CHAPTER XV
IN THE GRIP OF THE LAW
How long Tom Blair was unconscious he did not know. When he awoke hecould scarcely believe his own senses; and he looked about him dazedly.The sun was shining down as brightly as before. The snow was as white.He had for some reason been spared, after all, and hope arose in hisbreast. He began to look around him. Not two rods away, his face clearlyin sight, his eyes closed, dead asleep, lay the figure of the man whohad waylaid him. For a moment he looked at the figure steadily; then, indistinct animal cunning, the lids of the close-set eyes tightened.Stealthily, almost holding his breath, he started to rise, then fellback with a jerk. For the first time he realized that he was bound handand foot, so he could scarcely stir. He struggled, at first cautiously,then desperately, to be free; but the straps which bound him, thosewhich had held his own blanket, only cut the deeper; and he gave it up.Flat on his back he lay watching the sleeper, his anger increasing.Again his eyes tightened.
"Wake up, curse you!" he yelled suddenly.
No answer, only the steady rise and fall of the sleeper's chest.
"Wake up, I say!" repeated the voice, in a tone to raise the dead.
This time there was response--of action. Slowly Ben Blair roused, andgot up. A moment he looked about him; then, tearing a strip off hisblanket, he walked over, and, against the other's protests and promisesof silence, forced open the bearded lips, as though giving a horse thebit, and tied a gag full in the cursing mouth. Without a word or asuperfluous look he returned and lay down. Another minute, and theregular breathing showed he was again asleep.
During all the warmth of that day Ben Blair slept on, as a child sleeps,as sleep the very aged; and although the bearded man had freed himselffrom the gag at last, he did not again make a sound. Too miserablehimself to sleep, he lay staring at the other. Gradually through thehaze of impotent anger a realization of his position came to him. Hecould not avoid the issue. To be sure, he was still alive; but what ofthe future? A host of possibilities flashed into his mind, but in everyone there faced him a single termination. By no process of reasoningcould he escape the inevitable end; and despite the chilliness of theair a sweat broke out over him. Contrition for what he had done he couldnot feel--long ago he had passed even the possibility of that; but fear,deadly and absorbing fear, had him in its clutch. The passing of theyears, years full of lawlessness and violence, had left him the same manwhom bartender "Mick" had terrorized in the long ago; and for the firsttime in his wretched life, personal death--not of another but ofhimself--looked at him with steady eyes, and he could not return thegaze. All he could do was to wait, and think--and thoughts were madness.Again and again, knowing what the result would be, but seeking merely adiversion, he struggled at the straps until he was breathless; butrelentless as time one picture kept recurring to his brain. In it was arope, a stout rope, dangling from something he could not distinctlyrecognize; but what he could see, and see plainly, was a figure of aman, a bearded man--_himself_--at its end. The body swayed back andforth as he had once seen that of a "rustler" whom a group of cowboyshad left hanging to the scraggly branch of a scrub-oak; as a pendulummarks time, measuring the velocity of the prairie wind.
With each recurrence of the vision the perspiration broke out over theman anew, the sunburned forehead paled. This was what it was coming to;he could not escape it. If ever purpose was unmistakably written on ahuman face, it had been on the face of the man who lay sleeping so near,the man who had trailed him like a tiger and caught him when he thoughthe was safe. From another, there might still be hope; but from this one,Jennie Blair's son--The vision of a woman lying white and motionless onthe coarse blankets of a bunk, of a small boy with wonderfully clearblue eyes pounding harmlessly at the legs of the man looking down; thesound of a childish voice, accusing, menacing, ringing out over all,"You've killed her! You've killed her!"--this like a chasm stood betweenthem, and could never be crossed. Clasped together, the long nervousfingers, a gentleman's fingers still, twined and gripped each other.No, there was no hope. Better that the hands he had felt about histhroat in the morning had done their work. He shut his eyes. A hot waveof anger, anger against himself, swept all other thoughts before it.Why, having gotten safely away, having successfully hidden himself, hadhe ever returned? Why, having in the depths of his nest in the middle ofthe island escaped once, had a paltry desire for revenge against the manhe fancied had led the attack sent him back? What satisfaction was it,if in taking the life of the other man it cost him his own? Fool that hehad been to imagine he could escape where no one had ever escapedbefore! Fool! Fool! Thus dragged by the long hours of the afternoon.
