e to relieve him of
this responsibility; he must have received the telegram two days ago.
Pending his arrival, or, if not his arrival, the coming of the local
train that would carry himself and prisoner to the county seat, Lambert
cast about him for some means of securing his man in such manner that he
could watch him and defend against any attempted rescue without being
hampered.

A telegraph pole stood beside the platform some sixty or seventy feet
from the depot, the wires slanting down from it into the building's
gable end. To this Lambert marched his prisoner, the eyes of the town on
him. He freed one of Kerr's hands, passed his arms round the pole so he
stood embracing it, and locked him there.

It was a pole of only medium thickness, allowing Kerr ample room to
encircle it with his chained arms, even to sit on the edge of the
platform when he should weary of his standing embrace. Lambert stood
back a pace and looked at him, thus ignominiously anchored in public
view.

"Let 'em come and take you," he said.

He laid out a little beat up and down the platform at Kerr's back,
rolled a cigarette, settled down to wait for the sheriff, the train, the
rush of Kerr's friends, or whatever the day might have in store.

Slowly, thoughtfully, he paced that beat of a rod behind his surly
prisoner's back, watching the town, watching the road leading into it.
People stood in the doors, but none approached him to make inquiry, no
voice was lifted in pitch that reached him where he stood. If anybody
else in town besides the agent knew of the contemplated rescue, he kept
it selfishly to himself.

Lambert did not see any of Kerr's men about. Five horses were hitched in
front of the saloon; now and then he could see the top of a hat above
the latticed half-door, but nobody entered, nobody left. The station
agent still stood in his window, working the telegraph key as if
reporting the clearing of the flier, watching anxiously up and down the
platform.

Lambert hoped that Sim Hargus and young Tom, and the old stub-footed
scoundrel who was the meanest of them all who had lashed him into the
fire that night, would swing the doors of the saloon and come out with a
declaration of their intentions. He knew that some of them, if not all,
were there. He had tied Kerr out before their eyes like wolf bait. Let
them come and get him if they were men.

This seemed the opportunity which he had been waiting for time to bring
him. If they