silent a moment, while he wiped his eyes and
blew his nose, and his sobs gradually ceased. "No, Emerson couldn't
have been afraid. Though I sure thought for a minute I'd have to quit
him. But you're right, Nick. Emerson ain't afraid of anything, livin'
or dead. It was just his judgment. And Emerson's got powerful good
judgment, too. I ought to have known better than to think anything
else. But, Lord! I did hate to see that measly crowd sneakin' out of
here alive!"

CHAPTER V

The next morning there were only faint traces of the excitement of the
day before. Men began to cross Main street from one side to the other,
at first with cautious, apprehensive glances that swept the hostile
territory and penetrated open doors and windows, but, as the day wore
quietly on, with increasing confidence and unconcern. At noon Colonel
Whittaker and Pierre Delarue walked over to the Palmleaf saloon, and
while they clinked the ice in their mint juleps, good-natured and
smiling, they leaned on the bar and chatted with the two or three
Democrats who were in the room. An hour or so later, Judge Harlin
strolled across to the White Horse saloon and called for a whisky
straight. Then all Las Plumas knew that the war was over and went
about its usual affairs as amiably as if the day before had never
been.

At the breakfast table Pierre Delarue told his daughter about the
mass-meeting, its balked determination to lynch Emerson Mead, and
Mead's subsequent arrest.

"But, Father, how could they be so sure that Mr. Mead killed him? Did
they have any evidence?"

"Ah," he replied, shrugging his shoulders protestingly, "you women
never understand such things! Because Mead is a handsome young man and
looks good-natured, you think he can't possibly be a murderer. But it
is well known that he had killed more than one man before he murdered
poor Whittaker, and he is notorious as one of the worst cattle thieves
in the southwest."

"Father! These are dreadful things! Do you know them to be true?"

She looked across the table at him with horror in her face and eyes.
Delarue considered her indulgently.

"Everybody knows them to be true. There is plenty of proof."

"Then why hasn't he been arrested and tried and--punished?"

"That is what many are saying now--why has he not been punished long
before this? People have been lenient with him for a long time, but he
has at last reached the end of his career. They are now determined
that a sto