“That’s what?”
“Out with it,” ordered Buck.
“Oh, I expect I’ll keep that under my hat,” Curly told them lightly.
They were crowded about him in a half circle, nearly a score of hard leather-faced plainsmen. Some of them were riders of the Circle C outfit. Others had ridden over from neighboring ranches. All of them plainly meant business. They meant to stamp out rustling, and their determination had been given an edge by the wounding of Luck Cullison, the most popular man in the county.
“Think again, Curly,” advised Sweeney quietly. “The boys ain’t trifling about this thing. They mean to find out who was in the rustling of the Bar Double M stock.”
“Not through me, they won’t.”
“Through you. And right now.”
A dozen times during the evening Curly had crushed down the desire to beg for mercy, to cry out desperately for them to let him off. He had kept telling himself not to show yellow, that it would not last long. Now the fear of breaking down sloughed from his soul. He rose from the bed and looked round at the brown faces circled about him in the shine of the lamps.
“I’ll not tell you a thing—not a thing.”
He stood there chalk-faced, his lips so dry that he had to keep moistening them with the tip of his tongue. Two thoughts hammered in his head. One was that he had come to the end of his trail, the other that he would game it out without weakening.