organ had considerable to say, and he said it without whimper or
tremor, his only appeal being to their fairness and sense of justice
between man and man. He went back a little farther in his simple history
than he had gone with Judge Thayer that afternoon, telling them how he
once had been a cowboy like themselves on the Nebraska and Wyoming
range, leading up briefly, so they might feel they knew him, to his
arrival in Ascalon that day, and his manner of incurring Seth Craddock's
enmity, for which they were considering such an unreasonable punishment.

Inflamed as they were by liquor, and all but insensible to reasonable
argument, this simple story, enforced by the renewed plea of the one who
befriended him, turned two or three others in Morgan's favor. They
probably would have set him free if it had not been for the Dutchman,
who joined them, apparently sober and bitterly vindictive, as they were
considering that step.

The Dutchman was for vengeance on his own account, Seth Craddock out of
the consideration entirely. The granger had slugged him, he maintained;
no man that ever walked on the grass was able to lay him out with bare
hands. If they didn't hang the granger he'd shoot him, then and there,
even though he would have to throw ashes on his stinking blood to keep
it from driving everybody out of town.

Wait a minute, the young man with the straddle suggested, speaking
eagerly, as if he had been struck by an inspiration. The freight train
was just pulling out; suppose they put the rope around the granger's
body instead of his neck, leave his hands tied as they were, and hitch
him to a car! In that way he'd hang himself. It would be plain suicide,
as anybody with eyes could see.

The innocence and humor of this sportful proposal appealed to them at
once. It also satisfied the Dutchman, who seconded it loudly, with
excited enthusiasm. The protests of the granger's defender and friend
were unavailing. They pushed him back, even threatening him with their
guns when he would have interfered to stay the execution of this
inspired sentence.

The train was getting under way; three of the gang laid hold of the
_reata_ and ran, dragging Morgan against his best efforts to brace his
feet and hold them, the others pushing him toward the moving train. The
long freight was bound westward. Morgan and his tormenters were beyond
the railroad station, not far from Judge Thayer's little white office
building, which Morgan coul