“What are you? Who are you? What object have you in the seduction of my wife?”
He smiled, but was silent.
“Ah! you won’t answer. We’ll see.”
I pressed the knife slowly against his throat. His face contracted spasmodically, but although a thin red thread of blood sprang out along the edge of the blade, Brake remained mute. An idea suddenly seized me. This sort of death had no terrors for him. I would try another. There was the precipice. I was twice as powerful as he was, so I seized him in my arms, and in a moment transported him to the margin of the steep, smooth cliff, the edge of which was garnished with the tough stems of the wild vine. He seemed to feel it was useless to struggle with me, so allowed me passively to roll him over the edge. When he was suspended in the air, I gave him a vine stem to cling to and let him go. He swung at a height of eighty feet, with face upturned and pale. He dared not look down. I seated myself on the edge of the cliff, and with my knife began to cut into the thick vine a foot or two above the place of his grasp. I was correct in my calculation. This terror was too much for him. As he saw the notch in the vine getting deeper and deeper, his determination gave way.
“I’ll answer you,” he gasped out, gazing at me with starting eyeballs; “what do you ask?”
“What are you?” was my question, as I ceased cutting at the stem.
“A Mormon,” was the answer, uttered with a groan. “Take me up. My hands are slipping. Quick!”
“And you wanted my wife to follow you to that infernal Salt Lake,
City, I suppose?”
“For God’s sake, release me! I’ll quit the place, never to come back. Do help me up, Dayton—I’m falling!”
I felt mightily inclined to let the villain drop; but it did not suit my purpose to be hung for murder, so I swung him back again on the sward, where he fell panting and exhausted.