"One of the chuck wagons' teams—"
"Herders all right?" asked Wayland. He knew what the answer must be; the same answer that had been disgracing the West these twenty years.
The old man jerked his horse to a dead stop, drew himself erect and looked straight at the Ranger.
"Wayland, man, is this Russia—or Hell? Is there another country in the world calls itself civilized would allow four herder men to be burned to death? Does the country know what is doing? Do you know what happened? Do you know that last wagon is left there only because the rains put out the fire? Y'll find the iron tires of the other wagons with skeletons of men chained to the wheels. A came up just as they were settin' aboot firin' the second wagon. They'd ripped all the flour bags open and loosed the horses. This one, A caught full pelther down the trail."
The old man shook his head.
They trotted their horses across the Mesas in silence towards the glaring white canvas wagon. Broken harness, half-burned spokes, the charred hub of a wheel, snapped whiffle-trees, the white dust of scattered flour littered the ground. A brown scorch of flame up the back of the tent above the remaining wagon marked where the rains had extinguished the fire. A smouldering ill-smelling ash heap told the fate of the other wagons.
"Hell-devilish work, hell-devilish work! Th' beasts of the field couldna' conceive such baseness, Wayland! 'Tis the work o' devils spawned by harpies! They say there is no devil to-day! Hoh!" The old man puffed the heresy from his pursed lips. "The beasts don't prey on their own 'cepting the rats that starve; but, man, there's no explanation of his self-destruction 'cepting the old fashioned one, Wayland. 'He was possessed by a devil.'"
The Ranger had dismounted and was prodding the ash-heap with his heavy boot sole. Then, he gave the embers a smart flap with his whip. The blackened hub of a wheel went circling out. Suddenly, Wayland turned away his face, white and nauseated, hardened to resolution granite as the rocks. Eyeless sockets of a skeleton face protruded from the ashes; and on the ground were stains which the rains had not washed out. It was then Wayland noticed the bloody thumb marks round the canvas front of the wagon seat where the driver had been dragged down.
For a little time neither man spoke. But, was it not the natural ending of brutality unleashed of law; of crime left alone by the good?
"To mutilate thousands of sheep was damnable enough," said Wayland; "but—this?"