Sandy said nothing. There was no need to mention Molly's adventure.
"Want to be sure it's him?" asked Brandon. "Let's look at the black first. He gave us a hard chase, but we were too many for him and rounded him up."
They found the black stallion stretched out on the turf with its neck curiously twisted. Tired out, it had fallen clumsily and broken the vertebrae. It was quite dead. Both men looked at it silently, with a mental tribute to a good horse.
The body of Plimsoll lay at the foot of a big pine. The loops were still tight about his neck. One of the ropes had been tossed over a bough. The two men had dismounted. They nodded to Sandy as he came up with Brandon. He had seen them before on their first unsuccessful trip to the Waterline. They were horse-owners, responsible men, who considered they had administered justice, who felt no more qualms concerning the dead man than if his body had been the carcass of a slaughtered steer.
"Waiting for the rest of the boys to come up," said Brandon. "We'll hit the trail home to-night. Bourke wants to identify the body, boys."
Sandy looked down at the contorted, blackened face, and his disappointment at having been forestalled, sedimented down. The gambler's features had not been made placid by death; they still held much of the horror of the last moments of that relentless chase, his horse failing under him, foreknowledge of sudden death and then the whistling ropes, the jerk into eternity...! It was a thing to be forgotten, a nightmare that had nothing to do with the new day ahead.
"It's Plimsoll," said Sandy shortly. "I'm ridin' back to Three Star. I found him hangin' to a tree. Good night, hombres." He left them standing about their quarry and turned the willing mare toward home. Peace settled down on him under the stars that were fading, the moon below the hills when he rode into the home corral.
A figure was perched upon the fence, waiting. It was Molly, and she leaped down almost into his arms as he sprang from the mare. In the gray dawn her face seemed drawn and weary. There were the blue shadows under the eyes that he remembered seeing there the time they had ridden over the Pass of the Goats. She came close to him, her hands up against his chest.
"You're safe, Sandy. Safe!"
"I was too late," he said. "Brandon's men had been ahead of me."