It was Broome who had captured him. The cowboy had secured the loan of a fellow puncher’s horse, standing at the rail before Jim Bracton’s saloon. It was a good horse, more than a match for the indifferent beast Gard rode. There had been a mad race across the desert, a realizing sense that the danger was real and imminent, and Gard was in the act of drawing his revolver when the rope that Broome flung settled over his shoulders, and pinned his arms down.
“Now you know how it feels, damn you!” Broome said, when the crowd had their captive bound and again in saddle.
“But you don’t git no blindfold,” he sneered. “You’re goin’ to see all that’s a’comin’ to you, good ’n’ plain.” Broome’s face was thrust into his, drunken, distorted, malignant.
“Now my fine Mister Barker-Gard,” the thick voice snarled, “it’s prayers fer your’n. You’ve killed your last man, you sneakin’ coyote you. You’ll swing in jest about two minutes.”
There was a growl of assent from two of the others, and Gard recognized them as the same two ruffians that were fleecing Papago Joe when he had quietly but effectively stopped their game. The fourth man was a stranger to him. It was this one who carried the lantern, and he now held it unsteadily on high, surveying the prisoner with drunken gravity.
“Tell ye what,” he announced to Broome, “Thish ’ere thing’s gotter be done right. Thish ’a free ’n glorioush country. We don’t hang no man ’thout ’n he gits a fair trial.”
“Trial be damned!” Broome roared. “Don’t you go bein’ no fool Sam Hickey. This feller ’s bin tried an’ found guilty long of a real judge ’n jury, already.”
Hickey turned upon him with inebriate severity.
“If you wa’n’t so dangnation drunk, Broome,” he said, “I’d swat ye fer that remark. But y’ ain’t responsible now; that’s whatch y’ ain’t; Thish ’ere thing’s gotter be done decent, I tell you. We ain’t no murderers. We’sh populash o’ Arizona, seein’ justice done; an’ damn you, we’re goin’ to see it.”
“You bet we be!” interjected one of the others. “An’ quick! This feller’s had his trial.”