o
it, and stood helpless with the dangling rope in her hand.

"Are we too late?" Judith almost whispered, as she caught Alida's cold,
inert hands. "I dreamed it all and came. If I could have dreamed it
sooner!"

Alida did not seem to hear, neither could she speak. She only pointed
again to the thing beside her.

Judith understood. The women had a task to share, and in silence they
began it. The lynchers had done their work all too well. Again and again
the women strove with all their strength to take down the dangling parody
of a man, which in its dead-weight resistance seemed in league with the
forces against them. At last the thing was done. Down to a pale world,
that in the haggard gray of morning seemed to bear in its countenance
something of the pinch of death, Judith lowered the thing that had so
lately been a man. She cut the rope away from the neck, she straightened
the wry neck that seemed to wag in pantomimic representation of the last
word to the lynchers. They'd have to reckon with him on dark nights, and
when the wind wailed like a famished wolf and when things not to be
explained lurked in the shadows of the desert.

The morning stillness came flooding into the cup-shaped valley like a
soft, resistless wave. Something had come to the gray, old earth--another
day, with all its human gift of joy and woe, and the earth welcomed it
though it had known so many. The sun burst through the gold-tipped aureole
of cloud, scattering far and wide lavish promises of a perfect day. The
earth seemed to respond with a thrill. No longer was the pinch of death in
her countenance. The valley, the mountains, the invisible wind, even the
dead cotton-woods, seemed endowed with throbbing life that contrasted
fearsomely with the terrible nullity of this thing that once had been Jim
Rodney.

Alida had ceased to take any part in the hideous drama. She sat on the
ground, a crouching thing with glittering eyes. It was past comprehension
that the sun could shine and the world go on with her man dead before her.
Judith had become the force that planned and did to save the family pride.
While her hands were busy with preparations for the dead, she rehearsed
what she would say to this and that one to account for Jim's absence. The
silence of the men who had done this thing would be as steadfast as their
own.

And there were the children. Through all her frantic search for things in
the house, Judith remembered that she must step s