Mechanically Buck obeyed. He did not know that the rope was not yet tied to the limb.
Ward tied the rope securely, leaving enough slack to keep Buck from choking prematurely. He fussed a minute longer, with his lip curled into a grin of sardonic humor. Then he crawled hack to the trunk of the tree and slid down carefully so that he would not frighten the pinto.
He went up and took the hobble off Buck Olney's feet, felt in the seam of his coat-lapel, and pulled out four pins, with which he fastened Buck's "pedigree" between Buck's shrinking shoulder-blades. Then he stood off and surveyed his work critically before he went over to Rattler, who stood dozing in the sunshine.
"Sorry I can't stay to see you off," he told Buck maliciously. "I've decided to let you go alone and take your own time about starting. As long as that cayuse stands where he is, you're safe as a church. And you've got the reins; you can kick off any time you feel like it. Sabe?" He studied Buck's horror-marked face pitilessly.
"You've got about one chance in a million that you can make that pinto stand there till someone comes along," he pointed out impartially. "I'm willing to give you that chance, such as it is. And if you're lucky enough to win out on it—well, I'd advise you to do some going! South America is about as close as you'll be safe. Folks around here are going to know all about you, old-timer, whether they get to read what's on your back or not.
"And, on the other hand, it's a million-to-one shot you'll land where your ticket reads. I'd hate to gamble on that horse standing in one spot for two or three days, wouldn't you?" He wheeled Rattler unobtrusively, his eye on the pinto. "I hope he don't try to follow," he said. "I want you to have a little time to think about the things I said to you. Well, so-long."
Ward rode back the way he had come, glancing frequently over his shoulder at Buck, slumped in the saddle with a paper pinned to his back like a fire-warning on a tree, and his own grass rope noosed about his neck and connecting him with the cottonwood limb six feet above his hat crown.
Ward had not ridden a hundred yards before he heard Buck Olney scream hysterically for help. He grinned sourly with his eyebrows pinched together and, that hard, strained look in his eyes still. "Let him holler awhile!" he gritted. "Do him good, damn him!"
Until distance and the intervening hills set a wall of silence between, Ward heard Buck screaming in fear of death, screaming until he was so hoarse he could only whisper; screaming because he had not seen Ward take his knife and slice the rope upon the limb so that it would not have held the weight of a rabbit.