branding iron in the dust at his
feet. He was silent, yet apparently agitated by a strong emotion, as a
man might be who had leaped a crevasse in fleeing a pressing peril, upon
which he feared to look back.

She whom the man had called Rhetta picked up the young cowboy's hat and
put it on his head.

"Hush!" she charged, in reply to his whimpering intercession for mercy.
"Mr. Morgan isn't going to let them hang you."

Morgan started out of his thoughtful glooming as if a reviving wind had
struck his face, all alert again in a moment, but silent and inscrutable
as before. He leaned his brand against the hitching post, recovered his
rifle where it lay in the dust beside the scattered sticks of his fire,
making himself a little room as he moved about.

Those who had talked of hanging the six now suspended sentence while
waiting the outcome of this new activity on the part of the avenger. A
man who came from somewhere with a coil of rope on his arm stood at the
edge of the newly widened circle with fallen countenance, like one who
arrived too late at some great event in which he had expected to be the
leading actor.

Morgan began stripping belts and pistols from his captives, throwing the
gear at the foot of the post where his branding iron stood. When he had
stripped the last one he paused a moment as if considering something,
the weapon in his hand. The girl Rhetta had not added a word to her
appeal in behalf of the unworthy rascals who stood sweating in terror
before the threatening crowd. But she looked now into Morgan's face with
hopeful understanding, the color coming back to her drained cheeks, a
light of admiration in her eyes. As for Morgan, his own face appeared to
have cleared of a cloud. There was a gleam of deep-kindling humor in his
eyes.

"Gentlemen, there will not be any hanging in Ascalon this morning," he
announced.

He threw the last pistol down with the others, nodded Stilwell to him,
whispered a word or two. Stilwell went shouldering off through the
crowd. Morgan sheathed his rifle in the battered scabbard that hung on
his saddle. In a little while Stilwell came back with a saw.

Morgan took the tool and sawed through the pole to which his captives
were made fast. Stilwell held up the severed end while Morgan cut the
other, freeing from the bolted posts the four-inch section of pole to
which the cowboys were tied, leaving it hanging from the ropes at their
wrists, dangling a little below their