The two men glided away, keeping well in shadows until they gained the side street and thence passed to the main thoroughfare.
“What if Sorenson and Vorse are somewhere in that crowd?” Madden asked. “They’re likely to be, expecting your arrest.”
“Then we’ll have to wait till they leave it. But I don’t believe they’re there. They won’t want to show their hand even by being on the scene.”
“Probably they’ve found out Gordon is dead.”
“Probably. But on the other side, they suppose now that the dam has been destroyed and that I’m locked up,” Weir said. “Still, I’ll guess that if they’ve learned Pollock and Martinez and I were at Gordon’s all the 269 afternoon, and he committed suicide, they’ll be worrying some just the same.”
Madden glanced at his companion.
“I don’t believe we’ll bring Vorse in––alive,” he said.
“That’s the way I want him, and Sorenson, too. I want to see them go up for life, but if not that then hanged. But a life term for both, along with Burkhardt, is my choice. I want them to suffer as my father suffered. Only worse. Dying’s too easy for them. Let them have hell here for awhile before they get it on the other side. Let the iron bars and stone walls kill them. I hope they live for twenty years to gnaw out their hearts every day and every night behind steel doors. That wouldn’t half pay what they owe. But if they finish in prison, knowing there’s no hope, knowing I’ve put them there for what they did to my father and Jim Dent, knowing that all the money and cattle they stole had slipped through their fingers, that they’ve lost all they gained and more, that their curses and crimes are crushing their own heads, why, that will help. And Sorenson––Sorenson there every day knowing his son lies a helpless cripple, without the money that has been piled up for him! I couldn’t invent a worse hell for him. And that’s the hell he’s going to have!”
Though a man not easy to move, Madden at Weir’s cold implacable expression of hatred shivered slightly. Sorenson and his accomplices would be lucky indeed if they died by the rope.