-man's vengeance rose like some hideous vapor, poisonous and
obscene.

The ranger sickened as the bloody tale unfolded itself before him. Then a
fierce hate of such warfare flamed in his heart. Could this enormity be
committed under any other civilized flag? Would any other Government
intermingle so foolishly, so childishly its State and Federal authority as
to permit such diabolism?

Here lay the legitimate fruit of the State's essential hoodlumism. Here
was the answer to local self-government--to democracy. Such a thing could
not happen in Australia or Canada; only in America could lynch law become
a dramatic pastime, a jest, an instrument of private vengeance. The South
and the West were alike stained with the blood of the lynched, and the
whole nation was covered with shame.

In his horror, his sense of revolt, he cursed the State of which he was a
citizen. He would have resigned his commission at the moment, so intense
was his resentment of the supine, careless, jovial, slattern Government
under which he was serving.

"By the Lord!" he breathed, with solemn intensity, "if this does not shame
the people of this State into revolt, if these fiends are not hounded and
hung, I will myself harry them. I cannot live and do my duty here unless
this crime is avenged by law."

It did not matter to him that these herders were poor Basques; it was the
utter, horrifying, destructive disregard of law which raised such tumult
in his blood. His English education, his soldier's training, his native
refinement--all were outraged. Then, too, he loved the West. He had
surrendered his citizenship under the British flag--for this!

Chilled, shaking, and numb, he set spurs to his horse and rode furiously
down the trail toward the nearest town, so eager to spread the alarm that
he could scarcely breathe a deep breath. On the steep slopes he was forced
to walk, and his horse led so badly, that his agony of impatience was
deepened. He had a vision of the murderers riding fast into far countries.
Each hour made their apprehension progressively the more difficult.

"Who were they?" he asked himself, again and again. "What kind of man did
this thing? Was the leader a man like Ballard? Even so, he was hired. By
whom? By ranchers covetous of the range; that was absolutely certain."

It was long after noon before he came to the end of the telephone-line in
a little store and post-office at the upper falls of Deer Creek. The
telephone had