ad to escort you back to the house," Kite suggested
with an acid smile.

"What have you got to do with this?" she flamed. "Our boys took him. They
brought him here as their prisoner. Do you think we'll let you come over
into this county and dictate everything we do?"

"I've got a notion tucked away that you're trying to do the dictating your
own self," the Bar Double M man contradicted.

"I'm not. But I won't stand by while you get these boys to do murder. If
they haven't sense enough to keep them from it I've got to stop it
myself."

Kite laughed sarcastically. "You hear your boss, boys."

"You've had yore say now, Miss Kate. I reckon you better say good-night,"
advised Buck.

She handed Buck and his friends her compliments in a swift flow of
feminine ferocity.

Maloney pushed into the circle. "She's dead right, boys. There's nothing
to this lynching game. He's only a kid."

"He's not such a kid but what he can do murder," Dutch spat out.

Kate read him the riot act so sharply that the little puncher had not
another word to say. The tide of opinion was shifting. Those who had been
worked up to the lynching by the arguments of Bonfils began to resent his
activity. Flandrau was their prisoner, wasn't he? No use going off half
cocked. Some of them were discovering that they were not half so anxious
to hang him as they had supposed.

The girl turned to her friends and neighbors. "I oughtn't to have talked
to you that way, but you know how worried I am about Dad," she apologized
with a catch in her breath. "I'm sure you didn't think or you would never
have done anything to trouble me more just now. You know I didn't half
mean it." She looked from one to another, her eyes shiny with tears. "I
know that no braver or kinder men live than you. Why, you're my folks.
I've been brought up among you. And so you've got to forgive me."

Some said "Sure," others told her to forget it, and one grass widower drew
a laugh by saying that her little spiel reminded him of happier days.

For the first time a smile lit her face. The boy for whose life she was
pleading thought it was like sunshine after a storm.

"I'm so glad you've changed your minds. I knew you would when you thought
it over," she told them chattily and confidentially.

She was taking their assent for granted. Now she waited and gave them a
chance to chorus their agreement. None of them spoke except Maloney. Most
of them were with her in sympathy but none wan