“An’ it’s a dinged good riddance!” said Gallup. “The only thing I’m sorry fer is that the critter escaped lynchin’!”
“Yes, he should have been lynched!” flashed Bart. “At the Twin Star Ranch now the poor girl he deserted is lying on a bed of pain, shot down by his dastardly hand.”
“He did not intend the bullet for her,” said Frank, quickly.
“No; but he intended it for you! It was a great case of luck that he didn’t finish you. If you had pushed the villain to the wall before that, instead of dealing with him as if he had the least instinct of a gentleman in his worthless body, you would have saved the girl from so much suffering.”
“She loves him still,” said Frank. “Her last words to me were a message to him, for she does not know he is dead beneath the quicksands of Big Sandy.”
“The quicksands saved him from the gallows.”
“An’ they took another ungrateful rascal along with him, b’gee!” said Ephraim, with satisfaction.
“Yes,” nodded Frank; “I think there is no doubt but Lloyd Fowler perished with Lawrence, for I fancied I recognized Fowler in the fellow who accompanied Lawrence that fatal night.”
“And Fowler was a drinking man, so I should think he would be a warning to you,” said Hodge. “I shouldn’t think you’d care to take another sot into the company.”
“You must know that there is as little resemblance between Fowler and Burns as there is between night and day.”