“You done guessed it first crack,” Tom nodded.
“Not yet, boys,” protested Haines in his whispering falsetto. “I reckon we’d ought to wait an’ see how the girl comes out.”
“Why had we?” demanded a squat puncher from the Keystone. “What difference does it make? If ever any one needed stringin’ up, it’s the guy here. He’s worse than Douglas or any other Injun ever was. Is it yore notion we’d oughta sit around with our hands in our pockets, Blister, while reptiles like this Houck make our girls swim the river at night an’ plough barefoot through snowstorms? I ain’t that easy-dispositioned myself.”
“Shorty’s sure whistlin’. Same here,” another chap-clad rider chipped in.
“An’ here.”
Blister dropped into the background inconspicuously and vanished. He appeared to be in a minority of one, not counting Houck, and he needed reënforcements.
“We’ll hear what Mr. Houck has to say before we pass judgment,” Larson said.
But Houck, looking into the circle of grim faces that surrounded him, knew that he was condemned. Nothing that he could say would make any difference. He shrugged his heavy shoulders.
“What’s the use? You’ve done made up yore minds.”
He noticed that the younger fellows were pressing closer to him. Pretty soon they would disarm him. If he was going to make a fight for his life, it had to be now. His arm dropped to his side, close to the butt of the revolver he carried.