After the captives were arranged in line under a copal tree upon a little plateau, where the trail began to fall downhill on the other side, Bull stood frowning down from his height on the man whose face had aroused that haunting memory. “I’ve a hunch that I’ve seen this chap afore.”
He would have been more certain of it had he noticed the fellow’s look of recognition and fear only a moment before. But now his ugly countenance was veiled in that ox-like stolidity which a Mexican peon can so easily assume. He shook his head in dull negation to all of Bull’s questions. He did not come from any of the neighboring haciendas! They had never met before! His pais was far—it might have been anywhere in a thousand-mile circle implied by the wave of his hand.
“Yet I could swear to him.” Bull looked musingly at Sliver. “Pock-marked, too. Where have I seen him afore?”
Sliver shook his head. “Can’t prove it be me. All peones look like so many peas in a pod; some mebbe a bit uglier than others; an’ pock-marks ain’t no distinction with two-thirds of ’em pitted like a nutmeg-grater.”
“That ain’t the question before the house, neither,” Jake put in. “All I’m bothering about is whether to hang or shoot ’em. Hanging is what I was brought up to, but shooting’s more fashionable down here. I’d allow they’d likely prefer it.”
“Shooting’s too good for ’em.” In a spasm of virtuous indignation, Sliver shook his fist at the captives. “Hanging’s slower an’ hurts a heap, an’ if it gets about that the gent that meddles with our stock is in for a slow, choking they ain’t a-going to be near so careless.”
“There’s something in that,” Jake conceded. “An’ this copal’s got nice stout limbs. We kin use their own riatas, an’ that’ll be what the Tombstone editor used to call ‘poetic justice.’ Hanging goes.”
Bull was still staring at the raider, but, taking his consent for granted, they proceeded to fit the riatas around the prisoners’ necks. Jake had, indeed, thrown the slack of the last over a bough when there came a rattle of stones and scrape of hoofs on the trail below. Grabbing his rifle, he slid with Bull and Sliver, each behind a tree. One second thereafter their guns were trained on the spot where the trail debouched on the plateau.
Meanwhile, with Gordon in pursuit, Lee had led the race into the hills. Her blood mare was the fleetest animal she owned and, had she chosen, Gordon would have soon dropped out of sight. But she contented herself with just holding a lead.
Unaware of this, Gordon made repeated attempts to catch her with sudden bursts of speed. Perfectly aware of it, on her part, she would wait till his horse’s head almost touched her leg, then shoot ahead with a little laugh. Her face, looking back at him, was hard as her laugh—eyes bright and shining, nose contemptuously tilted, mouth one scarlet line.