"What do you want with a rope, Terry?"
"Oh, Judge Lynch always has use for a rope for cattle thieves. I will act as sheriff, if you don't wish to have anything to do with it. Generally I am opposed to lynching, but this is a fair case."
"No, Terry, I don't believe in that. I'm sorry that, instead of capturing them, we didn't shoot them and thus get rid of them without calling in Judge Lynch."
The prisoners, of course, heard every word that the boys uttered. The fact is, they were both talking for their benefit. The cowboys, though, thought that they were in earnest and they would see a lynching, so when the dawn of day began to appear in the east Fred sent one of the cowboys back to the barn with instructions to bring down a coil of barb wire and a coil of rope.
One of the prisoners, tied to the tree, begged that Mr. Fearnot would come up to the tree and let him talk with him.
Fred did so, and the fellow said that if he wouldn't punish him and would release him, he would leave the country and never show up there again.
"Oh, yes; but it is bad policy to let a cattle thief go loose, after he has been caught in the act."
Then the others began making similar promises, and never did men beg for their lives as hard as they did.
One of the cowboys was sent off for wire and rope, and while he was gone a farmer came by, making an early start for Crabtree.
The road passed within a couple of hundred yards of where the men were tied to the tree, and he heard them talking as well as noticed the smoke from the fire which Fred and Terry had built out there.