In the afternoons, Mrs. Stevens would sit beside him and knit things and talk to him in a pleasantly garrulous fashion, and he would lie and listen to her--and to Mona, singing somewhere. Mona sang very well, he thought; he wondered if she had ever had any training. Also, he wished he dared ask her not to sing that song about "She's only a bird in a gilded cage." It brought back too vividly the nights when he and Bob stood guard under the quiet stars.

And then one day he hobbled out into the dining-room and ate dinner with the family. Since he sat opposite Mona she was obliged to look at him occasionally, whether she would or no. Thurston had a strain of obstinacy in his nature, and when he decided that Mona should not only look at him, but should talk to him as well, he set himself diligently to attain that end. He was not the man to sit down supinely and let a girl calmly ignore him; so Mona presently found herself talking to him with some degree of cordiality; and what is more to the point, listening to him when he talked. It is probable that Thurston never had tried so hard in his life to win a girl's attention.

It was while he was still hobbling with a cane and taxing his imagination daily to invent excuses for remaining, that Lauman, the sheriff, rode up to the door with a deputy and asked shelter for themselves and the two Wagners, who glowered sullenly down from their weary horses. When they had been safely disposed in Thurston's bedroom, with one of the ranch hands detailed to guard them, Lauman and his man gave themselves up to the joy of a good meal. Their own cooking, they said, got mighty tame especially when they hadn't much to cook and dared not have a fire.

They had come upon the outlaws by mere accident, and it is hard telling which was the most surprised. But Lauman was, perhaps, the quickest man with a gun in Valley County, else he would not have been serving his fourth term as sheriff. He got the drop and kept it while his deputy did the rest. It had been a hard chase, he said, and a long one if you counted time instead of miles. But he had them now, harmless as rattlers with their fangs fresh drawn. He wanted to get them to Glasgow before people got to hear of their capture; he thought they wouldn't be any too safe if the boys knew he had them.

If he had known that the Lazy Eight roundup had just pulled in to the home ranch that afternoon, and that d.i.c.k Farney, one of the Stevens men, had slipped out to the corral and saddled his swiftest horse, it is quite possible that Lauman would not have lingered so long over his supper, or drank his third cup of coffee--with real cream in it--with so great a relish. And if he had known that the Circle Bar boys were camped just three miles away within hailing distance of the Lazy Eight trail, he would doubtless have postponed his after-supper smoke.

He was sitting, revolver in hand, watching the Wagners give a practical demonstration of the extent of their appet.i.tes, when Thurston limped in from the porch, his eyes darker than usual. "There are a lot of riders coming, Mr. Lauman," he announced quietly. "It sounds like a whole roundup. I thought you ought to know."

The prisoners went white, and put down knife and fork. If they had never feared before, plainly they were afraid then.

Lauman's face did not in the least change. "Put the hand-cuffs on, Waller," he said. "If you've got a room that ain't easy to get at from the outside, Mrs. Stevens, I guess I'll have to ask yuh for the use of it."

Mrs. Stevens had lived long in Valley County, and had learned how to meet emergencies. "Put 'em right down cellar," she invited briskly.

"There's just the trap-door into it, and the windows ain't big enough for a cat to go through. Mona, get a candle for Mr. Lauman." She turned to hurry the girl, and found Mona at her elbow with a light.

"That's the kind uh woman I like to have around," Lauman chuckled. "Come on, boys; hustle down there if yuh want to see Glasgow again."

Trembling, all their dare-devil courage sapped from them by the menace of Thurston's words, they stumbled down the steep stairs, and the darkness swallowed them. Lauman beckoned to his deputy.

"You go with 'em, Waller," he ordered. "If anybody but me offers to lift this trap, shoot. Don't yuh take any chances. Blow out that candle soon as you're located."

