"You'll go to hell, Buck," Ward cut in inexorably. "You've got your ticket."
"I'll own up to everything. I'll tell you where some of the money's cached we got in that Hardup deal, Ward. There's enough to put you on Easy Street. I'll tell you who helped—"
"You'd better not," advised Ward harshly, "or I'll make hanging a relief to you. I know pretty well, right now, all you could tell. And if I wanted to send your pardners up, I wouldn't need your help. It's partly to give them a chance that I'm sending you out this way, myself. I don't call this murder, Buck. I'm saving the State a lot of time and trouble, that's all; and your pardners the black eye they'd get for throwing in with you. I heap sabe who was the head push. You got them in to take whatever dropped, so you could get off slick and clean, just as you've done before, you—you—"
Buck Olney got it then, hot from the fires of Ward's wrath. A man does not brood over treachery and wrong and a blackened future for years, without storing up a good many things that he means to say to the friend who has played him false. Ward had been a happy-go-lucky young fellow who had faith in men and in himself and in his future. He had lived through black, hopeless days and weeks and months, because of this man who tried now to buy mercy with the faith of his partners.
Ward stood up and let the rope trail forgotten from his hands while he told Buck Olney all the things he had brooded over in bitterness. He had meant to keep it all down, but it was another instance of bottled emotions, and Buck, with his offer of a fresh bit of treachery, had pulled the cork. Ward trembled a little while he talked, and his face grew paler and paler as he dug deep into the blackest part of the past, until when he finished he was a tanned white. He was shaking at the last; shaking so that he staggered to the tree and leaned against it weakly, while he fumbled for tobacco and papers.
In the saddle Buck sat all hunched together as if Ward had lashed him with rawhide instead of with stinging words. The muscles of his face twitched spasmodically. His eyes were growing bloodshot.
Ward spilled two papers of tobacco before he got a cigarette rolled and lighted. He wondered a little at the physical reaction from his outburst, but he wondered more at Buck Olney sitting alive and unhurt on the horse before him—a Seabeck horse which Ward had seen Floyd Carson riding once or twice. He wondered what Floyd would do if he saw Buck now and the use to which the horse was being put.
Ward finished the cigarette, rolled another, and smoked that also before he could put his hand out before him and hold it reasonably steady. When he felt fairly sure of himself again, he lifted his hat to wipe off the sweat of his anger, gave a big sigh, and returned to the tying of the hangman's noose.
When he finally had it fixed the way he wanted it, he went close and flung the noose over Buck Olney's head. He could not trust himself to speak just then. He cast an inquiring glance upward, took Buck's horse by the bridle, and led him forward a few steps so that Buck was directly under the overhanging limb. Then, with the coil of Buck's rope in his hand, he turned back and squirmed up the tree-trunk until he had reached the limb. He crawled out until he was over Buck's bullet-punctured hat-crown, sliced off what rope he did not need, and flung it to the ground. He saw Buck wince as the rope went past him. The pinto horse shied out of position.
"Take the reins and bring him back here!" Ward called shortly, and gave a twitch of the rope as a hint.