“If you give her up now, you’re a yellow dog, Dillon,” his tormentor sneered. “Stick it out. Tell me to go to red-hot blazes.”
He took an extra turn on the wrist. Bob writhed and shrieked. Tiny beads of perspiration stood on his forehead. “You’re killin’ me!” he screamed.
“Wish you’d gunned me when you had a chance, don’t you?” Houck spat at him. “Too late now. Well, what’s it to be?” Again he applied the torture.
The boy begged, pleaded, then surrendered. “I can’t stand it! I’ll do anything you say.”
“Well, you know yore li’l’ piece. Speak it right up,” ordered the cattleman.
Bob said it, with his eyes on the ground, feeling and looking like a whipped cur. “You better go with him, June. I—I’m no good.” A sob choked him. He buried his face in his hands.
Houck laughed harshly. “You hear him, June.”
In a small dead voice June asked a question. “Do you mean that, Bob—that I’m to go with him—that you give me up?”
Her husband nodded, without looking up.
No man can sacrifice his mate to save his own hide and still hold her respect. June looked at him in a nausea of sick scorn. She turned from him, wasting no more words.