Cullison laughed harshly. “You’ll be sicker soon.”
“You promised you wouldn’t do anything if we turned you loose,” the man plucked up courage to remind him.
“I promised the law wouldn’t do anything. You’ll understand the distinction presently.”
“Mr. Cullison, please—— I admit I done wrong. I hadn’t ought to have gone in with Cass Fendrick. He wanted me to kill you, but I wouldn’t.”
With that unwinking gaze the ranchman beat down his lies, while fear dripped in perspiration from the pallid face of the prisoner.
Bucky had let Cullison take the center of the stage. He had observed a growing distress mount and ride the victim. Now he stepped in to save the man with an alternative at which Blackwell might be expected not to snatch eagerly perhaps, but at least to be driven toward.
“This man is my prisoner, Mr. Cullison. From what I can make out you ought to strip his hide off and hang it up to dry. But I’ve got first call on him. If he comes through with the truth about the W. & S. Express robbery, I’ve got to protect him.”
Luck understood the ranger. They were both working toward the same end. The immediate punishment of this criminal was not the important issue. It was merely a club with which to beat him into submission, and at that a moral rather than a physical one. But the owner of the Circle C knew better than to yield to Bucky too easily. He fought the point out with him at length, and finally yielded reluctantly, in such a way as to aggravate rather than relieve the anxiety of the convict.
“All right. You take him first,” he finally conceded harshly.
Bucky kept up the comedy. “I’ll take him, Mr. Cullison. But if he tells me the truth—and if I find out it’s the whole truth—there’ll be nothing doing on your part. He’s my prisoner. Understand that.”