With the coming of the chill of evening, Ben Blair awoke and rubbed hiseyes. A moment later he arose, and, walking over to his captive, lookeddown at him, steadily, peculiarly. So long as he could, Tom Blairreturned the gaze; but at last his eyes fell. A voice sounded in hisears, a voice speaking low and clearly.
"You're a human being," it said. "Physically, I'm of your species,modelled from the same clay." A long pause. "I wonder if anywhere in mymake-up there's a streak of such as you!" Again a moment of silence, inwhich the elder man felt the blue eyes of the younger piercing himthrough and through. "If I thought there was a trace, or the suggestionof a trace, before God, I'd kill you and myself, and I'd do it now!" Thespeaker scanned the prostrate figure from head to foot, and back again."And do it now," he repeated.
Silence fell; and in it, though he dared not look, coward Tom Blairfancied he heard a movement, imagined the other man about to put thethreat into execution.
"No, no!" he pleaded. "People are different--different as day and night.You belong to your mother's kind, and she was good and pure." Everytrace of the man's nerve was gone. But one instinct was active--toplacate this relentless being, his captor. He fairly grovelled. "I swearshe was pure. I swear it!"
Without speaking a word, Ben turned. Going back to his snow-blind, hepacked his blanket and camp kit swiftly and strapped them to hisshoulders. Returning, he gathered the things he had found upon theother's person--the rifle, the revolvers, the sheath-knife--into a pile;then deliberately, one against the other, he broke them until they wereuseless. Only the blanket he preserved, tossing it down by the side ofthe prostrate figure.
"Tom Blair," he said, no indication now that he had ever been nearer tothe other than a stranger, "Tom Blair, I've got a few things to say toyou, and if you're wise you'll listen carefully, for I sha'n't repeatthem. You're going with me, and you're going free; but if you try toescape, or cause me trouble, as sure as I'm alive this minute I'll stripoff every stitch of clothing you wear and leave you where I catch youthough the snow be up to your waist."
Slowly he reached over and untied first the feet then the hands. "Getup," he ordered.
Tom Blair arose, stretched himself stiffly.
"Take that," Ben indicated the blanket, "and go ahead straight for theriver."
The bearded man obeyed. To have secured his freedom he could not havedone otherwise.
For ten minutes they moved ahead, only the crunching snow breaking thestillness.
"Trot!" said Ben.
"I can't."
"Trot!" There was no misunderstanding the tone.
In single file they jogged ahead, reached the river, and descended tothe level surface of its bed.
"Keep to the middle, and go straight ahead."
On they went--jog, jog, jog.
Of a sudden from under cover of the bank a frightened cottontail sprangforth and started running. Instantly there was the report of a bigrevolver, and Tom jumped as though he felt the bullet in his back. Againthe report sounded, and this time the rabbit rolled over and over in thesnow.
Without stopping, Ben picked up the still struggling game and slipped acouple of fresh cartridges into the empty revolver chambers. The bankswere lined with burrows and tracks, and within five minutes a secondcottontail met the fate of the first.
"Come back!" called Ben to the man ahead.
Again Tom obeyed. He would have gone barefoot in the snow without aquestion now.
"Can you make a fire?"
"Yes."
"Do it, then. I left the matches in your pocket."
