“I’m not. But I won’t stand by while you get these boys to do murder. If they haven’t sense enough to keep them from it I’ve got to stop it myself.”
Kite laughed sarcastically. “You hear your boss, boys.”
“You’ve had yore say now, Miss Kate. I reckon you better say good-night,” advised Buck.
She handed Buck and his friends her compliments in a swift flow of feminine ferocity.
Maloney pushed into the circle. “She’s dead right, boys. There’s nothing to this lynching game. He’s only a kid.”
“He’s not such a kid but what he can do murder,” Dutch spat out.
Kate read him the riot act so sharply that the little puncher had not another word to say. The tide of opinion was shifting. Those who had been worked up to the lynching by the arguments of Bonfils began to resent his activity. Flandrau was their prisoner, wasn’t he? No use going off half cocked. Some of them were discovering that they were not half so anxious to hang him as they had supposed.
The girl turned to her friends and neighbors. “I oughtn’t to have talked to you that way, but you know how worried I am about Dad,” she apologized with a catch in her breath. “I’m sure you didn’t think or you would never have done anything to trouble me more just now. You know I didn’t half mean it.” She looked from one to another, her eyes shiny with tears. “I know that no braver or kinder men live than you. Why, you’re my folks. I’ve been brought up among you. And so you’ve got to forgive me.”
Some said “Sure,” others told her to forget it, and one grass widower drew a laugh by saying that her little spiel reminded him of happier days.
For the first time a smile lit her face. The boy for whose life she was pleading thought it was like sunshine after a storm.