“There’s got to be law, even in a place like this. We make our own laws, and the men that stay here have got to abide by them. Our law said this man must die. He died.”
She did not ask him how. The story went that the outlaws whom the wretched man had tried to sell let him escape on purpose—that, just as he thought he was free of them, their mocking laughter came to him from the rocks all around. He was completely surrounded. They had merely let him run into a trap. He escaped again, wandered without food for days, and again discovered that they had been watching him all the time. Turn whichever way he would, their rifles warned him back. He stumbled on, growing weaker and weaker. They would neither capture him nor let him go.
For nearly a week the cruel game went on. Frequently he heard their voices in the hills about him. Sometimes he would call out to them pitifully to put him out of his misery. Only their horrible laughter answered. When he had reached the limit of endurance he lay down and died.
And the man who had engineered that heartless revenge was riding beside her. He had been ready to tell her the whole story, if she had asked for it, and equally ready to justify it. Nothing could have shown her more plainly the character of the villain into whose hands she had fallen.
They descended into the valley, winding in and 258 out until they came suddenly upon ranch houses and a corral in a cleared space.
A man came out of the shadows into the moonlight to meet them. Instantly Melissy recognized his walk. It was Boone.
“Oh, it’s you,” MacQueen said coldly. “Any of the rest of the boys up?”
“No.”
Not a dozen words had passed between them, but the girl sensed hostility. She was not surprised. Dunc Boone was not the man to take second place in any company of riff-raff, nor was MacQueen one likely to yield the supremacy he had fought to gain.
The latter swung from the saddle and lifted Melissy from hers. As her feet struck the ground her face for the first time came full into the moonlight.