“Sure. They all got away. Wasn't that about the maddest crowd you ever saw?”
“No wonder. In a second every man there feared the man next to him would shoot. That showed the power of Kells's Border Legion. If his men had been faithful and obedient he never would have fallen.”
“Joan! You speak as if you regret it!”
“Oh, I am ashamed,” replied Joan. “I don't mean that. I don't know what I do mean. But still I'm sorry for Kells. I suffered so much.... Those long, long hours of suspense.... And his fortunes seemed my fortunes—my very life—and yours, too, Jim.”
“I think I understand, dear,” said Jim, soberly.
“Jim, what'll we do now? Isn't it strange to feel free?”
“I feel as queer as you. Let me think,” replied Jim.
They huddled there in comparative seclusion for a long time after that. Joan tried to think of plans, but her mind seemed, unproductive. She felt half dazed. Jim, too, appeared to be laboring under the same kind of burden. Moreover, responsibility had been added to his.
The afternoon waned till the sun tipped the high range in the west. The excitement of the mining populace gradually wore away, and toward sunset strings of men filed up the road and across the open. The masked vigilantes disappeared, and presently only a quiet and curious crowd was left round the grim scaffold and its dark swinging forms. Joan's one glance showed that the vigilantes had swung Frenchy's dead body in the noose he would have escaped by treachery. They had hanged him dead. What a horrible proof of the temper of these newborn vigilantes! They had left the bandits swinging. What sight was so appalling as these limp, dark, swaying forms? Dead men on the ground had a dignity—at least the dignity of death. And death sometimes had a majesty. But here both life and death had been robbed and there was only horror. Joan felt that all her life she would be haunted.
“Joan, we've got to leave Alder Creek,” declared Cleve, finally. He rose to his feet. The words seemed to have given him decision. “At first I thought every bandit in the gang would run as far as he could from here. But—you can't tell what these wild men will do. Gulden, for instance! Common sense ought to make them hide for a spell. Still, no matter what's what, we must leave.... Now, how to go?”