On opposite sides of the fire, from long forked sticks of green ash,they broiled strips of the meat which Ben dressed and cut. Likewisefronting each other, they ate in silence. Darkness was falling, and theglow from the embers lit their faces like those of two friends campingafter a day's hunt. Had it not all been such deadly earnest, the scenewould have been farce-comedy. Suddenly Tom Blair raised his eyes.
"What are you going to do with me?" he asked directly.
Ben said nothing.
The question was not repeated, but another trembled on the speaker'slips. At last it found words.
"When you had me down I--I thought you had done for me. Why did you--letme up?"
A pause followed. Then Ben's blue eyes raised and met the other's.
"You'd really like to know?"
"Yes."
Another moment of hesitation, but the youth's eyes did not move. "Verywell, I'll tell you." More to himself than to the other he was speaking.His voice softened unconsciously. "A girl saved you that time, TomBlair, a girl you never saw. You haven't any idea what it means, but Ilove that girl, and I could never look her in the face again with bloodon my hands, even such blood as yours. That's the reason."
For a moment Tom Blair was silent; then into his brain there flashed asuggestion, and he grasped at it as a drowning man at a straw.
"Wouldn't it be blood on your hands just the same if you take me backwhere we're headed, back to Mick Kennedy and--"
With a single motion, swift as though raised by a spring, Ben was uponhis feet.
"Pick up your blanket!"
"But--"
"Silence!" The big square jaw shot forward like the piston of an engine."Not another word of that, now or ever. Not another word!"
For a second the other paused doggedly, then taking up his load he movedahead into the shadow.
Hour after hour they advanced, alternately walking and trotting,following the winding bed of the stream. Darkness fell, until they couldnot see each other's faces, until they were merely two black passingshadows; but the figure behind was relentless. Stimulating, compelling,he forced himself close. Ever and anon they could hear the frighteneddash of a rabbit away from their path. More than once a snow-owlfluttered over their heads; but they took no notice. Twice the man inadvance stumbled and fell; but though Ben paused he spoke no word. Likea soldier of the ranks on secret forced march, ignorant of hisdestination, given only conjecture as to what the morrow would bringforth, Tom Blair panted ahead.
With the coming of daylight Ben slowed to a walk, and looked about inquest of breakfast. Game was plentiful along the shelter of the stream,and before they had advanced a half-mile farther he saw ahead a flock ofgrouse roosting in the diverging branches of a cottonwood tree. At twohundred yards, selecting those on the lowest branches, he dropped half adozen, one after the other, with the rifle; and still the remainder ofthe flock did not fly. Very different were they from the open-landprairie chicken, whom a mere sound will send a-wing.
As on the night before, they broiled each what he wished, and, carefullycleaning the others, Ben packed them with his kit. Then, stolid as anIndian, he cleared a spot of earth, and wrapping himself in his blanketlay down full in the sunshine, smoking his pipe impassively. Taking thecue, Tom Blair likewise curled up like a dog near at hand.
Slowly and more slowly came the puffs of smoke from the captor's pipe;at last they ceased entirely. The lids of the youth's eyes closed, hisbreath came deep and regular. Beneath the blanket a muscle here andthere twitched involuntarily, as in one who is very weary and asleep.
An hour passed, an hour without a sound; then, looking closely, aspectator could have seen one of Tom Blair's eyes open and closefurtively. Again it opened, and its mate as well--to remain so. For aminute, two minutes, they studied the companion face uncertainly,suspiciously, then savagely. Another minute, and the body had risen tohands and knees. Still Ben did not stir, still the great expanse of hischest rose and fell. Tom Blair was satisfied. Hand over hand, feelinghis way like a cat, he advanced toward the prostrate figure. Despite hiscaution, the crust of the snow crackled once beneath his touch, and hepaused, a soundless curse forming upon his lips; but the warning passedunheeded, and, bolder than before, he padded on.
