at has
tasted blood to lie down and be good. He must have more. For a time
Bud struggled, then he saddled a mule and went as fast as he could ride
toward town. It was a race of endurance against a collapsing resolve.
When he reached the village he sought out the town marshal and
excitedly begged, "Fer God's sake lock me up in ther jail-house. Ther
cravin's done come on me afresh. I'm goin' mad ergin."

The town marshal knew the history of Bud's alcoholic periodicity, yet
he had no authority to jail a man on request in advance of any offense.
"Ye don't look drunk yit, Bud, albeit I'm afeared ye soon will be," he
said. "I reckon I hain't hardly got ther power ter jail ye, without ye
commits some misdeed."

But Bud was at the end of his struggle. In a minute more instead of
pleading to be confined, he would be hunting for liquor. It was now or
never. He seized up a brick that lay at his feet and hurled it through
the glass window of a store, before which they stood talking.

"Kin ye do hit now?" he demanded hoarsely, and the town marshal said:
"Yes, I reckon I kin--now."

Men have varied fashions for expressing their love of women. That
night Jack Halloway sat on the moonlit porch of Alexander's house and
Bud sat in the vermin-infested cell of the village lockup. But as the
hours went on he found a certain recompense in the thought that he was
keeping a pledge.

As for Jerry O'Keefe that night, he was doing nothing at all except
thinking certain things about the great fellow who was with the girl,
but those thoughts were putting out roots of future conflict.

CHAPTER XVI

Nothing had been heard of any Ku-Klux operations since Alexander's
adventure, and even of that episode no unclean circulated story had
gone abroad. Those who had worn the black masks were not apt to talk
overmuch, and those who had made up Bud's force were for quite
different reasons equally discreet. Since Alexander had won through
safe and unrobbed, those who had been, in a fashion, her clansman, had
few outstanding grudges to repay. Jack Halloway, for example, had come
with a satisfied heart out of the baggage-room, by way of the wrecked
telegraph office. For him the matter was concluded, save that he had
made three enemies who would nurse a malignant grievance and seek, some
day, to requite it with the ambushed rifle. The telegraph operator had
altogether disappeared from the country, and his two immediate
confederates,