By Shore and Sedge | Page 9

which they endeavored to escape from by furious riding; so
that in half an hour the party had reached a point where the tules began
to sap the arid plain, while beyond them broadened the lagoons of the
distant river. In the foreground, near a clump of dwarfed willows, a
camp-fire was burning, around which fifteen or twenty armed men
were collected, their horses picketed in an outer circle guarded by two
mounted sentries. A blasted cotton-wood with a single black arm
extended over the tules stood ominously against the dark sky.
The circle opened to receive them and closed again. The elder man
dismounted and leading Gideon to the blasted cotton-wood, pointed to
a pinioned man seated at its foot with an armed guard over him. He
looked up at Gideon with an amused smile.
"You said it was a dying man," said Gideon, recoiling.
"He will be a dead man in half an hour," returned the stranger.
"And you?"
"We are the Vigilantes from Alamo. This man," pointing to the prisoner,
"is a gambler who killed a man yesterday. We hunted him here, tried
him an hour ago, and found him guilty. The last man we hung here,
three years ago, asked for a parson. We brought him the man who used
to live where we found you. So we thought we'd give this man the same
show, and brought you."
"And if I refuse?" said Gideon.
The leader shrugged his shoulders.
"That's HIS lookout, not ours. We've given him the chance. Drive
ahead, boys," he added, turning to the others; "the parson allows he
won't take a hand."
"One moment," said Gideon, in desperation, "one moment, for the sake
of that God you have brought me here to invoke in behalf of this
wretched man. One moment, for the sake of Him in whose presence

you must stand one day as he does now." With passionate earnestness
he pointed out the vindictive impulse they were mistaking for Divine
justice; with pathetic fervency he fell upon his knees and implored their
mercy for the culprit. But in vain. As at the camp-meeting of the day
before, he was chilled to find his words seemed to fall on unheeding
and unsympathetic ears. He looked around on their abstracted faces; in
their gloomy savage enthusiasm for expiatory sacrifice, he was
horrified to find the same unreasoning exaltation that had checked his
exhortations then. Only one face looked upon his, half mischievously,
half compassionately. It was the prisoner's.
"Yer wastin' time on us," said the leader, dryly; "wastin' HIS time.
Hadn't you better talk to him?"
Gideon rose to his feet, pale and cold. "He may have something to
confess. May I speak with him alone?" he said gently.
The leader motioned to the sentry to fall back. Gideon placed himself
before the prisoner so that in the faint light of the camp- fire the man's
figure was partly hidden by his own. "You meant well with your little
bluff, pardner," said the prisoner, not unkindly, "but they've got the
cards to win."
"Kneel down with your back to me," said Gideon, in a low voice. The
prisoner fell on his knees. At the same time he felt Gideon's hand and
the gliding of steel behind his back, and the severed cords hung loosely
on his arms and legs.
"When I lift my voice to God, brother," said Gideon, softly, "drop on
your face and crawl as far as you can in a straight line in my shadow,
then break for the tules. I will stand between you and their first fire."
"Are you mad?" said the prisoner. "Do you think they won't fire lest
they should hurt you? Man! they'll kill YOU, the first thing."
"So be it--if your chance is better."
Still on his knees, the man grasped Gideon's two hands in his own and
devoured him with his eyes.
"You mean it?"
"I do."
"Then," said the prisoner, quietly, "I reckon I'll stop and hear what
you've got to say about God until they're ready."
"You refuse to fly?"
"I reckon I was never better fitted to die than now," said the prisoner,

still grasping his hand. After a pause he added in a lower tone, "I can't
pray--but--I think," he hesitated, "I think I could manage to ring in a
hymn."
"Will you try, brother?"
"Yes."
With their hands tightly clasped together, Gideon lifted his gentle voice.
The air was a common one, familiar in the local religious gatherings,
and after the first verse one or two of the sullen lookers-on joined
unkindly in the refrain. But, as he went on, the air and words seemed to
offer a vague expression to the dull lowering animal emotion of the
savage concourse, and at the end of the second verse