Eight feet he gained, then ten. His color heightened, the repressedarteries throbbed above the gaudy neckerchief, the skulking animalintensified in the tightened muscles of the temples. As many feet again;but a few more minutes--then liberty and life. The better to guard hismovements, his gaze fell. Out and down went his right hand, then hisleft, as his lithe body slid forward. Again he glanced up, paused--andon the instant every muscle of his tense body went suddenly lax. Insteadof the closed eyes and sleeping face he had expected, two steady eyeswere giving him back look for look. There had not been a motion; theface was yet that of a sleeper; the chest still rose and fell steadily;but the eyes!
Tom Blair's teeth ground each other like those of a dog with rabies. Thesuggestion of froth came to his lips.
"Curse you!" he cried. "Curse you forever!"
A moment they lay so, a moment wherein the last vestige of hope left themind of the captive; but in it Ben Blair spoke no word. Maddening,immeasurably worse than denunciation, was that relentless silence. Itwas uncanny; and the bearded man felt the hairs of his head rising asthe mane of a dog or a wolf lifts at a sound it does not understand.
"Say something," he pleaded desperately. "Shoot me, kill me, doanything--but don't look at me like that!" and, fairly writhing, hecrawled back to his blanket and buried his head in its depths.
With the coming of evening coolness, Ben again made preparation for thejourney. Neither of the men made reference to the incidents of the day,but on Tom Blair's face there was a new expression, like that of acriminal on his passage from the cell to the hangman's trap. If theyounger man saw it, he gave no sign; and as on the night before, theyjogged ahead. Before daylight broke, the comparatively smooth bed of BadRiver merged into the irregular surface of the Missouri. Then theyhalted. Why they stopped there, Tom Blair could not at the time tell;but with the coming of daylight he understood. Where he had crossed andBen had followed there was not now a single track, but many--a score atleast. At the margin of the stream, where the cavalcade had stopped, thesnow was tramped hard as a stockade; and in the centre of the beatenplace, distinct against the white, was a dark spot where a greatcamp-fire had been built. At the river the party had stopped. Obviously,there the last snow had obliterated the trail, and, seeing that they hadturned back, Tom Blair gave a sigh of relief. Whatever the future had instore for him, it could reveal nothing so fearful as a meeting withthose whom intuition told him had made up that party.
But his relief was short-lived. Again, after they had breakfasted fromthe grouse in the pack, Ben ordered the onward march, along the bank ofthe great river. As they moved ahead, a realization of their destinationat last came to the captive, and for the first time he balked.
"Do what you wish with me," he cried. "I'll not go a step farther."
They were perhaps a mile down the river. The bordering hills enclosedthem like an arena.
"Very well." Ben Blair spoke as though the occurrence were one ofevery-day repetition. "Give me your clothes!"
Tom's face settled stubbornly.
"You'll have to take them."
The youth's hand sought his hip, and a bullet spat at the snow withinthree inches of the other's feet. There was a meaning pause. Slowly thebravado left the other's face.
"Don't keep me waiting!" urged Ben.
Slowly, very slowly, off came the captive's coat and vest. Despite hisefforts, the hands which loosened the buttons trembled uncontrollably.Following the vest came the shirt, then a shoe, and the sock beneath.His foot touched the snow. For the first time a faint realization of t
hething he was choosing came to him. The vicious bite of the frost uponthe bare skin was not a possibility of the future, but a condition ofthe immediate now; and he weakened. But in the moment of his indecision,the wave of stubbornness and of blinding hate again flooded him, and arush of hot curses left his lips.
For a moment, the last time in their lives, the two men eyed each otherfairly. Indescribable hate was written upon one face; the other was asblank as the surrounding snow. Its very immobility chilled Tom Blair andcowed him into silence. Without a word he replaced shoe and coat andtook up his blanket. An advancing step sounded behind him, and,understanding, he moved ahead. After a while the foot-fall again gainedupon him, and once more the walk merged into the interminable jog-jog ofthe back-trail.
