“Both, probably,” added another.
“I’ll not ask you to believe me any more,” I now said. “Don’t I see the post-trader over there among those horses?”
“No.”
“Very well, take me to him at Washakie. He has known me for years. I demand it.”
“We’ll not take you anywhere. We’re going to leave you here.”
And now the truth, the appalling, incredible truth, which my brain had totally failed to take in, burst like a blast of heat or ice over my whole being, penetrating the innermost recesses of my soul with a blinding glare. They intended to put me to death at once; their minds were as stone vaults closed against all explanation. Here in this hidden crack of the wilderness my body would be left hanging, and far away my family and friends would never know by what hideous outrage I had perished. Slowly they would become anxious at getting no news of me; there would be an inquiry, a mystery, then sorrow, and finally acceptance of my unknown fate. Broken visions of home, incongruous minglings of loved faces and commonplace objects, like my room with its table and chairs, rushed upon me. Had I not been seated, I must have fallen at the first shock of this stroke. They stood watching me.
“But,” I began, feeling that my very appearance was telling against me, while my own voice sounded guilty to my ears, “but it’s not true.”
“What’s the use in him talking any more to us?” said a man to Lem Speed.
Lem Speed addressed me. “You claim this: you’re an Eastern traveller. You come here—out of curiosity. You risk getting lost in the hardest country around here—out of curiosity. But you come all straight because an Indian’s map guides you, only you’ve burnt it. And you’re a stranger, ignorant that this is a cache for rustlers. That’s what you claim. It don’t sound like much against these facts: last year you and another man that’s wanted in several places and that we’re after now—you and him was known to be thick. You offered to pay his doctor’s bill. You come back to the country where he’s been operating right along, and first thing you do you come over to this cache when he’s got stolen horses right in it, and you ride a stolen horse that’s known to have been in his possession, and that’s got on it now the brand of the outfit this gentleman here represents—all out of curiosity.”
“We’ve just found six more of our stock in here,” said the gentleman indicated by Speed.