"Ye come hyar ter hang ther wrong man, boys," he shouted, "but ther right man's hyar—ther rope's hyar, an' ther tree's hyar! Hang Bas Rowlett!"
There was a silence of grim tension over the room when the accuser's voice fell quiet after its staccato peroration of incitement. The masked men gave no betrayal of final sentiment yet, and the woman rose unsteadily from her chair and pressed her hands against the tumultuous pounding of her heart. She could not still it while she waited for the verdict, and scarcely dared yet to hope.
Rowlett had been long trusted, and had there been left in him the audacity for ten adroitly used minutes of boldness, he might have been heard that night in his own defence. But Bas had, back of all his brutal aggressions, a soul-fibre of baseness and it had wilted.
Now, with every eye turned on him, with the scales of his fate still trembling, the accused wretch cast furtive glances toward the door, weighing and considering the chances of escape. He abandoned that as hopeless, opened his lips and let his jaw sag, then crouched back as though in the shadow of the room's corner he hoped to find concealment.
"Look at him, men!" shouted Sim Squires, following up the wreck of arrogance who through years had brow-beaten him, and becoming in turn himself the bully. "Look at him huddlin' thar like a whipped cur-dawg! Hain't he done es good es made confession by ther guilty meanness in his face?"
He paused, and then with a brutal laugh he struck the cowering Rowlett across his mouth—a blow that he had dreamed of in his sleep but never dared to think of when awake—and Rowlett condemned himself to death when he flinched and failed to strike back.
"Jest now, men," rushed on the exhorter, "ye seed Thornton thar facin' death—an' he showed ye how a man kin demean himself when he thinks his time hes come. Take yore choice between them two—an' decide which one needs hangin'!"
Then feeding on the meat of new authority, Sim Squires, who had always been an underling before, seized up from the hearth, where the ashes were dead, a charred stick—and it happened to be a bit of black walnut that had grown and died on the tree which was about to become a gallows.
With its blackened end Sim drew a line across the planks of the floor between himself and Rick Joyce.
"Thar, now," he passionately importuned his hearers. "Thar hain't room in this country fer a lot of warrin' enemies thet would all be friends save fer mischief makers. Parish Thornton hes done admitted thar's good men amongst ye, an' we've agreed ter punish them briggatty fellers thet kilt Pete Doane, so thar hain't rightfully no grudge left outstandin'. I takes up my stand on this side of thet line, along with Parish Thornton, an' I summonses every man thet's decent amongst ye all ter come over hyar an' stand with us. We aims ter hev our hangin' without no deefault, but with a diff'rent man swingin' on ther rope!"