“Say what you want,” Robin answered coldly. “I make no promises. It’s hangin’ or the pen for you, anyway.”
“If I hang, I want him to hang with me,” the Texan mumbled. “He got me into this. I’ll take a chance on the penitentiary if you’ll keep me off’n this tree.”
“Say your say,” Robin lowered his quirt.
“Steele’s been rustlin’ off the Bar M Bar an’ the Block S for two seasons, brandin’ what he stole with the T Bar S, which he owns on the quiet. I’ve been in with him from the start. He got a hold over me an’ I had to go through. At first we shot the cows, like we did that day a year ago in this here bottom, when you rode down an’ looked for the brand on that cow. It was Mark took a crack at you that day. Mostly we cut back cows with big calves an’ separated ’em later. We had a corral in the Bad Lands down toward Cow Creek where we got in our work late in the fall. A lot of the stuff we threw across the Missouri on the ice. It was Steele shot Tex Matthews when we got onto you fellers prowlin’ down there. He tried to get you too. An’ we was lookin’ for you, figurin’ how we could get away with you the time we walked in on you asleep in the Birch Creek line camp—the day you turned Mark’s gun back on him an’ shot him in the neck.
“When you jumped the country thinkin’ you’d killed him, he figured it was all clear. When you come back this spring he was scared to rustle, and he was leary of jumpin’ you in public. He began to think you was tougher game than he’d reckoned. Then he got worried when he knew you was runnin’ the J7 round-up in the Judith because he knew you’d come on lots of T Bar S yearlin’s. When you blew into the Block S the other day an’ made that play about havin’ bought the T Bar S an’ undertook to sell it to Sutherland, he knew the stuff was off an’ he had to claim ownership. He figured he could bluff Sutherland since there wasn’t enough proof to convict him. But he was afraid you’d either keep on his trail until you got evidence, or you an’ Sutherland would just naturally grab every T Bar S in sight an’ hold ’em in spite of hell. So he foamed around after Sutherland fired him an’ decided we had to kill you first chance an’ that would be the end of it. You were the only man in the country that really knew how it was worked. So he put it up to me to ambush you. I’ve been layin’ for you for three days. That’s all. I’ll swear to that in court if you take him alive.”
The J7 men had crowded close to listen.
“By the Lord,” one growled. “You sure ought to hang. A cow thief an’ a murderer. Will I hit old Bones a clip, Robin?”
“Untie the rope,” Robin said calmly. “We’ll let the sheriff of Chouteau county hang him an’ Shinin’ Mark together.”
“One other thing,” Robin said when Thatcher’s neck was free of the noose. “Where is Mark Steele now?”
“I dunno. I expect,” Thatcher mumbled, “he’ll be around somewheres in public establishin’ a alibi for himself, in case he got accused of shootin’ you. I’ve had to do the dirty work.”