It was morning when the two began that last relay. It was four o'clockin the afternoon when they arrived amid the outskirts of the scatteredprairie terminus which was their destination. Within ten minutesthereafter the two had separated. The older man, in charge of a lank,unshaven frontiersman, chiefly noticeable from a quid of tobacco whichswelled one cheek like an abscess, and a nickle-plated star which hewore on the lapel of his coat, was headed for the pretentious whitepainted building known as the court-house. The younger, catching sightof a wind-twisted sign lettered "Hotel," made for it as though sightingthe promised land. In the office, as he passed through, was a crowd ofmen entirely too large to have gathered by chance in a frontierhostelry, who eyed him peculiarly; but he took no notice, and fiveminutes later, upon the bedraggled bed of the unplastered upper roomthat the landlord gave him, without even his boots removed, he was deepin the realm of oblivion.
Some time later--he had no idea of the hour save that all was dark--hewas awakened by a confusion of voices in the room below, a slamming ofdoors, a thumping of great boots upon the bare floor. Scarcelyremembering his whereabouts, he rolled from his bed and thrust his headout of the narrow window. Here and there about the town were scatteredlights--some stationary, others, which he took to be lanterns, moving.On the street beneath his window two men went by on a run. Half way upthe block, before the well-lighted front of a saloon, a motley crowd wasshifting back and forth, restless as ants in a hill, the murmur of theirvoices sounding menacing as the distant hum of swarming bees. All atonce from out the door there burst fair into the crowd a heavy man withgreat shoulders and a bull neck. About him, even in the uncertain light,there seemed to the watcher something very familiar. What he said, Bencould not understand; but he turned his head this way and that, and hismotions were unmistakable. The crowd made way before him as sheep beforea dog, and closing behind followed steadily in his wake. Gradually asthe leader advanced the mass gained momentum. At first the pace had beena slow walk. In the space of seconds it became a swift one, then a run,with a wild scramble by those in the rear to gain front place. Thefrozen ground rumbled under their rushing feet. The direction of theirmovement, at first uncertain, became definite. It was a direct line forthe centrally located court-house; and, no longer doubtful of theirpurpose, Ben left the window, fairly tumbled downstairs, and rushedthrough the now deserted office into the equally deserted street.
The court-house square was but two blocks away; but the mob had a goodlead, and when the youth arrived he found the space within thesurrounding chain fence fairly covered. Where the people could all havecome from struck him even at that moment as a mystery. Certainly alltold the town could not in itself have mustered half the number.Elbowing his way among them, however, he began soon to understand. Hereand there among the mass he caught sight of familiar faces,--Russell ofthe Circle R Ranch, Stetson of the "XI," each taking no part, but withhats slouched low over their eyes watching every movement of the drama.Passing around a jam he could not press through, Ben felt a detaininghand upon his arm, and turning, he was face to face with Grannis. Thegrip of the overseer tightened.
"I've been looking for you, Blair," he said, "I know what you've beentrying to do, but most of the crowd don't and won't. They're ugly. You'dbetter keep back."
For answer Ben eyed the cowboy squarely.
"I thought I left you in charge of the ranch," he said evenly.
The weather-stained face of the foreman reddened in the shifting lanternlight, but the eyes did not drop.
"I have been. I just got here." A dignity which well became him spoke inthe steady voice. "I had a reason for coming."
Ben released his gaze.
"The others are here too?"
"No, they're all at the ranch. Graham and I attended to that."
"I just saw Russell and Stetson. They couldn't possibly have got hereto-day from home. Has--has this been planned?"
Grannis nodded. "Yes. Kennedy and his gang have been watching here andat the ranch for days. They thought you'd show up at one place or theother. The whole country is out. There are lots of strangers here, fromranches I never heard of before. Seems as though everybody knew Rankinand heard of his being shot. You'd better let them have it their way.It'll amount to the same in the end, and death itself couldn't stop themnow."
He took a step forward; for Ben, understanding all, had at last movedon.
