Perkins stiffened. "That," he said with some dignity, "will come out at the trial. He killed Rawhide outright, and Texas Bill will die, I reckon. The trial will show what kinda excuse he thought he had."

Having delivered himself, thus impartially and with malice towards none, Perkins started on.

"Oh, say! You don't mind if I talk to 'em?" Bill gritted his teeth at having to put the sentence in that favor-seeking tone, but he did it, nevertheless.

The Captain scowled under his black, slouch hat. "I've give strict orders not to let anybody inside the tent till after the trial," he said shortly.

"Oh, that's all right. I'll talk to 'em through the door," Bill agreed equably. "Jack owes me some money."

The Captain muttered unintelligibly and pa.s.sed on, and Bill chose to interpret the mutter as consent. He strolled over to the tent, joked condescendingly with the guard who stood before it, and announced that the Captain had said he might talk to the prisoners.

"I did not," said the Captain unexpectedly at his shoulder. "I said you couldn't. After the trial, you can collect what's coming to you, Mr. Wilson. That is," he added hastily, "in case Allen should be convicted. If he ain't, you can do as you please." He looked full at the guard. "Shoot any man that attempts to enter that tent or talk to the prisoners without my permission, Shorty," he directed, and turned his back on Bill.

Bill did not permit one muscle of his face to twitch. "All right," he drawled, "I guess I won't go broke if I don't get it. You mind what your Captain tells you, Shorty! He's running this show, and what he says goes. You've got a good man over yuh, Shorty. A fine man. He'll weed out the town till it'll look like grandpa's onion bed--if the supply of rope don't give out!" Whereupon he strolled carelessly back to his place, and went in as if the incident were squeezed dry of interest for him. He walked to the far end of the big room, sat deliberately down upon a little table, and rewarded himself for his forbearance by cursing methodically the Captain, the Committee of which he was the leader, the men who had witlessly given him the power he used so ruthlessly as pleased him best, and Jack Allen, whose ill-timed criticisms and hot-headed freedom of speech had brought upon himself the weight of the Committee's dread hand.

"d.a.m.n him, I tried to tell him!" groaned Bill, his face hidden behind his palms. "They'll hang him--and darn my oldest sister's cat's eyes, somebody'll sweat blood for it, too!" (Bill, you will observe, had reached the end of real blasphemy and was forced to improvise milder expletives as he went along.) "There ought to be enough decent men in this town to--"

"Did you git to see Jack?" ventured Jim, coming anxiously up to his boss.

The tone of him, which was that hushed tone which we employ in the presence of the dead, so incensed Bill that for answer he threw the hammer viciously in his direction. Jim took the hint and retreated hastily.

"No, d.a.m.n 'em, they won't let me near him," said Bill, ashamed of his violence. "I knew they'd get him; but I didn't think they'd get him so quick. I sent a letter down by an Injun this morning to his pardner to come up and get him outa town before he--But it's too late now. That talk he made last night--"

"Say, he shot Swift in the arm, too," said Jim. "Pity he didn't kill him. They're getting a jury together already. Say! Ain't it h.e.l.l?"

CHAPTER III

THE THING THEY CALLED JUSTICE

Jack stared meditatively across at the young fellow sitting hunched upon another of the boxes that were the seats in this tent-jail, which was also the courtroom of the Vigilance Committee, and mechanically counted the slow tears that trickled down between the third and fourth fingers of each hand. A half-hour spent so would have rasped the nerves of the most phlegmatic man in the town, and Jack was not phlegmatic; fifteen minutes of watching that silent weeping sufficed to bring a m.u.f.fled explosion.

"Ah, for G.o.d's sake, brace up!" he gritted. "There's some hope for you--if you don't spoil what chance you have got, by crying around like a baby. Brace up and be a man, anyway. It won't hurt any worse if you grin about it."

The young fellow felt gropingly for a red-figured bandanna, found it and wiped his face and his eyes dejectedly. "I beg your pardon for seeming a coward," he apologized huskily. "I got to thinking about my--m-mother and sisters, and--"

Jack winced. Mother and sisters he had longed for all his life. "Well, you better be thinking how you'll get out of the sc.r.a.pe you're in," he advised, with a little of Bill Wilson's grimness. "I'm afraid I'm to blame, in a way; and yet, if I hadn't mixed into the fight, you'd be dead by now. Maybe that would have been just as well, seeing how things have turned out," he grinned. "Still--have a smoke?"

"I never used tobacco in my life," declined the youth somewhat primly.

"No, I don't reckon you ever did!" Jack eyed him with a certain amount of pitying amus.e.m.e.nt. "A fellow that will come gold-hunting without a gun to his name, would not use tobacco, or swear, or do anything that a perfect lady couldn't do! However, you put up a good fight with your fists, old man, and that's something."

"I'd have been killed, though, if you hadn't shot when you did. They were too much for me. I haven't tried to thank you--"

"No, I shouldn't think you would," grinned Jack. "I don't see yet where I've done you any particular favor: from robbers to Vigilance Committee might be called an up-to-date version of 'Out of the frying-pan into the fire.'"

The boy glanced fearfully toward the closed tent-flaps. "Ssh!" he whispered. "The guard can hear--"

"Oh, that's all right," returned Jack, urged perhaps to a conscious bravado by the very weakness of the other. "It's all day with me, anyway. I may as well say what I think.

"And so--" He paused to blow one of his favorite little smoke rings and watch it float to the dingy ridge-pole, where it flickered and faded into a blue haze "--and so, I'm going to say right out in meeting what I think of this town and the Committee they let measure out justice. Justice!" He laughed sardonically. "Poor old lady, she couldn't stop within forty miles of Perkins' Committee if she had forty bandages over her eyes, and both ears plugged with cotton!

