The second night there came to the bullwhacker camp two men in a light road wagon. They took the body away.
At the same time a dozen bullwhackers and nearly all the men from the cow camp rode away to the south. Preston, silent as the Sphynx, sat astride a horse, his hands tied behind him. They told him he was going to Sidnev to have a trial. He smiled, but said nothing. It was just an effort to appear brave. His life had been one of crime. He was a pest of the plains, of the trails, of the camps—and he was on the way to the end of a rope. He knew it, and did not plead for mercy or ask for quarter; he did not in the long ride across the sand hills utter a word of regret for what he had done. He was heartless, cruel, brutal, even in the valley of the shadow. And he was silent even as death itself. He showed no fear as we would describe fear.
Entering Sidney the posse and the prisoner took the center one of three coulees that ran down into the town, all three meeting at the level. It was here that One-Eyed Ed met the court that was to try him, together with the populace. The court consisted of fifty horsemen, half of whom rode down the east coulee, the other half down the other, meeting the prisoner and his escort as abruptly as one meets a person sometimes in whirling around the corner of a city block.
One long yi, yi, yi, yi, ye! was the "hear ye" of the plainsman court crier—the signal understood by all the horsemen, and especially those comprising the posse just emerging from the center coulee. As if by magic the escort faded away and the prisoner, bareheaded, long hair waving in the wind, his hands securely tied, sat upright—alone.
Then from the east and west coulees dashed horsemen led by Jim Redding swinging his lariat over and over and over his head until he was in the right spot to spin it out. Preston's horse stood like a piece of statuary, and to give the man on his back his proper meed of credit let it be recorded that he had the appearance of a man bravely facing death, for he sat erect and made no effort to dismount, which he might have done, for he had not been fastened to the saddle, as that would have made impossible the program mapped out to the minutest detail.
When Redding spun his lariat for Preston's head--after he had ridden past him two or three times while the horsemen lined up like a company of cavalry and looked on--it landed around his shoulders. Redding planted a spur into his cow pony, there was a jump and Preston's body shot up and away from his mount and to the ground.
Copyright by American Colortype Co., Chicago
Track-Layers Fought Redskins—Chapter VIII.