to the prisoner. "You hear the verdict. The
Committee believes it to be just."

He looked at the group near the door. "Mr. Wilson," he called
maliciously, "you will now be given an opportunity to collect from the
prisoner what he owes you."

"Jack Allen don't owe me a cent!" cried Bill Wilson hotly, shouldering
his way to the open space before the Captain. "But there's a heavy
debt hanging over this damned Committee--a debt they'll have to pay
themselves one day at the end of a rope, if there's as many honest men
in this town as I think there is.

"I helped form the first Vigilance Committee, boys. We did it to
protect the town from just such men as are running the Committee right
now. When crimes like this can be done right before our eyes, in broad
daylight, I say it's time another Committee was formed, to hang this
one! Here they've got a man that they know, and we all know, ain't
done a thing but what any brave, honest man would do. They've gone
through a farce trial that'd make the Digger Injuns ashamed of
themselves; and they've condemned Jack Allen, that's got more real
manhood in his little finger than there is in the dirty, lying
carcasses of the whole damned outfit--they've condemned him to be
hung!

"And why! I can tell yuh why--and it ain't for killing Texas and
Rawhide--two as measly, ornery cusses as there was in town--it ain't
for that. It's for daring to say, last night in my place, that the
Committee is rotten to the core, and that they murdered Sandy McTavish
in cold blood when they took him out and hung him for killing that
greaser in self-defense. It's for speaking his mind, the mind of an
honest man, that they're going to hang him. That is, they'll hang him
if you'll stand by and let 'em do it. I believe both these boys told a
straight story. I believe them three was trying to pull off a daylight
robbery, and Jack shot to save the kid.

"Now, men, see here! I for one have stood about all I'm going to stand
from this bunch of cutthroats that've taken the place of the Committee
we organized to protect the town. To-night I want every man that calls
himself honest to come to my place and hold a mass meeting, to elect a
Committee like we had in the first place. I want every man--"

"Bill, you're crazy!" It was Jack, white to the lips in sheer terror
for Wilson, Jack who refused to blench at his own dire strait, who
sprang up and clapped a hand over the mouth that was sealing the doom
of the owner