A glance at Buck showed Peruna how deadly in earnest he was. Reluctantly he sank to his knees.
"I didn't mean what I said. I hope you will excuse me—" he whined.
"That's enough. Now git up. Pull your freight," Buck ordered.
"By God, no!" interposed Sage-brush.
The cowboys seized Peruna.
Buck saw that his bluff at bossing the situation was called. He turned appealingly to Echo, and rapidly fabricated a moving tale about Peruna's heroic rescue of himself from drowning in the Gila River. "An I swore I would do as much fer him some day. Now I perpose that we all give him a kick, an' let him go; let him have two hours' start, after which the game-laws will be out on him."
Sage-brush cried out against the plan, but Echo was moved by McKee's appeal for his comrade, and, speaking low and beseechingly to Sage-brush, said: "It will save a range-war that we can't afford to have till Jack and Slim get back." Sage-brush finally assented.
"Two hours' start. Well, he'll have to go some, if he gets away. Kick him and let him go," he commanded.
Echo turned away.
The cowboys who held Peruna threw him to the ground, and every man of the Allen and Payson ranches gave him a vicious kick, Show Low putting in an extra one for his murdered bunkie. Last of all, McKee approached the prostrate man, and made the mistake which was to cost him his life by booting Peruna cruelly. The man was a stupid fellow by nature, and what wits he had were addled by the habit he had acquired of consuming patent-medicines containing alcohol, morphin, and other stimulating and stupefying drugs. He was as revengeful as stupid, and could have forgiven McKee's putting the rope around his neck more easily than Buck's joining in the humiliation which saved his life.