It was then that fifty riders clattered into the yard and up to the front door, grouping in a way that left no exit unseen. Thurston, standing in the doorway, knew them almost to a man. Lazy Eight boys, they were; men who night after night had spread their blankets under the tent-roof with him and with Bob MacGregor; Bob, who lay silently out on the hill back of the home ranch-house, waiting for the last, great round-up. They glanced at him in mute greeting and dismounted without a word. With them mingled the Circle Bar boys, as silent and grim as their fellows. Lauman came up and peered into the dusk; Thurston observed that he carried his Winchester un.o.btrusively in one hand.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, boys," he greeted cheerfully. But for the rifle you never would have guessed he knew their errand.

"h.e.l.lo, Lauman," answered Park, matching him for cheerfulness. Then:

"We rode over to hang them Wagners." Lauman grinned. "I hate to disappoint yuh, Park, but I've kinda set my heart on doing that little job myself. I'm the one that caught 'em, and if you'd followed my trail the last month you'd say I earned the privilege."

"Maybe so," Park admitted pleasantly, "but we've got a little personal matter to settle up with those jaspers. Bob MacGregor was one of us, yuh remember."

"I'll hang 'em just as dead as you can," Lauman argued.

"But yuh won't do it so quick," Park lashed back. "They're spoiling the air every breath they draw. We want 'em, and I guess that pretty near settles it."

"Not by a d.a.m.n sight it don't! I've never had a man took away from me yet, boys, and I've been your sheriff a good many years. You hike right back to camp; yuh can't have 'em."

Thurston could scarcely realize the deadliness of their purpose. He knew them for kind-hearted, laughter-loving young fellows, who would give their last dollar to a friend. He could not believe that they would resort to violence now. Besides, this was not his idea of a mob; he had fancied they would howl threats and wave bludgeons, as they did in stories. Mobs always "howled and seethed with pa.s.sion" at one's doors; they did not stand about and talk quietly as though the subject was trivial and did not greatly concern them.

But the men were pressing closer, and their very calmness, had he known it, was ominous. Lauman shifted his rifle ready for instant aim.

"Boys, look here," he began more gravely, "I can't say I blame yuh, looking at it from your view-point. If you'd caught these men when yuh was out hunting 'em, you could uh strung 'em up--and I'd likely uh had business somewhere else about that time. But yuh didn't catch 'em; yuh give up the chase and left 'em to me. And yuh got to remember that I'm the one that brought 'em in. They're in my care. I'm sworn to protect 'em and turn 'em over to the law--and it ain't a question uh whether they deserve it or not. That's what I'm paid for, and I expect to go right ahead according to orders and hang 'em by law. You can't have 'em--unless yuh lay me out first, and I don't reckon any of yuh would go that far."

"There's never been a man hung by law in this county yet," a voice cried angrily and impatiently.

"That ain't saying there never will be," Lauman flung back. "Don't yuh worry, they'll get all that's coming to them, all right."

"How about the time yuh had 'em in your rotten old jail, and let 'em get out and run loose around the country, killing off white men?" drawled another-a Circle-Bar man.

"Now boys."

A hand--the hand of him who had stood guard over the Wagners in the bedroom during supper--reached out through the doorway and caught his rifle arm. Taken unawares from behind, he whirled and then went down under the weight of men used to "wra.s.sling" calves. Even old Lauman was no match for them, and presently he found himself stretched upon the porch with three Lazy Eight boys sitting on his person; which, being inclined to portliness, he found very uncomfortable.

Moved by an impulse he had no name for, Thurston s.n.a.t.c.hed the sheriff's revolver from its scabbard. As the heap squirmed pantingly upon the porch he stepped into the doorway to avoid being tripped, which was the wisest move he could have made, for it put him in the shadow--and there were men of the Circle Bar whose trigger-finger would not have hesitated, just then, had he been in plain sight and had they known his purpose.

"Just hold on there, boys," he called, and they could see the glimmer of the gun-barrel. Those of the Lazy Eight laughed at him.

