Borden knew that the decision was inflexible. As he rose, put his foot in the stirrup, and raised himself into the saddle, he determined, however, to have another try.
"Come and settle up along the creek by me. There's an open claim just beyond mine, better than this piece."
"'YOU GOT THE BEST O' ME, DICK; I'LL GO'"
Dempster shook his head; maybe he was thinking of the clearing back in Indiana and the boughs under which he had drawn his first breath, maybe this poor fringe of woods along the river was dearer to him than all the treeless prairie.
"We've lived here near ten years now," he said at last, "the old woman an' Joe—an' me, 'ceptin' when I was at war. I guess if we go, you'll have to use your gun."
"I'm sorry, Jack, but you've got to go. And I give you a week. It's not me that says so, it's the law."
"Law!" answered Dempster, with sudden rising fierceness. "Does the law drive a man off his own?"
It was the law, not justice, that was driving him. Without replying a word, Borden, and I by his side, rode away. When we reached the lean, eager face behind the scrub, the Marshal broke out, "You vulture, keep behind us! If you try to ride even, I'll sink your carcass in the river." And in that order, with him trailing us, we came back to Kinton.
Well, during the next week the more I turned the thing over on my tongue the less I liked the taste of it, but Borden was not one to consider dislikes—neither another man's nor his own—when he was riding the law's saddle. So I resolved to go through with it, and was ready Thursday morning. He came out from Nebraska City, accompanied by six deputies, men he had tried, who would not back off from the mouth of a gun, for he knew the door he must enter that day. Fitch was among them; oh, he was yellow over it! Borden had dragged him along to the whole end of the dirty business. The tale, too, was out among the deputies, and Fitch saw plainly what rope they would have swung him by. Grim looks were his every mile; when he pushed up among them, they crowded his horse to the withers until it hung back from the others; one cursed him fully and foully. They intended that he should earn that bit of ground before the day was done.