to kill. It was the moment of opportunity for the leader of
the assailants. The whistle of a rope cut the air, and the noose
tightened about the giant's neck with instant grip. There was a surge
back upon the rope, a movement which would have been fatal for any
other man, which would have been fatal to him, had the men got the rope
to a horse as they wished, so that they might drag the victim by
violence through the crowd.

But with Juan this act was not final. The noose enraged him, but did
not frighten or disable him. As the great bear of the foothills, when
roped by the horseman, scorns to attempt escape, but pulls man and
horse toward him by main force, so the giant savage who was now thus
assailed put forth his strength, and by sheer power of arm drew his
would-be captors to him, hand over hand. The noose about his own neck
he loosened with one hand. Then he raised his hand and let it fall.
The caster of the rope, his collar bone broken and his shoulder blade
cracked across, fell in a heap at his feet as the swaying crowd made
way. Once again there was silence, one moment of confusion,
hesitation. Then came the end.

There came, boring into the silence with horrible distinctness, the
sound of one merciful, mysterious shot. The giant straightened up
once, a vast black body towering above the black mass about him, and
then sank gently, slowly down, as though to curl himself in sleep.

There was a groan, a roar, a swift surging of men, thick, black, like
swarming bees. Some bent above the two prone figures. Others caught
at the rope, grovelling, snarling.

They were saved the last stage of their disgrace. Into the crowd there
pressed the figure of a new-comer, a hatless man, whose face was pale,
whose feet were unshod, and who bore one arm helpless in a dirty sling
which hung about his neck. Haggard and unkempt, barefooted, half-clad
as he had stumbled out of bed at his ranch six miles away, Bill Watson,
the sheriff, appeared a figure unheroic enough. With his broken arm
hanging useless and jostled by the crowd, he raised his right hand
above his head and called out, in a voice weak and halting, but
determined:

"Men, go--go home! I command you--in the name--of the law!"

BOOK IV

THE DAY OF THE PLOUGH

CHAPTER XXX

THE END OF THE TRAIL

The Cottage Hotel of Ellisville was, singularly enough, in its palmy
days conducted by a woman, and a very good woman she was. It was
perhaps an