henry stated. What a mess!

What rotten luck, ran through his weary brain.

Pell's foot moved again. Then his arm went up; and slowly he rose on one elbow, pushed away the tablecloth that touched his head, and looked about him. He was like a man awaking from a sound slumber. He was dazed, mystified. In the almost complete darkness, he could not distinguish faces.

"What was it? What happened?" he inquired, in a hollow voice--a voice from the tomb!

No one answered. They were all terror-stricken.

"I can't remember," the hollow voice went on. He fell back on the floor. He was weak from the loss of blood. "Red" lifted him up, and helped him around the table to a chair.

Lucia's eyes never left Morgan Pell's face. Was she dreaming? Was this some madness that had come to her? This brute come back to life! It was unbearable, unbelievable. She could not adjust her mind to the situation.

But with true feminine instinct, she found herself leaving her chair where she had sat so long, going to the kitchen and getting a cup of water. Then she knew, in some strange way, that she had fetched a bowl, and a towel.

These she placed on the table. Still she looked at her husband, as though he were a ghost--as, literally, he was. They had thought him dead--gone forever. Now he was back among them, speaking, moving. Incredible! One hand went to her face. She dreaded the thought of Morgan's seeing her.

It was Uncle Henry who broke the awful tension.

"You was shot!" he cried, to Pell.

The other looked at the old man in the chair. "Shot?" he said.

"Yes, and a rotten shot it was, too!" Uncle Henry was not afraid to say.

"Gol darn it all!"

The moment was too tragic for anyone to smile.

"Who shot me?" Pell asked. He was very weak. He put the towel in the bowl of water, and pressed it to his forehead.

"A friend of mine!" cried Uncle Henry.

Gilbert glared at the old man. No one could be forgiven for a remark like that.

"I remember, now," Pell murmured. "The bandit."

"And a gol darn nice fellow, too," Uncle Henry went on. "A little careless, but--"

Pell looked startled. The towel fell from his hand and he looked about him.

"He's not here still!" he cried, as one just coming out of a stupor to a full realization of his surroundings.

"No, worse luck!" Uncle Henry said.

"He's gone?" Pell said.

"The rangers came," Hardy explained.

"Texas?" from Pell.

"Yes, gol darn 'em!" Uncle Henry let out.

Lucia, who had been watching Pell's face every second, now offered him the bowl of water with her own hands, and drew closer to him. She picked up the towel that had fallen to the table, and folded it, then dampened it. Pell looked up and saw her for the first time.

"Oh, so there you are, my dear!" was his cynical greeting.

Lucia still stared at him. "I thought--I thought--you were dead," she murmured. Her voice sounded far away to her. It was scarcely a whisper.

"So it seems!" Morgan Pell answered, his lip curling. "My dear, I regret to disappoint you. But aside from a slight pain in my head, I was never better in my whole life!" He wanted to see the effect of his words.

"Shall I bandage your wound for you?" his dutiful wife asked.

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Thank you--no," he said.

Lucia sat down on the other side of the table.