Thus without warning he saw the distorted and ghastly face of a man hanging by the neck on a rope tied to the trestle. The spectacle gave Adam a terrible shock.
“That’s Collishaw’s work,” muttered Adam, darkly, and he remembered stories told of the sheriff’s grim hand in more than one act of border justice. What a hard country!
In front of the village store Adam encountered Merryvale, and he asked him for particulars about the execution.
“Wal, I don’t know much,” replied the old watchman, scratching his head. “There’s been some placer miners shot an’ robbed up the river. This Collishaw is a regular sure-enough sheriff, takin’ the law to himself. Reckon there ain’t any law. Wal, he an’ his deputies say they tracked thet murderin’ gang to Picacho, an’ swore they identified one of them. Arallanes stuck up for thet greaser. There was a hot argument, an’, by gosh! I jest swore Collishaw was goin’ to draw on Arallanes. But Arallanes backed down, as any man not crazy would have done. The greaser swore by all his Virgins thet he wasn’t the man, an’ was swearin’ he could prove it when the rope choked him off.... I don’t know, Adam. I don’t know. I was fer waitin’ a little to give the feller a chance. But Collishaw came down here to hang some one an’ you bet he was goin’ to do it.”
“I know him, Merryvale, and you’re betting right,” replied Adam, forcefully.
“Adam, one of his men is a fine-lookin’ young chap thet sure must be your brother. Now, ain’t he?”
“Yes, you’re right about that, too.”
“Wal, wal! You don’t seem powerful glad.... Son, jest be careful what you say to Collishaw. He’s hard an’ I reckon he’s square as he sees justice, but he doesn’t ring right to an old timer like me. He courts the crowd. An’ he’s been askin’ fer you. There he comes now.”
The sheriff appeared, approaching with several companions, and halted before the store. His was a striking figure, picturesque, commanding, but his face was repellent. His massive head was set on a bull neck of swarthy and weathered skin like wrinkled leather; his broad face, of similar hue, appeared a mass of crisscrossed lines, deep at the eyes, and long on each side of the cruel, thin-lipped, tight-shut mouth; his chin stuck out like a square rock; and his eyes, dark and glittering, roved incessantly in all directions, had been trained to see men before they saw him.
Adam knew that Collishaw had seen him first, and, acting upon the resolution that he had made down in the thicket, he strode over to the sheriff.