"Aw, put it down, Bud," Park admonished. "That's too dangerous a toy for you to be playing with--and yuh know d.a.m.n well yuh can't hit anything."

"I killed a steer once," Thurston reminded him meekly, whereat the laugh hushed; for they remembered.

"I know I can't shoot straight," he went on frankly, "but you're taking that much the greater chance. If I have to, I'll cut loose--and there's no telling where the bullets may strike."

"That's right," Park admitted. "Stand still, boys; he's more dangerous than a gun that isn't loaded. What d'yuh want, m'son?"

"I want to talk to you for about five minutes. I've got a game leg, so that I can neither run nor fight, but I hope you'll listen to me. The Wagners can't get away--they're locked up, with a deputy standing over them with a gun; and on top of that they're handcuffed. They're as helpless, boys, as two trapped coyotes." He looked down over the crowd, which shifted uneasily; no one spoke.

"That's what struck me most," he continued. "You know what I thought of Bob, don't you? And I didn't thank them for boring a hole in my leg; it wasn't any kindness of theirs that it didn't land higher--they weren't shooting at me for fun. And I'd have killed them both with a clear conscience, if I could. I tried hard enough. But it was different then; out in the open, where a man had an even break. I don't believe if I had shot as straight as I wanted to that I'd ever have felt a moment's compunction. But now, when they're disarmed and shackled and altogether helpless, I couldn't walk up to them deliberately and kill them could you?

"It could be done, and done easily. You have Lauman where he can't do anything, and I'm not of much account in a fight; so you've really only one deputy sheriff and two women to get the best of. You could drag these men out and hang them in the cottonwoods, and they couldn't raise a hand to defend themselves. We could do it easily--but when it was done and the excitement had pa.s.sed I'd have a picture in my memory that I'd hate to look at. I'd have an hour in my life that would haunt me. And so would you. You'd hate to look back and think that one time you helped kill a couple of men who couldn't fight back.

"Let the law do it, boys. You don't want them to live, and I don't; n.o.body does, for they deserve to die. But it isn't for us to play judge and jury and hangman here to-night. Let them get what's coming to them at the hands of the officers you've elected for that purpose. They won't get off. Hank Graves says they will hang if it takes every hoof he owns.

He said he would bring Bowman down here to help prosecute them. I don't know Bowman--"

"I do," a voice spoke, somewhere in the darkness. "Lawyer from Helena.

Never lost a case."

"I'm glad to hear it, for he's the man that will prosecute. They haven't a ghost of a show to get out of it. Lauman here is responsible for their safe keeping and I guess, now that he knows them better, we needn't be afraid they'll escape again. And it's as Lauman said; he'll hang them quite as dead as you can. He's drawing a salary to do these things, make him earn it. It's a nasty job, boys, and you wouldn't get anything out of it but a nasty memory."

A hand that did not feel like the hand of a man rested for an instant on his arm. Mona brushed by him and stepped out where the rising moon shone on her hair and into her big, blue-gray eyes.

"I wish you all would please go away," she said. "You are making mamma sick. She's got it in her head that you are going to do something awful, and I can't convince her you're not. I told her you wouldn't do anything so sneaking, but she's awfully nervous about it. Won't you please go, right now?"

They looked sheepishly at one another; every man of them feared the ridicule of his neighbor.

"Why, sure we'll go," cried Park, rallying. "We were going anyway in a minute. Tell your mother we were just congratulating Lauman on rounding up these Wagners. Come on, boys. And you, Bud, hurry up and get well again; we miss yuh round the Lazy Eight."

The three who were sitting on Lauman got up, and he gave a sigh of relief. "Say, yuh darned cowpunchers don't have no mercy on an old man's carca.s.s at all," he groaned, in exaggerated self-pity. "Next time yuh want to congratulate me, I wish you'd put it in writing and send it by mail."

A little ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Then they swung up on their horses and galloped away in the moonlight.

CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF NERVE