It was after midnight when he rode up on the scene. Before he arrived, Jud Carpenter had aroused the mob to do its first fury, and still held them, now doubly vengeful and shouting to be led against the jail. But to storm a jail they needed a braver man than Jud Carpenter. And they found him in Richard Travis—especially Richard Travis in the terrible mood, the black despair which had come upon him that night.
Why did he come? He could not say. In him had surged two great forces that night—the force of evil and the force of good. Twice had the good overcome—now it was the evil's turn, and like one hypnotized, he was led on.
He sat his horse among them, pale and calm, but with a cruel instinct flashing in his eyes. At least, so Jud Carpenter interpreted the mood which lay upon him; but no one knew the secret workings of this man's heart, save God.
He had come to them haggard and blanched and with a nameless dread, his arm tied up where the dog's fang had been buried in his flesh, his heart bitter in the thought of the death that was his. Already he felt the deadly virus pulsing through his veins. A hundred times in the short hour that had passed he suffered death—death beginning with the gripping throat, the shortened breath, the foaming mouth, the spasm!
He jerked in the saddle—that spasmodic chill of the nerves,—and he grew white and terribly silent at the thought of it—the death that was his!
Was his! And then he thought: “No, there shall be another and quicker way to die. A braver way—like a Travis—with my boots on—my boots on—and not like a mad-dog tied to a stake.
“Besides—Alice—Alice!”
She had gone out of his life. Could such a thing be and he live to tell it? Alice—love—ambition—the future—life! Alice, hazel-eyed and glorious, with hair the smell of which filled his soul with perfume as from the stars. She who alone uplifted him—she another's, and that other Tom Travis!
Tom Travis—returned and idealized—with him, the joint heir of The Gaffs.
And that mad-dog—that damned mad-dog! And if perchance he was saved—if that virus was sucked out of his veins, it was she—Helen!