You wait till their farce of a trial is over. You may get off, by a scratch--I hope so. But unless Bill Wilson--"

"Aw, yuh needn't pin no hopes on Bill Wilson!" came a heavy, malicious voice through the tent wall. "All h.e.l.l can't save yuh, Jack Allen!

You've had a ride out to the oak comin' to yuh for quite a while, and before sundown you'll get it."

"Oh! Is that so, Shorty? Say, you're breaking the rules, you old pirate; you're talking to the prisoners without permission. As the Captain's most faithful dog Tray, you'd better shoot yourself; it'll save the town the trouble of hanging you later on!" He smoked calmly while Shorty, on guard without, growled a vilifying retort, and the other guards snickered.

"Ah, brace up!" he advised his quaking companion again. "If my company doesn't d.a.m.n you beyond all hope, you may get out of the sc.r.a.pe. You didn't have a gun, and you're a stranger and haven't said naughty things about your neighbors. Cheer up. Life looks just as good to me as it does to you. I love this old world just as well as any man that ever lived in it, and I'm not a bit pleased over leaving it--any more than you are. But I can't see where I could better matters by letting myself get wobbly in the knees. I'm sorry I didn't make a bigger fight to keep my guns, though. I'd like to have perforated a few more of our most worthy Committee before I quit; our friend Shorty, for instance,"

he stipulated wickedly and clearly, "and the Captain."

If he were deliberately trying to goad Shorty to further profanity, the result should have satisfied him. The huge shadow of Shorty moving back and forth upon the front wall of the tent, became violently agitated and developed a gigantic arm that waved threateningly over the ridge pole. The other guards laughed and checked their laughter with a suddenness which made Jack's eyes leave the dancing shadow and seek questioningly the closed tent flaps.

"If I'm any good at reading signs, we are now about to be tried by our peers--twelve good men and true," he announced ironically. "Brace up, old man! The chances are you'll soon be out of this mess and headed for home. Don't be afraid to tell the truth--and don't act scared; they'll take that as a sure sign you've got a guilty conscience. Just keep a stiff upper lip; it won't take long; we do things in a hurry, out here!"

"Say, you're a brick, Mr. Allen!" the boy burst out, impulsively gripping the hand of his champion.

Jack jerked his hand away--not unkindly, but rather as if he feared to drop, even for an instant, his flippant defiance of the trick fate had played him. The jerk sent a small, shining thing sliding down to the floor; where it stood upright and quivered in the soft sand.

"Lord!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed under his breath, s.n.a.t.c.hing it up as a thief would s.n.a.t.c.h at his spoils. He looked fearfully at the closed flaps, outside which the trampling of many feet sounded closer and closer; and with a warning shake of his head at the other, slid the dagger into his sleeve again, carefully fastening the point in the stout hem of the buckskin.

"You never can tell," he muttered, smiling queerly as he made sure the weapon was not noticeable.

He was rolling another cigarette when the Captain parted the tent flaps and came stooping in, followed by twelve men of the Committee who were to be the jury, and as many spectators as could crowd after them.

"Gentlemen, be seated," the Captain invited formally, and motioned the jury to the crude bunks that lined one side of the large tent. Jack and the boy he moved farther from the entrance, and took up his own position where his sharp eyes commanded every inch of the interior and where the gun which he drew from its holster and rested upon his knee could speak its deadly rebuke to any man there if, in the upholding of justice, the Captain deemed it necessary.

The jury shuffled to their places, perched in a row upon the edge of the bunks and waited silently, their eyes fixed expectantly upon their Captain. The crowd edged into the corners and along the sides, their hat crowns sc.r.a.ping the canvas roof as they were forced closer to the low wall.

The Captain waited until the silence was a palpable thing made alive by the rhythmic breathing of the men who were to look upon this new travesty of justice.

"Gentlemen," he said at last, his sonorous voice carrying his words distinctly to the crowd without, "we are now ready to proceed with the investigation. I wish to state, for the information of those present, that after the prisoners were placed here under guard, I went to get a statement from the wounded man, Mr. Texas Bill. I found him dying from a wound inflicted upon his person by a pistol ball which pa.s.sed through his left lung, above and to the right of his heart. I did not take a written statement, for lack of time and writing materials. But Texas swore--"

"Yeah--I'll bet he swore!" commented Bill Wilson under his breath.

Every one looked toward Bill, standing just inside the flaps, and the Captain scowled while he waited for attention.

"Texas swore that he was shot by one of the prisoners, Jack Allen by name, who fired upon him without due provocation, while he was talking to this other prisoner, whose name we have yet to learn. Texas stated that Allen, appearing suddenly from behind some bushes, began shooting with deadly intent and without warning, wantonly murdering Rawhide Jack, who lies dead in Smith's back room, and shooting him, Texas, through the lung. He also stated that Mr. d.i.c.k Swift was with him and Rawhide Jack, and was also shot by the prisoner, Jack Allen, without cause or provocation.

"They had met the stranger and were standing talking to him about his luck in the diggin's. This stranger, who is the other prisoner, was inclined to be sa.s.sy, and made a pa.s.s at Rawhide with his fist, telling him to mind his own business and not ask so many questions.

Rawhide struck back; and Allen, coming out from behind some bushes, began shooting."

The Captain stopped and looked calmly and judicially from face to face in the crowd.

"That, gentlemen, is the statement made to me by Texas Bill, who now lies dead in Pete's Place as a result of the wound inflicted by Allen."

"That's a lot of swearing for a man to do that's been shot through the lungs," commented Bill Wilson skeptically.