“Yes,” agreed Tug. “But we’re not going to put ourselves in the wrong because he is. The law will deal with him.”
“The boys ain’t liable to feel that way,” Tom said significantly.
“They won’t know anything about it till we’ve gone. You’ll tell them then.” His hand fell on the foreman’s shoulder with a grip that was almost affectionate. “We can’t have a lynching here, Tom. We’d be the ones in bad then.”
Tom had to feel his way through a few moments of sulkiness to acceptance of this point of view. “All right. You’re the doctor. Hustle this fellow outa camp an’ I’ll wait till you’re gone. Sure he’s picked up every stick of this stuff?”
Cig was quite sure about that. He spoke humbly and with all the braggadocio gone from his manner. He had been thoroughly frightened and did not yet feel wholly out of the woods. Not till he was behind the bars would he feel quite safe again.
CHAPTER XXIII
OUT OF THE BLIZZARD
Tom called a warning to Hollister as the engineer and his prisoner struck out into the blinding storm. “Careful you don’t get lost. Looks like she’s gettin’ her back up for a reg’lar snifter.”
The snow was still falling thickly, but it had behind it now a driving wind that slapped it in the faces of the men at a slanting angle. Presently under the lee of a hill they got their backs to the storm, but this did not greatly improve conditions, for the whip of the wind caught up the surface drifts and whirled them at the travelers.
Hollister had buckled on a belt with a revolver and had taken the precaution to rope his prisoner to him with ten feet of slack between. They ploughed through the new snow that had fallen above the crust, making slow progress even with the wind to help.
From the shelter of the gulch they came into the full force of the howling hurricane. It caught them as they crossed a mesa leading to a cañon. Hollister realized that the snow was thinning, but the wind was rising and the temperature falling. He did not like that. Even to his lack of experience there was the feel of a blizzard in the air. Moreover, before they were halfway across the mesa he had a sense of having lost his direction.