[Pg 17] [Pg 17] Butch Butch It ain’t my blood. (Elly draws back, her hand at her face, confused.) I killed a man. Elly Elly (sickened) Elly Oh! (With terrible conviction.) You’ll hang fer it, Butch Adams! Why’d you go and do it? Who wuz it? Butch (begins in a hard voice, but becomes more and more excited.) Butch Jim Dory. He told on me fer sellin’ whiskey. He told the federal officers at Tulsy. I killed him. Stuck a knife in him and turned it around. That’s why I went out at midnight ... to lay fer him. I knowed he’d go to the play-party over t’ Binghams. I laid fer him in the big woods close to the sawmill here. He’d go that a-way home, I figgered. About three o’clock this mornin’ he come along in a buggy with one horse to it. I jumped out and grabbed the bridle. He lep’ out on me with a knife. I got a-hold of it. I stuck it through his ribs and turned it around. Then I got skeered. They might think I done it ... findin’ him so close t’ here. It wouldn’t do to find him so close. I picked him up and dumped him in the buggy and give the horse a crack with a stick. He started off in a run down the road. But not afore I’d saw Jim kinda raise up one of his hands to his face! He wuzn’t dead. I hadn’t made shore! He wuzn’t dead, and he’d tell on me! He’d tell some one ’fore he died, and I’d hang fer it! I thought mebbe I could ketch up and finish the job. But the horse run like mad, crashin’ through the bushes but keepin’ purty close to the road. I run and run after him—almost to the Switch. Then I seen some one come out of the store whur a light was burnin’, and grab the horse’s bridle. I seen him take Jim up and carry him in and shet the
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