"Blair!" he called after him, again extending a detaining hand. Hisvoice took on a new note--intimate, personal, a tone of which no onewould have thought it capable. "Blair, listen to me! Stop!"
But he might as well have spoken to the swiftly flowing water beneaththe ice of the great river. Of a sudden, from out a passage leading intothe cell-room of the court-house basement, a black swarm of men hademerged, bearing by sheer animal force a struggling object in theirmidst. The silence of those who waited, the lull before the storm, onthe instant ended. A very Babel of voices took its place. By commonconsent, as though drawn by centripetal force, actors and spectatorscrowded together until they were a solid block of humanity. Caught inthe midst, Grannis and Ben alike could for a moment but move with themass. So fierce was the crush that their very breath seemed imprisonedin their lungs.
Like molten metal the crowd began to flow--to the right, in thedirection of the railroad track. With each passing moment the confusionwas, if possible, greater than before. Here and there a cowboy, unableto control his excess of feeling, emptied his revolver into the air.Once Ben heard the wailing yelp of a dog caught under foot of the mass.To his left, a little man with a white collar, obviously a merespectator, pleaded loudly to be released from the pressure. Adding tothe confusion, the bell on the town-hall began ringing furiously.
On they went, a hundred yards, two hundred, reached the railroad track,stopped. In the midst of the leaders, looming over their heads, was awhitened telegraph pole. Of a sudden a lariat shot up over the paintedcross-arm, and dropped, the two ends dangling free; and, understandingit all, the spectators again became silent. Everything moved likeclockwork. From somewhere in the darkness a bare-backed pony wasproduced and brought directly under the dangling rope. Astride him adark-bearded figure with hands tied behind his back was placed andfirmly held. Swiftly a running noose, fashioned from the ends of thelariat, was slipped over the captive's neck. A man grasped the bit ofthe mustang. Before him, the crowd began to give way. The greatbull-necked leader--Mick Kennedy, every one now saw it was--held up hishand for silence, and turned to the helpless figure astride the pony.
"Tom Blair!" he said,--and such was now the silence that a whisper wouldhave been audible,--"Tom Blair, have you anything you wish to say?"
The dark shape took no notice. Apparently it did not hear.
Mick Kennedy hesitated. Upon his lips a repetition of the question wasforming--but it got no farther. In the midst of the mass of spectatorsthere was a sudden tumult, a scattering from one spot as from a lightedbomb.
"Make way!" demanded an insistent voice. "Let me through!" Andfor a moment, forgetting the other interest, the spectators turned tothis newer one.
At first they could distinguish nothing perfectly; then amidst theconfusion they made out the form of a long-armed, long-faced youth, hishead lowered, his shoulder before him like
a wedge, crowding his way tothe fore.
"Make room there!" he repeated. "Make room!" and again into the crowd,like a snow-plough into a drift, he penetrated until his momentum wasexhausted, then paused for a fresh plunge.
But before him a pathway was forming. Seemingly the thing wasimpossible, but the trick of a spoken name was sufficient.
"It's Ben Blair!" someone had announced, and others had loudly taken upthe cry. "It's Ben Blair! Let him through!"
Along the pathway thus cleared the youth made his way and approached thecentre of activity. Previously the drama had moved swiftly,--so swiftlythat the spectators could merely watch developments, but under theinterruption it halted. The man at the pony's bridle--cowboy Buck itwas--paused, uncertain what to do, doubtful of the intent of thelong-faced man who so suddenly had come beside him. Not so Mick Kennedy.Well he knew what was in store, and reaching over he gave the pony aresounding slap on the flank.
"Let him go, Buck!" he commanded of the cowboy. "Hurry!"
But already he was too late. With a grip like a trap, Ben's hand waslikewise on the rein, holding the little beast, despite his struggles,fairly in his tracks. Ben's head turned, met the bartender's Cyclopeaneye squarely, and held it with a look this bulldozer of men had neverbefore received in all his checkered career.
