His voice, filled with emotion, touched Redfield, and he said: “Can’t I go to the relief of the herder?”
“No, you must not think of it; you are a man of a family. But if you can find any one who has had the smallpox send him up; the old herder who is nursing the patient is not strong, and may drop any moment. Then it’s up to me.”
The men came back to the camp-fire conversing in low voices, some of them cursing in tones of awe. One or two of them were small farmers from Deer Creek, recent comers to the State, or men with bunches of milk-cows, and to them this deed was awesome.
The sheriff followed, saying: “Well, there’s nothing to do but wait till morning. The rest of you men better go home. You can’t be of any use here.”
For more than three hours the sheriff and Redfield sat with the ranger waiting for daylight, and during this time the name of every man in the region was brought up and discussed. Among others, Ross mentioned the old man in the ditch.
“He wouldn’t hurt a bumblebee!” declared the sheriff. “He’s got a bunch of cattle, but he’s the mildest old man in the State. He’s the last rancher in the country to even stand for such work. What made you mention him?”
“I passed him as I was riding back,” replied Cavanagh, “and he had a scared look in his eyes.”
The sheriff grunted. “You imagined all that. The old chap always has a kind of meek look.”
Cavanagh, tired, hungry, and rebellious, waited until the first faint light in the east announced the dawn; then he rose, and, stretching his hand out toward it, said: “Here comes the new day. Will it be a new day to the State, or is it to be the same old round of savagery?”
Redfield expressed a word of hope, and in that spirit the ranger mounted and rode away back toward the small teepee wherein Wetherford was doing his best to expiate his past—a past that left him old and friendless at fifty-five. The sheriff and his men took up the work of vengeance which fell to them as officers of the law.