"Don't you know the lone tree's dead? Jest shrivelled up an' died after Bill Atwood was hung onto it. Some augers he worn't guilty. But it's better to play safe, an' string up all the doubtful ones, then yer bound to git the right one onct in a while."
"Swing over into Buffalo Coulee," commanded Tex. "There's a bunch of cottonwoods just above Hansen's old sheep ranch."
"We'll string him up to a cottonwood limb
An' dig his grave in under him——"
"Shut up!" ordered Curly, favouring the singer with a scowl. "Any one would think you was joyous-minded, which this here hangin' a man is plumb serious business, even if it hain't only a pilgrim!"
He edged his horse in beside the Texan's. "He don't seem tore up with terror, none. D'you think he's onto the racket?"
Tex shook his head, and with his eyes on the face of the prisoner which showed very white in the moonlight, rode on in silence.
"You mean you think he's jest nach'ly got guts—an' him a pilgrim?"
"How the hell do I know what he's got?" snapped the other. "Can't you wait till we get to Buffalo?"
Curly allowed his horse to fall back a few paces. "First time I ever know'd Tex to pack a grouch," he mused, as his lips drew into a grin. "He's sore 'cause the pilgrim hain't a-snifflin' an' a-carryin'-on an' tryin' to beg off. Gosh! If he turns out to be a reg'lar hand, an' steps up an' takes his medicine like a man, the joke'll be on Tex. The boys never will quit joshin' him—an' he knows it. No wonder he's sore."
The cowboys rode straight across the bench. Song and conversation had ceased and the only sounds were the low clink of bit chains and the soft rustle of horses' feet in the buffalo grass. At the end of an hour the leaders swung into an old grass-grown trail that led by devious windings into a deep, steep-sided coulee along the bottom of which ran the bed of a dried-up creek. Water from recent rains stood in brackish pools. Remnants of fence with rotted posts sagging from rusty wire paralleled their course. A dilapidated cross-fence barred their way, and without dismounting, a cowboy loosened the wire gate and threw it aside.