“By what right?”
“My debt—duty—your family—Dave!”
“Boy! Boy! You've robbed me.” Naab waved his arm from the gaping crowd to the swinging rustlers. “You've led these white-livered Mormons to do my work. How can I avenge my sons—seven sons?”
His was the rage of the old desert-lion. He loosed Hare and strode in magnificent wrath over Holderness and raised his brawny fists.
“Eighteen years I prayed for wicked men,” he rolled out. “One by one I buried my sons. I gave my springs and my cattle. Then I yielded to the lust for blood. I renounced my religion. I paid my soul to everlasting hell for the life of my foe. But he's dead! Killed by a wild boy! I sold myself to the devil for nothing!”
August Naab raved out his unnatural rage amid awed silence. His revolt was the flood of years undammed at the last. The ferocity of the desert spirit spoke silently in the hanging rustlers, in the ruthlessness of the vigilantes who had destroyed them, but it spoke truest in the sonorous roll of the old Mormon's wrath.
“August, young Hare saved two of the rustlers,” spoke up an old friend, hoping to divert the angry flood. “Paul Caldwell there, he was one of them. The other's gone.”
Naab loomed over him. “What!” he roared. His friend edged away, repeating his words and jerking his thumb backward toward the Bishop's son.
“Judas Iscariot!” thundered Naab. “False to thyself, thy kin, and thy God! Thrice traitor!... Why didn't you get yourself killed? ... Why are you left? Ah-h! for me—a rustler for me to kill—with my own hands!—A rope there—a rope!”
“I wanted them to hang me,” hoarsely cried Caldwell, writhing in Naab's grasp.