"Mick Kennedy," he said quietly, "another move like that, and in fiveminutes you'll be hanging from the other side."
For the fraction of a second there was a pause; but, short as it was,the Irishman felt the sweat start. "The day of such as you has passed,Mick Kennedy."
There was no time for more. As bystanders gather around a street fight,the grim cowmen had closed in from all sides. On the outskirts menmounted each other's shoulders the better to see. Of a sudden, frombehind, Ben felt himself grasped by a multitude of hands. Angry voicessounded in his ears.
"String him up too if he interferes!" suggested one.
"That's the talk!" echoed a third. "Swing him, too!"
The lust of blood was upon the crowd, crying to be satisfied. But theyhad reckoned wrongly, and were soon to learn their error. Every atom ofthe long youth's fighting blood was raised to boiling pitch. On theinstant, the all but superhuman strength at which we marvel in theinsane was his. Like flails, his doubled fists shot out in everydirection, meeting resistance at each blow. By the dim light he caughtthe answering glint on sheath knives, but he took no notice. His hat hadcome off, and his abundant brown hair shook about his shoulders. Hisblue eyes blazed. A figure of war incarnate he stood, and a vacantcircle which no one cared to cross formed about him. One long hand, withfingers outstretched, was raised above his head. The brilliant eyessearched the surrounding sea of faces for those he knew; as one by onehe found them, lingered, conquered. Silence fell intense.
"Men! Gentlemen!" The words went out like pistol-shots reaching everyacute ear. "Listen to me. I've a right to speak. Stop a moment, all ofyou, and think. This is the twentieth century, not the first. We're inAmerica, free America. Think, I say, think! Don't act blindly! Think!This man is guilty. We all know it. He's caught red-handed. But he can'tescape. Remember this, men, and think! As you value your ownself-respect, as you honor the country you live in, don't be savages,don't do this deed you contemplate, this thing you've started doing. Letthe law take its course!"
The speaker paused for breath, and, as though fascinated by his audacityor something else, friend and enemy remained motionless and waiting.Well fitting the drama was its setting: the darkness of night broken bythe flickering lanterns; on the pony the huddled helpless figure with arunning noose about its neck; the row upon row of rugged faces, ofgleaming eyes!
"Ranchers, stockmen!" rushed on the insistent voice, "you knowresponsibility; it's to you I'm talking. A principle is at stakehere,--the principle of law or of lawlessness. One of these--you knowwhich--has run this range too long; it's gripping us at this moment.Before we can be free we must call it halt. Let's do it now; don't waitfor the next time or the next, but now, now!" Once more he paused, hiseyes for the last time making the circle swiftly, his hand in the air,palm forward. "For law, the law of J. L. Rankin, instead of JudgeLynch!" he challenged. "For civilization instead of savagery--notto-morrow but now, now! Help me to uphold the law!"
So swiftly that the spectators scarcely realized what he was doing, hestepped over to the limp figure upon the pony, loosed the noose fromaround the neck, and lifted him to the ground.
"Sheriff Ralston!" he called; "come and take your prisoner! Russell!Stetson! Grannis!" designating each by name, "every man who values life,help me now!"
The cry was the trumpet for action. Instantly every one was in motion.Again arose the Babel of voices,--voices cursing, arguing, encouraging.The circle of malevolent faces which had surrounded the youth would notlonger be stayed, closed hotly in. He felt the press of their bodiesagainst his, their breath in his face. With an effort, marking hisplace, the extended right hand went up once more into the air. Theslogan again sprang to his tongue.
"For the law of J. L. Rankin, men! The law of--"
The sentence died on his lips. Suddenly, something lightning-like,scorching hot, caught him beneath his right shoulder-blade. Before hiseyes the faces, the lighted lanterns, faded into darkness. A sound likefalling waters roared in his ears.