but it did not much matter what the excuse was.
His life would be snuffed out certainly.

There were several reasons why Culvera should sacrifice him and not one
why he should be spared. Ramon had a personal grudge against him, and
the new commander was not a man to forget to pay debts of this kind.
Moreover, the easiest way to still any whispered doubts of his own
loyalty to Pasquale was to show sharp severity in punishing those
charged with being implicated in his death.

Yeager accepted it as settled that he was doomed.

But what about his friends? What of Threewit and Farrar? And, above all,
what of Ruth? Would Culvera think it necessary to extend his vengeance
to them? Or would prudence stay his hand after he had executed the chief
offender?

Culvera was a good politician. The chances were that he would not risk
stirring up a hornet's nest by shooting a man as well known in the
United States as Threewit. Since Farrar was in the same case, he would
probably stand or fall by the Lunar director. As for Ruth--her _life_
would be safe enough. There was no doubt of that. But--what of her
future?

Ramon was a known libertine. No scruples would restrain him if he
thought the game was a safe quarry. And Steve knew with a sinking heart
that he could offer to any official inquiry of the United States
Government a plausible story of an abandoned woman who had come to camp
to sell her charms to the highest bidder. It would be easy to show that
she had ridden down with a man suspected of being a rustler and known to
be a bad character, that she had jilted him for Pasquale who was already
married and a good deal more than twice her age, and that after the
death of Gabriel she had turned at once to his successor. To twist the
facts in support of such an interpretation of her conduct would require
only a little distortion here and there. The truth, twisted, makes the
most damnable lies.

Without any heroics Holcomb had given his life to save her because she
was an American woman. Yeager counted himself a dead man in the same
cause. What wrung his heart now, and set him limping up and down his
cell regardless of the pain from his wounded leg, was the fear that the
price had been paid in vain. Little Ruth! Little Ruth! His heart went
out to her in an agony of despair.

While he clung rigid to the window bars of his prison the rusty lock in
the door creaked. The sergeant with the cruel little eyes entered with
three men.

"