had crushed down the desire to beg
for mercy, to cry out desperately for them to let him off. He had kept
telling himself not to show yellow, that it would not last long. Now the
fear of breaking down sloughed from his soul. He rose from the bed and
looked round at the brown faces circled about him in the shine of the
lamps.

"I'll not tell you a thing--not a thing."

He stood there chalk-faced, his lips so dry that he had to keep moistening
them with the tip of his tongue. Two thoughts hammered in his head. One
was that he had come to the end of his trail, the other that he would game
it out without weakening.

Dutch had a new rope in his hand with a loop at one end. He tossed it over
the boy's head and drew it taut. Two or three of the faces in the circle
were almost as bloodless as that of the prisoner, but they were set to see
the thing out.

"Will you tell now?" Bonfils asked.

Curly met him eye to eye. "No."

"Come along then."

One of the men caught his arm at the place where he had been wounded. The
rustler flinched.

"Careful, Buck. Don't you see you're hurting his bad arm?" Sweeney said
sharply.

"Sure. Take him right under the shoulder."

"There's no call to be rough with him."

"I didn't aim to hurt him," Buck defended himself.

His grip was loose and easy now. Like the others he was making it up to
his conscience for what he meant to do by doing it in the kindest way
possible.

Curly's senses had never been more alert. He noticed that Buck had on a
red necktie that had got loose from his shirt and climbed up his neck. It
had black polka dots and was badly frayed. Sweeney was chewing tobacco. He
would have that chew in his mouth after they had finished what they were
going to do.

"Ain't he the gamest ever?" someone whispered.

The rustler heard the words and they braced him as a drink of whiskey does
a man who has been on a bad spree. His heart was chill with fear, but he
had strung his will not to let him give way.

"Better do it at the cottonwoods down by the creek," Buck told Bonfils in
a low voice.

The foreman of the Bar Double M moved his head in assent. "All right.
Let's get it over quick as we can."

A sound of flying feet came from outside. Someone smothered an oath of
surprise. Kate Cullison stood in the doorway, all out of breath and
panting.

She took the situation in before she spoke, guessed exactly what they
intended to do. Yet she flung her imperious question at th