CHAPTER III
AT THE END OF THE ROAD
Curly’s wooden face told nothing of what he was thinking. The first article of the creed of the frontier is to be game. Good or bad, the last test of a man is the way he takes his medicine. So now young Flandrau ate his dinner with a hearty appetite, smoked cigarettes impassively, and occasionally chatted with his guards casually and as a matter of course. Deep within him was a terrible feeling of sickness at the disaster that had overwhelmed him, but he did not intend to play the quitter.
Dutch and an old fellow named Sweeney relieved the other watchers about noon. The squat puncher came up and looked down angrily at the boy lying on the bunk.
“I’ll serve notice right now that if you make any breaks I’ll fill your carcass full of lead,” he growled.
The prisoner knew that he was nursing a grudge for the blow that had floored him. Not to be bluffed, Curly came back with a jeer. “Much obliged, my sawed-off and hammered-down friend. But what’s the matter with your face? It looks some lopsided. Did a mule kick you?”
Sweeney gave his companion the laugh. “Better let him alone, Dutch. If he lands on you again like he did before your beauty ce’tainly will be spoiled complete.”
The little puncher’s eyes snapped rage. “You’ll get yours pretty soon, Mr. Curly Flandrau. The boys are fixin’ to hang yore hide up to dry.”
“Does look that way, doesn’t it?” the boy agreed quietly.
As the day began to wear out it looked so more than ever. Two riders from the Bar Double M reached the ranch and were brought in to identify him as the horse thief. The two were Maloney and Kite Bonfils, neither of them friends of the young rustler. The foreman in particular was a wet blanket to his chances. The man’s black eyes were the sort that never soften toward the follies and mistakes of youth.