This settled, and while Sliver rode on down into the valley to free the anciano, Bull and Jake cinched the thieves securely in their saddles. Then, driving them and the horses ahead, with Lee and Gordon following, they started down the trail.
Now the spectacle of four men trussed for hanging is not to be seen every day—let us say, on the streets of New York—and though Gordon had looked on with breathless interest, he could hardly believe that the business would have been carried to a conclusion.
“Do you really think they would?”
Lee looked at him in surprise. “Of course! You know Valles has issued orders for hacendados to shoot raiders on sight; that is”—she added it with a little sigh—“all but his own.”
Her tone was so casual, he felt convicted of vast and unlimited greenness. But where, according to the lights under which he had been raised, he ought to have suffered a severe revulsion, he actually experienced a thrill. This juxtaposition of life and death, the violence and quickness with which events rang their changes, somehow stripped away the veils from the riddle of existence, reduced its complex terms to their basic factors. Here in the mountains, desert, plains, they were very simple—to eat well, sleep well, fight well, and die well, even as these thieves, comprised the whole duty of man. The thrill recorded his acceptance of the terms.
While they were riding down and down the sun lowered its great crimson orb till it hung, transfixed, on a distant peak. The mountain steeps above, spurs, and ridges beneath, were washed in its dying crimson. Deep purple filled the hollows; faint violet clothed the distant plains. Over all a cloud-flecked sky spread its parti-colored glories. Mountain and plain, cañon and deep ravine, it was a scene infinitely wild, infinitely beautiful, and as he looked over it all Gordon took his breath in a deep sigh.
“This is life! I hate to leave it.”
“Leave it?” If Lee’s surprise was assumed, it was exceedingly well done. She went on, with a low laugh: “Oh, I see! Papa wins out. The prodigal will return to marry the beautiful heiress and live happy ever afterward.”
“Who told you? Oh, Bull, of course. Now that comes of owning a blabbing tongue. Confound him! Well, since you want to know, I won’t. In my present mood, New York is the last place in the world I want to see.”
“Then you have tired of us—so soon?”