"Ain't you afraid to die?"
"Just order your hounds to jerk on that rope and I'll show you whether or not I am afraid to die. But let me tell you this, you damned murderer! If any harm comes to that girl—to Miss Marcum—may the curse of God follow every last one of you till you are damned in a fiery hell! You will kill me now, but you won't be rid of me. I'll haunt you every one to your graves. I will follow you night and day till your brains snap and you go howling to hell like maniacs."
Several of the cowboys shuddered and turned away. Very deliberately the Texan rolled a cigarette.
"There is a box in my coat pocket, will you hand me one? Or is it against the rules to smoke?" Without a word the Texan complied, and as he held a match to the cigarette he stared straight into the man's eyes: "You've started out good," he remarked gravely. "I'm just wonderin' if you can play your string out." With which enigmatical remark he turned to the cowboys: "The drinks are on me, boys. Jerk off that rope, an' go back to town! An' remember, this lynchin' come off as per schedule."
Alone in the cottonwood grove, with little patches of moonlight filtering through onto the new-sprung grass, the two men faced each other. Without a word the cowboy freed the prisoner's hands.
"Viewin' it through a lariat-loop, that way, the country looks better to a man than what it really is," he observed, as the other stretched his arms above his head.
"What is the meaning of all this? The lynching would have been an atrocious injustice, but if you did not intend to hang me why should you have taken the trouble to bring me out here?"
"'Twasn't no trouble at all. The main thing was to get you out of Wolf River. The lynchin' part was only a joke, an' that's on us. You bein' a pilgrim, that way, we kind of thought——"
"A what?"
"A pilgrim, or tenderfoot, or greener or chechako, or counter-jumper, owin' to what part of the country you misfit into. We thought you wouldn't have no guts, an' we'd——"