“We don’t need no warrants in these here mountains.”
“Oh, yes you do,” insisted Richard politely. “Law and order must be respected just as much on the mountains as in the valleys. People who don’t respect them soon find out what happens.”
Two more men slunk toward the door.
“I think,” went on Richard, “that you had better follow your friends out quietly and go to your homes. I am certain most of you have wives who would be glad to see you again after this dangerous little adventure. Jail isn’t a pleasant place, you know, especially to people who are in the habit of breathing mountain air.”
Only six men remained now of the original number. Even Lupo had been silenced, but at the mention of wives he flared up again.
“They have taken my wife away from me,” he cried, shaking his fist at the women in the gallery. “They have given her money to leave me. I ain’t so forgivin’.”
“Do you want to know the real reason why your wife left you?” said Richard in a tone of such conviction that Lupo was deceived into thinking this perfect stranger knew all about him. “She was afraid of you and your lawless ways. When you have been drinking, as you have to-night, you’re a dangerous man. You begin by breaking into private houses. You’re disorderly and violent. Men like you end in the penitentiary. You hide yourselves perhaps for a while, but these mountains are difficult to hide in nowadays. You would be caught sooner or later, and do you think you’ll get much sympathy with the court after one of these ladies, perhaps, has told the history of to-night’s work? Fifteen years would be a short sentence. Your wife is right, I think. You’re not a very safe companion.”
Lupo looked about him bewildered. Only one of the band remained: the watery-eyed innkeeper.
“I was in the rights of the law,” exclaimed Lupo, half-crying as he crept down the gallery steps.
“I am afraid not,” said Richard gently. “But you take a little trip to another county and get some good honest work, and you will soon find out how much happier and safer it is to be within the limits of the law. Decidedly more agreeable than being hunted through the mountains by a sheriff with his bloodhounds, sleeping out in the cold, going hungry, slinking around the edges of villages when everybody is asleep for a chance piece of bread. Earning honest money with your wife happy beside you is heaven in comparison, I assure you.”