‘No, Señor!’ sliding away from Welton’s boot.
‘We aren’t the court and can’t hang him here, and there’s no shack in this hole of a town that will hold him. Our horses are done for—they won’t get back to Bismo—’
Letchie’s words died out of Bob Leadley’s ears. He was trying to find himself. He was seeing old Batten’s white hair, not combed as usual; he was seeing his own boy—a look in Bart’s face, different from ever before. The hard white curve of Letchie’s jaw was before his eyes and words again:
‘I, for one, ain’t sittin’ up on guard to-night. I’m not askin’ you fellows to do what I won’t do myself.’
Something was crowding for utterance to Bob Leadley’s lips, but Welton’s voice kept it from coming clear. They might be here in Red Ante for days, while some one rode back to Bismo for fresh provisions and horses.
‘... He ain’t worth it—no greaser is. Only one way—to fix him so he can’t get away—’
Now Bart spoke up: ‘I’ll stand guard over him to-night. I don’t feel so done out—’
The father was glad in a crippled sort of fashion, glad but afraid.
‘I guess not,’ said Letchie. ‘Wouldn’t look so pretty when we got back, to have you tell ’em you sat rifle-up over the prisoner while we got our beauty sleep back.... No, I’m figurin’ out a different way from what I saw up yonder—just as we broke into town.’
He meant the blacksmith shop. Bob Leadley saw Mort Cotton standing in the dark like a dirt-stained corpse. It might have been Batten himself.