"
"Well, it's this way, Hitchcock," he finally said, "I'm in the same boat
with the rest. If three-score bucks have made up their mind to kill the
girl, why, we can't help it. One rush, and we'd be wiped off the
landscape. And what good'd that be? They'd still have the girl. There's
no use in going against the customs of a people except you're in force."
"But we are in force!" Hitchcock broke in. "Four whites are a match for
a hundred times as many reds. And think of the girl!"
Sigmund stroked the dog meditatively. "But I do think of the girl. And
her eyes are blue like summer skies, and laughing like summer seas, and
her hair is yellow, like mine, and braided in ropes the size of a big
man's arms. She's waiting for me, out there, in a better land. And
she's waited long, and now my pile's in sight I'm not going to throw it
away."
"And shamed I would be to look into the girl's blue eyes and remember the
black ones of the girl whose blood was on my hands," Hitchcock sneered;
for he was born to honor and championship, and to do the thing for the
thing's sake, nor stop to weigh or measure.
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