"Tari's white cl'ar through an' is Jack's dawg. I ain't frettin' he'll stampede our cattle none."
"Any'ow, I votes we pospones the execution o' justice till to-morrer," observed the bosun's mate cautiously. "Mebbe the gal oughter have a say."
"I guess nit! Gals is shore to make a wrong play when a lynchin' is the game. They're too soft-hearted an' mushy that-away."
"What erbout y'r mate?"
"Jack's an interested party, an' so is barred from the jury," declared Broncho uneasily.
The cowboy knew well enough that Jack would not countenance such downright methods of justice as a lynching. Everything depended on it being done without the rover's knowledge, and by hook or by crook Broncho was determined that this snake in Jack's path to happiness should be removed somehow; he relied greatly, however, on being able to bring the bluejacket round to his way of thinking.
Over and over again he bitterly reproached himself that he had not aimed to kill, when he let fly the bullet which creased Hawksley's arm.
Now that he knew Jack's secret and the reason of those long fits of melancholy, he was set upon removing the cause of them.
The man deserved death, he argued; he was a notorious scoundrel, and the fact that he had nearly succeeded in killing Jack was quite reason enough to satisfy the justice of the drop, in the cowboy's easy Western code of laws.
However, giving up the discussion for the time, the two agents of justice returned to the group under the trees.