The cowboys were off before he had finished, and as no one noticed him, he slumbered again.
“What will they do with him?” whispered Helen. She had drawn away from Gard when the others appeared, but he still held her hand.
“Nothing, dear,” he replied. “They won’t find him. He’s safe at Sylvania. I only wish you were as far away from here as he is.”
“She will be in a shake,” Sandy Larch called, overhearing him. “An’ so’ll you be, too.”
Sandy had assured himself that bad whiskey and rage were more responsible for Broome’s groans than the bullet which had shattered his collar-bone, and ploughed his shoulder. The fellow’s howls and oaths had been silenced by a kick, and no longer made night hideous.
“Sago,” Sandy said, turning to one of his cowboys, “I reckon you ’n’ Manuel’s equal to the care o’ these citizens. They kin all sit their horses, I guess, an’ you two kin ride herd on ’em, into Sylvania. I’d gather in their guns, if ’t was me doin’ it, on’ leave ’em with fatty Harkins till mornin’. I dare say they’ll be some peacabler by then.”
The foreman had already eased Broome’s shoulder, crudely enough, by means of an arm-sling, improvised from the riata that the fellow had meant to use for Gard.
“He’ll do till he gits to Sylvania,” he said, with an indifference that was not feigned, “Mebby there’ll be somebody there to tend to ’im.” And he left the would-be lynchers to the tender mercies of their captors.
Ashley Westcott was mounting his hired horse in front of the hotel, when a stranger, on a hard-ridden, pacing buckskin, stopped beside the rail.
“Say, friend,” he drawled, catching sight of the lawyer, “Your name happen to be Westcott?”