Sam Taber and his riders prowled the dark desert and the desert was a big place after sundown. Finally he pulled up and said, "I can't figure this thing out. Bates must have used a car. Why can't we see the headlights?"
"Maybe he turned them out so as to slip up on the man in the dark." This from one of the men in his group; men who obeyed orders and seldom spoke.
"With the whole town and half the county tailing along behind him? I think not."
A different voice: "There, boss. Look. See the glow?"
Sam's gray eyes pierced the night. "Sure. That's Bates. We swung in the wrong direction. Should have gone to Sage Bend and started from there."
"The light's at Indian Head Rock."
"Let's go."
They swept across the desert, thundering up a dust cloud that hung in the night behind them. Rode until sight of a terrible thing sent a chill down Sam Taber's spine; sight of a man hanging from a rope against the glare of a car's headlights; a silhouette of savagery that killed the last faint hope in Sam Taber's breast; the last hope for a crippled son.
Sam fought to control himself as he and his men rode silently, gently, into the lighted circle. He struggled there in the saddle with the red rage that tried to flare up from the stormy heart of him; the uncontrollable anger he had fought all his life and thought he had conquered. The mob was now looking at its handiwork in silence, each member wishing himself somewhere else.