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neck; his breast heaved convulsively.
"You fool!" cried Hare, dumfounded and resentful. "I recognized you.
Would you rather hang than live? What's your secret?"
He snatched off the black mask. The Bishop's eldest son stood revealed.
"Good God!" cried Hare, recoiling from that convulsed face.
"Brother! Oh! I feared this," groaned John Caldwell.
The rustlers broke out into curses and harsh laughter.
"--- --- you Mormons! See him! Paul Caldwell! Son of a Bishop! Thought h e was
shepherdin' sheep?"
"D--n you, Hare!" shouted the guilty Mormon, in passionate fury and shame
.
"Why didn't you hang me? Why didn't you bury me unknown?"
"Caldwell! I can't believe it," cried Hare, slowly coming to himself."
But you don't hang. Here, come out of the crowd. Make way, men!"
The silent crowd of Mormons with lowered and averted eyes made passage for
Hare and Caldwell. Then cold, stern voices in sharp questions and orders went
on with the grim trial. Leading the bowed and stricken
Mormon, Hare drew off to the side of the town-hall and turned his back upon
the crowd. The constant trampling of many feet, the harsh medley of many
voices swelled into one dreadful sound. It passed away, and a long hush
followed. But this in turn was suddenly broken by an outcry:
"The Navajos! The Navajos!"
Hare thrilled at that cry and his glance turned to the eastern end of the
village road where a column of mounted Indians, four abreast, was riding
toward the square.
"Naab and his Indians," shouted Hare. "Naab and his Indians! No fear!"
His call was timely, for the aroused Mormons, ignorant of Naab's pursuit,
fearful of hostile Navajos, were handling their guns ominously.
But there came a cry of recognition--"August Naab!"
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Onward came the band, Naab in the lead on his spotted roan. The mustangs
were spent and lashed with foam. Naab reined in his charger and the keen-eyed
Navajos closed in behind him. The old Mormon's eagle glance passed over the
dark forms dangling from the cottonwoods to the files of waiting men.
"Where is he?"
"There!" answered John Caldwell, pointing to the body of Holderness.
"Who robbed me of my vengeance? Who killed the rustler?" Naab's stentorian
voice rolled over the listening multitude. In it was a hunger of thwarted
hate that held men mute. He bent a downward gaze at the dead
Holderness as if to make sure of the ghastly reality. Then he seemed to rise
in his saddle, and his broad chest to expand. "I know--I saw it all--blind I
was not to believe my own eyes! Where is he? Where is
Hare?"
Some one pointed Hare out. Naab swung from his saddle and scattered the men
before him as if they had been sheep. His shaggy gray head and massive
shoulders towered above the tallest there.
Hare felt again a cold sense of fear. He grew weak in all his being. He
reeled when the gray shaggy giant laid a huge hand on his shoulder and with
one pull dragged him close. Was this his kind Mormon benefactor, this man
with the awful eyes?
"You killed Holderness?" roared Naab.
"Yes," whispered Hare.
"You heard me say I'd go alone? You forestalled me? You took upon yourself
my work? . . . Speak."
"I--did."
"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
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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.
Hare threw all his weight and strength upon the Mormon's iron arm. "Naab!
Naab! For God's sake, hear! He saved Mescal. This man, thief, traitor,
false Mormon--whatever he is--he saved Mescal."
August Naab's eyes were bloodshot. One shake of his great body flung [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]