"Gentlemen, there will not be any hanging in Ascalon this morning," he announced.
He threw the last pistol down with the others, nodded Stilwell to him, whispered a word or two. Stilwell went shouldering off through the crowd. Morgan sheathed his rifle in the battered scabbard that hung on his saddle. In a little while Stilwell came back with a saw.
Morgan took the tool and sawed through the pole to which his captives were made fast. Stilwell held up the severed end while Morgan cut the other, freeing from the bolted posts the four-inch section of pole to which the cowboys were tied, leaving it hanging from the ropes at their wrists, dangling a little below their hands.
The late lords of the plains were such a dejected and altogether sneaking looking crew, shorn of their power by the hands of one man, stripped of their roaring weapons, tied like cattle to a hurdle, that the vengeful spirit of Ascalon veered in a glance to humorous appreciation of the comedy that was beginning before their eyes.
The cowboys who had stood ready a few minutes past to help hang the outfit, fairly rolled with laughter at the sight of this miserable example of complete degradation, through which the meanness of their kind was so ludicrously apparent. The citizenry and floating population of the town joined in the merriment, and the lowering clouds of tragedy were swept away on a gale of laughter that echoed along the jagged business front.
But the girl Rhetta was not laughing. Perplexed, troubled, she laid her hand on Morgan's arm as he stood beside his horse about to mount.
"What are you going to do with them now, Mr. Morgan?" she inquired.
"They're going to start for Texas down the Chisholm Trail," he said, smiling down at her from the saddle.
And in that manner they set out from Ascalon, carrying the pole at their backs, Morgan driving them ahead of him, starting them in a trot which increased to a hobbling run as they bore away past the railroad station and struck the broad trampled highway to the south.
Afoot and horseback the town and the visitors in it came after them, shooting and shouting, getting far more enjoyment out of it than they would have got out of a hanging, as even the most contrary among them admitted. For this was a drama in which the boys and girls took part, and even the Baptist preacher, who had a church as big as a mouse trap, stood grinning in appreciation as they passed, and said something about it being a parallel of Samson, and the foxes with their tails tied together being driven away into the Philistines' corn.