upon
himself the weight of the Committee's dread hand.

"Damn him, I tried to tell him!" groaned Bill, his face hidden behind
his palms. "They'll hang him--and darn my oldest sister's cat's eyes,
somebody'll sweat blood for it, too!" (Bill, you will observe, had
reached the end of real blasphemy and was forced to improvise milder
expletives as he went along.) "There ought to be enough decent men in
this town to--"

"Did you git to see Jack?" ventured Jim, coming anxiously up to his
boss.

The tone of him, which was that hushed tone which we employ in the
presence of the dead, so incensed Bill that for answer he threw the
hammer viciously in his direction. Jim took the hint and retreated
hastily.

"No, damn 'em, they won't let me near him," said Bill, ashamed of his
violence. "I knew they'd get him; but I didn't think they'd get him so
quick. I sent a letter down by an Injun this morning to his pardner to
come up and get him outa town before he--But it's too late now. That
talk he made last night--"

"Say, he shot Swift in the arm, too," said Jim. "Pity he didn't kill
him. They're getting a jury together already. Say! Ain't it hell?"

CHAPTER III

THE THING THEY CALLED JUSTICE

Jack stared meditatively across at the young fellow sitting hunched
upon another of the boxes that were the seats in this tent-jail, which
was also the courtroom of the Vigilance Committee, and mechanically
counted the slow tears that trickled down between the third and fourth
fingers of each hand. A half-hour spent so would have rasped the
nerves of the most phlegmatic man in the town, and Jack was not
phlegmatic; fifteen minutes of watching that silent weeping sufficed
to bring a muffled explosion.

"Ah, for God's sake, brace up!" he gritted. "There's some hope for
you--if you don't spoil what chance you have got, by crying around
like a baby. Brace up and be a man, anyway. It won't hurt any worse if
you grin about it."

The young fellow felt gropingly for a red-figured bandanna, found it
and wiped his face and his eyes dejectedly. "I beg your pardon for
seeming a coward," he apologized huskily. "I got to thinking about
my--m-mother and sisters, and--"

Jack winced. Mother and sisters he had longed for all his life. "Well,
you better be thinking how you'll get out of the scrape you're in," he
advised, with a little of Bill Wilson's grimness. "I'm afraid I'm to
blame, in a way; and yet, if I hadn't mixed into the fight, yo