le, and as they met those of her husband
they flashed the unspoken exhortation: "Don't submit ... die fighting!"

It was the old dogma of mountain ferocity, but Parish Thornton knew its
futility and shook his head. Then he answered her silent incitement in
words:

"Hit's too late, Dorothy.... I'd only git you kilt as well as me.... I
reckon they hain't grudgin' _you_ none, es things stands now."

But the mob leader laughed, and turning his face to the wife, he
ruthlessly tore away even that vestige of reassurance.

"We hain't makin' no brash promises erbout ther woman, Thornton," he
brutally announced. "I read in her eyes jest now thet she _ree_co'nized
one of us--an' hit hain't safe ter know too much."

They were still working at the ropes on the prisoner's wrists and the
knots were not yet secure. The man had gauged his situation and resigned
himself to die like a slaughter-house animal, instead of a mountain
lion--in order to save his wife. Now they denied him that.

Suddenly his face went black and his eyes became torrential with fury.

His lunging movement was as swift and powerful as a tiger-spring, and
his transition from quiet to earthquake violence as abrupt and deadly as
the current of the electric chair.

His shoulders and wrists ripped at their bonds, and the men busied about
them were hurled away as with a powder blast. The arms came free and the
hands seized up a chair. A human tornado was at work in a space too
crowded for the use of firearms; and when the insufficient weapon had
been shattered into splinters and fallen in worthless bits there were
broken crowns and prostrate figures in that room.

Faces were marked with bruise and blood and laceration--but the odds
were too overwhelmingly uneven, and at last they bore him down, pounded
and kicked, to the puncheon floor, and when they lifted him to his feet
again the ropes that fastened him were firm enough to hold.

Then Parish Thornton spoke again: spoke with a passion that seemed
almost as destructive as the short-lived chair he had been swinging
flail-like, though the panting exertion made his voice come in
disjointed and sob-like gasps.

"Ye hain't done yit," he shouted into their maddened faces as they
crowded and yapped about him. "By dint of numbers ye've done tuck me
alive, but thar's still a reckonin' ahead!"

Above the answering chorus of jeers rang his berserk fury of defiance.

"Ye kin go ahead an' hang me now--an' be damned ter