Smith are setting in it up at the corner, with their feet on the cushions
to show they're used to ridin' around with four white horses every day in
the week. It's waitin' till you're ready to go out to Briscoe's. It's an
hour before supper time, and you can talk to young Fisbee all you want.
He's out there."

As they drove along the pike, Harkless's three companions kept up a
conversation sprightly beyond the mere exhilaration of the victorious; but
John sat almost silent, and, in spite of their liveliness, the others eyed
him a little anxiously now and then, knowing that he had been living on
excitement through a physically exhausting day, and they were fearful lest
his nerves react and bring him to a breakdown. But the healthy flush of
his cheek was reassuring; he looked steady and strong, and they were
pleased to believe that the stirring-up was what he needed.

It had been a strange and beautiful day to him, begun in anger, but the
sun was not to go down upon his wrath; for his choleric intention had
almost vanished on his homeward way, and the first words Smith had spoken
had lifted the veil of young Fisbee's duplicity, had shown him with what
fine intelligence and supreme delicacy and sympathy young Fisbee had
worked for him, had understood him, and had _made_ him. If the open
assault on McCune had been pressed, and the damnatory evidence published
in Harkless's own paper, while Harkless himself was a candidate and rival,
John would have felt dishonored. The McCune papers could have been used
for Halloway's benefit, but not for his own; he would not ride to success
on another man's ruin; and young Fisbee had understood and had saved him.
It was a point of honor that many would have held finicky and
inconsistent, but one which young Fisbee had comprehended was vital to
Harkless.