“The gang was soon buzzin’ all around; the woman, now almost in hysterics, was hustled aside, and a few bundles of loose hay was being dumped into the shed through an open window. A match did the rest. Within three minutes the door opened and Thurston came staggerin’ out through thick clouds of smoke. Pierre grabbed him and had a noose around his neck in doublequick time.
“The shootin’ was over before this, and some of the ranch hands were lookin’ on from a little distance, for now everyone knew that it was only the boss that the night-riders were after. So more’n one was able afterwards to tell the story—how the young wife threw herself at Don Manuel’s feet, and with sobs and tears pleaded for mercy. And by the living God she won out even after the rope, with her husband at the end of it, had been swung over the limb of a near-by sycamore.
“The White Wolf stood stock-still for perhaps a minute, weighin’ things like, his arms folded across his breast. Then he raised the weepin’ woman, and, turnin’ to Thurston, now half-dead with fear, laid hold of him by the shoulder and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. Then with his other hand he flung the noose from around his neck. ‘Take your miserable life, then, this time’—that’s what Don Manuel said. ‘Take it, but the day will come when we shall meet again, man to man, with no woman’s tears to save you.’ And he pushed Thurston away contemptuously, topplin’ him over like a ninepin, and a minute later rode off at the head of his men.”
The narrator paused, and there was a general murmur of repressed excitement.
“My word, that’s a peach of a story,” exclaimed Jack Rover.
“He certainly was a chivalrous fellow, this oldtime Don Manuel,” remarked the lieutenant.
“And don’t you see,” said the sheriff, “that, when a man acted like that and spoke like that, his words must come true? Don’t tell me that Don Manuel today is dead while Ben Thurston is still alive. But he has taken mighty good care of himself ever since that day. He an’ his wife skipped East the very next morning, and I’m told they never stopped till they got to Europe. Nobody knows where exactly they lived during the time that followed, but news came through years later that the wife had died, somewhere in the south of England, leaving a son behind. That’s young Marshall who has come West with his dad now—the young man’s first visit and his father’s last one, I reckon, if he sells the ranch, as I’m told he’s trying to do.”
“But I say, boys,” observed Jack Rover, “what do you suppose the White Wolf did with all the gold he took away from the people? It’s said that in one stage robbery he got over fifty thousand dollars of the yellow stuff.”
“Hid it,” replied Buck Ashley, “with Joaquin Murietta’s hoarded gold. For it’s sure as sure can be that Don Manuel came to know the secret o’ the bandits’ cave where Murietta used to store his loot. The only thing anybody else knows is that it is around here somewheres.”
“But they do say,” observed one of the cowboys, “whatever Sheriff Baker may think, and you, too, Buck, that Don Manuel is sure ‘nuff dead. Most folks herabouts believe that the White Wolf has gone to his long restin’ place, sort a j’ined forces with old Joaquin Murietta. The Tulare Lake affair was, I guess, his last raid.”