d groaned dreadful. He really was the most awkward-looking
man, with her holding onto his legs that way, you ever seen!

[Illustration: "'DON'T HANG HIM, SIR!' SHE GROANED OUT"]

"Oh, Lord, ma'am, _do_ get up!" he said. "Having you like that for
another minute'll make me sick. I'm not used to such goings-on"--and
Cherry did what he could to work loose his legs.

But she hung on so tight he couldn't shake her, and kept saying, "Save
him! Save him!" and uttering groans.

Cherry wriggled his legs as much as he could and looked around at the
boys. They all was badly broke up, and anybody could see they was
weakening. "Shall we let up on Santa Fe this time?" he asked. "I guess
it's true he didn't more'n half mean, being drunk the way he was, to
shoot Bill--and it makes things different, anyway, knowing he's got
kids and a wife. Bill himself would be the first to allow that. Bill
was as kind-hearted a man as ever lived. Do please, ma'am, let go."

Nobody spoke for a minute--but it was plain how the tide was
setting--and then Santa Fe himself chipped in. "Gentlemen," he said,
"you all know I've faced this music from the first without any
squirming, and even come into Joe Cherry's plan for making me do
circus stunts at the funeral for the good of the town. I'm ready to go
through the whole fool business right now, and come back here when
it's all over and be hung according to contract--"

"Save him! Save him!" the woman sung out; and she give such a jerk to
Cherry's legs it come close to spilling him.

"But I will say this much, gentlemen," Santa Fe went on: "I am willing
to ask for the sake of my dear wife and helpless innocent infants what
I wouldn't be low down enough to ask for myself--and that is that you
call this game off. This dreadful experience has changed me,
gentlemen. It has changed me right down to my toes. Being as close to
a telegraph-pole as I am now makes a man want to turn over a new leaf
and behave--as some of you like enough'll find out for yourselves if
you don't draw cards from my awful example and brace up all you know
how. Give me another show, gentlemen. That's what I ask for--give me
another show. Let me go home with my angel wife to the dear old farm
in Ohio, where my aged mother and my sweet babes are waiting for me.
Like enough they're standing out by the old well in the front yard
looking down the road for me now!" Santa Fe gagged so he couldn't go
on for a minute. But he pulled himself tog