The old hunter, whose language had hitherto been ironical and face malicious, suddenly changed his tone, and became as serious and stern as he had previously been sarcastic. "Listen," he said, "and profit by what you are going to hear. We are not the dupes of your feigned weakness. We know very well that your strength has nearly returned. The advice I give you is frank, and intended to guard you against yourself; you are not our prisoner, it is true, and yet you are not free."
"I do not understand you," Don Stefano interrupted him, the last words clouding over his face, which had suddenly grown brighter.
"Not one of the persons present," Marksman continued, "has any charge to bring against you. We do not know who you are; and before today, I, at least, was entirely ignorant of your existence; but there is a man who asserts that he has against you—not feelings of hatred, for that would be a matter to settle between yourselves in a fair fight—but motives of complaint sufficiently great to justify your immediate trial."
"My trial!" Don Stefano repeated, in the utmost astonishment; "but before what tribunal does that man intend to try me? We are here in the desert."
"Yes; and you seem to forget it. In the desert, where the laws of cities are powerless to punish the guilty, there is a terrible, summary, implacable legislature, to which, in the common welfare, every aggrieved person has a right to appeal, when suspicious circumstances demand it."
"And what is this law?" Don Stefano asked, whose pale face had already assumed a cadaverous hue.—
"It is Lynch law."
"Lynch law?"
"Yes; and in the name of that law we, who, as you say, you do not know, have been assembled to try you."
"Try me! But that is impossible. What crime have I committed? Who is the man that accuses me?"