Rupert Hughes

“ And such a snub!
The treacherous girl had plucked a little spray of lilacs and flicked it over the fence at Harley's feet before she turned her back on him. Before she turned her back on him she had swept him with a look like a shaft of sunset sunbeams breaking through a cloud. ”

“ When peace was declared, ruffians, who hardly deserved the name of guerrilla, came back to the neighborhoods they had harried; and their feelings were hurt, their tempers murderously aroused, if they were not treated as honorable warriors returned from noble strife. But it was against human nature to forgive them, especially as they continued to be a nuisance or a menace.
Among the trouble makers in Nineveh, Mo., was Jed Bolen, a huge bushwhacker, who had been rather a gorilla than a guerrilla. He was a giant of uncouth ferocity and power. ”

“ Harley was in a hurry to visit his brand-new client, but he was in a greater hurry to let Audrey know. So he made a grand detour on his way to the jail, and received the delicious snub and the surreptitious spray of lilacs.
When he entered the jail he wore a lilac nosegay in his lapel. He found Jed gripping the iron bars and snarling through them like an infuriated ape; also he was trying to bend or break them with his hands. He was so ferocious that it seemed quite possible for him to succeed if he would only save the strength he wasted in yelling like a circus steam calliope:
"I want out! ”

“ If a guileless old farmer left a sick old cow on the railroad track and sued the iniquitous railroad corporation for the wanton destruction of a blue-beribboned thoroughbred, he would hardly put his case in the hands of the Judge's pet aversion. It mattered not what form of litigation amused that Missourian community, nobody was gambler enough to trust his chances to Harley Teele. ”

“ Moulton had tantrums for days, and the Judge ordered the young reprobate to get out of his office and stay out, also to keep out of his house and off the front porch and the grass, and a good distance from the daughter, under penalty of getting shot, cowhided, bound over to keep the peace, and locked in jail for contempt of court.
The feud made a sensation in Nineveh. Almost anything except a snore made a sensation in Nineveh, for Nineveh, Mo., as a town, is about as lively as the place it was named after is now. Harley was the best advertised lawyer in the county. ”

“ He lived among the good-for-nothing white trash gathered along the river bottom, most of them wretches as lazy, as stupid, as ignorant, and as vicious as the snapping turtles that basked in the mud and the sun. ”

“ Thrilled with the powers of attorney at law. Harley made out his papers and hastened to the Judge for their execution. And the Judge said with an amused kindliness:
"Now, Harley, I advise you to leave your client right where he is. From the talk I hear round town, the minute Jed puts his ugly head out in the street, he'll he lynched and lynched unanimous. It's more than likely that some of our best people won't wait for him to come out. They'll go and get him. Of course. I don't know this officially, but folks are so tired of barn burning they're getting peevish. They never liked Jed anyhow. ”

“ Audrey wept and pleaded and stormed and made her home almost intolerable for her parents, but she could not move them to relent, and she did not dare invite Harley to his destruction by braving the wrath of her father, an ex-warrior who still ate fire on occasion and felt that as a man's home was his castle, his revolver was his sword of knightly dignity.
THE parents in self-defense encouraged Jere Hutter to take Audrey off their hands of evenings. Hutter's father had money, and Hutter had a practice. ”

“ And when I'm loose I'm going to kill you fust off. And next I'm goin' to kill the prosecutin' attorney. You go tell Jere Hutter that Him and you and that Judge are a gang of black-livered consperators, and I'm goin' to kill you—all three of you, you hear me? I ain't killed sence the war, and I'm just hongry thusty for blood. Hear?"
There was no doubt that Jed was making himself heard. There was no doubt that he meant what he shouted. Harley, as a loyal advocate, tried to quiet him and promise him justice, mercy, and all the rights the law allowed. ”