go--open the jail door!"

"He's locked up for his own safety," shouted Mizzoo. "You fellows
agree to leave him alone, and I'll turn him out quick enough. You talk
about the law--what you want to do to Bill ain't overly lawful, I take
it."

"If he gives up his secret we ain't going to handle him rough," was the
quick retort.

Lahoma found that the softening influence she had exerted was already
fast dissipating. They bore with her merely because of her youth and
sex. She cried out desperately.

"Is there nothing I can say to move your hearts? Has my story of that
pearl and onyx pin been lost on you? Couldn't you understand, after
all? Are you western men, and yet unable to feel the worth of a
western man like Brick?... How he clothed me and sheltered me when the
man who should have supported the child left in his care neglected
her.... How he taught me and was always tender and gentle--never a
cross word--a man like THAT.... And you think he could kill! I don't
know whether Bill was told his hiding-place or not. But if _I_ knew
it, do you think I'd tell? And if Bill betrayed him,--but Bill
wouldn't do it. Thank God, I've been raised with real MEN, men that
know how to stand by each other and be true to the death. You want
Bill to turn traitor. I say, what kind of men are YOU?"

She turned to Wilfred, blinded by hot tears. "Oh, say something to
them!" she gasped, clinging to his arm.

"Go on," murmured Wilfred. "I couldn't reach em, and you made a point,
that time. Go on--don't give 'em a chance to think."

"But I can't--I've said all I had to say--"

"Don't stop, dear, for God's sake--the case is desperate! You'll have
to do it--for Bill."

"And that isn't all," Lahoma called in a broken pathetic voice, as she
turned her pale face upon the curious crowd. "That isn't all. You know
Brick and Bill have been all I had--all in this world... You know they
couldn't have been sweeter to me if they'd been the nearest of
kin--they were more like women than men, somehow, when they spoke to me
and sat with me in the dugout--and I guess I know a little about a
mother's love because I've always had Brick and Bill. But one day
somebody else came to the cove and--and this somebody else,
well--he--this somebody else wants to marry me--today. This was the end
of our journey," she went on blindly, "and--and it is our wedding-day.
I thought there must be SOME way to get Brick to the wedding, but you
see ho