The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels. William MacLeod Raine
I allow I have some right.”
“What’s the use of talking? He’s the man we want, broke in another impatiently.
“Who is the man you want?” asked their prisoner.
“You’re the man we want, Jim Kinney.”
“Wrong guess. My name is Larry Neill. I’m from the Panhandle and I’ve never been in this part of the country till two days ago.”
“You may have a dozen names. We don’t care what you call yourself. Of course you would deny being the man we’re after. But that don’t go with us.”
“All right. Take me back to Fort Lincoln, or take me to the prison officials. They will tell you whether I am the man.”
The leader of the party pounced on his slip. “Who mentioned prison? Who told you we wanted an escaped prisoner?”
“He’s give himself away,” triumphed the one edged Tom. “I guess that clinches it. He’s riding Maloney’s hawss. He’s wounded; so’s the man we want. He answers the description—gray eyes, tall, slim, muscular. Same gun—automatic Colt. Tell you there’s nothin’ to it, Duffield.”
“If you’re not Kinney, how come you with this hawss? He stole it from a barn in Fort Lincoln last night. That’s known,” said the leader, Duffield.
The imperilled man thought of the girl bing toward the border with her brother and the remembrance padlocked his tongue.
“Take me to the proper authorities and I’ll answer questions. But, I’ll not talk here. What’s the use? You don’t believe a word I say.”
“You spoke the truth that time,” said one.
“If you ever want to do any explaining now’s the hour,” added another.
“I’ll do mine later, gentlemen.”
They looked at each other and one of them spoke.
“It will be too late to explain then.”
“Too late?”
Some inkling of the man’s hideous meaning seared him and ran like an ice-blast through him.
“You’ve done all the meanness you’ll ever do in this world. Poor Dave Long is the last man you’ll ever kill. We’re going to do justice right now.”
“Dave Long! I never heard of him,” the prisoner repeated mechanically. “Good God, do you think I’m a murderer?”
One of the men thrust himself forward. “We know it. Y’u and that hellish partner of yours shot him while he was locking the gate. But y’u made a mistake when y’u come to Fort Lincoln. He lived there before he went to be a guard at the Arizona penitentiary. I’m his brother. These gentlemen are his neighbors. Y’u’re not going back to prison. Y’u’re going to stay right here under this cottonwood.”
If the extraordinary menace of the man appalled Neill he gave no sign of it. His gray eye passed from one to another of them quietly without giving any sign of the impotent tempest raging within him.
“You’re going to lynch me then?”
“Y’u’ve called the turn.”
“Without giving me a chance to prove my innocence?”
“Without giving y’u a chance to escape or sneak back to the penitentiary.”
The thing was horribly unthinkable. The warm mellow afternoon sunshine wrapped them about. The horses grazed with quiet unconcern. One of these hard-faced frontiersmen was chewing tobacco with machine-like regularity. Another was rolling a cigarette. There was nothing of dramatic effect. Not a man had raised his voice. But Neill knew there was no appeal. He had come to the end of the passage through a horrible mistake. He raged in bitter resentment against his fate, against these men who stood so quietly about him ready to execute it, most of all against the girl who had let him sacrifice himself by concealing the vital fact that her brother had murdered a guard to effect his escape. Fool that he had been, he had stumbled into a trap, and she had let him do it without a word of warning. Wild, chaotic thoughts crowded his brain furiously.
But the voice with which he addressed them was singularly even and colorless.
“I am a stranger to this country. I was born in Tennessee, brought up in the Panhandle. I’m an irrigation engineer by profession. This is my vacation. I’m headed now for the Mal Pais mines. Friends of mine are interested in a property there with me and I have been sent to look the ground over and make a report. I never heard of Kinney till to-day. You’ve got the wrong man, gentlemen.”
“We’ll risk it,” laughed one brutally. “Bring that riata, Tom.”
Neill did not struggle or cry out frantically. He stood motionless while they adjusted the rope round his bronzed throat. They had judged him for a villain; they should at least know him a man. So he stood there straight and lithe, wide-shouldered and lean-flanked, a man in a thousand. Not a twitch of the well-packed muscles, not a quiver of the eyelash nor a swelling of the throat betrayed any fear. His cool eyes were quiet and steady.
“If you want to leave any message for anybody I’ll see it’s delivered,” promised Duffield.
“I’ll not trouble you with any.”
“Just as you like.”
“He didn’t give poor Dave any time for messages,” cried Tom Long bitterly.
“That’s right,” assented another with a curse.
It was plain to the victim they were spurring their nerves to hardihood.
“Who’s that?” cried one of the men, pointing to a rider galloping toward them.
The newcomer approached rapidly, covered by their weapons, and flung himself from his pony as he dragged it to a halt beside the group.
“Steve Fraser,” cried Duffield in surprise, and added, “He’s an officer in the rangers.”
“Right, gentlemen. Come to claim my prisoner,” said the ranger promptly.
“Y’u can’t have him, Steve. We took him and he’s got to hang.”
The lieutenant of rangers shook his dark curly head.
“Won’t do, Duffield. Won’t do at all,” he said decisively. “You’d ought to know law’s on top in Texas these days.”
Tom Long shouldered his way to the front. “Law! Where was the law when this ruffian Kinney shot down my poor brother Dave? I guess a rope and a cottonwood’s good enough law for him. Anyhow, that’s what he gits.”
Fraser, hard-packed, lithe, and graceful, laid a friendly hand on the other’s shoulder and smiled sunnily at him.
“I know how you feel, Tom. We all thought a heap of Dave and you’re his brother. But Dave died for the law. Both you boys have always stood for order. He’d be troubled if he knew you were turned enemy to it on his account.”
“I’m for justice, Steve. This skunk deserves death and I’m going to see he gits it.”
“No, Tom.”
“I say yes. Y’u ain’t sitting in this game, Steve.”
“I reckon I’ll have to take a hand then.”
The ranger’s voice was soft and drawling, but his eyes were indomitably steady. Throughout the Southwest his reputation for fearlessness was established even among a population singularly courageous. The audacity of his daredevil recklessness was become a proverb.
“We got a full table. Better ride away and forget it,” said another.
“That ain’t what I’m paid for, Jack,” returned Fraser good-naturedly. “Better turn him over to me peaceable, boys. He’ll get what’s coming to him all right.”