By Shore and Sedge | Page 9

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 the refrain, augmented in volume and swelled by every voice in the camp, swept out over the hollow plain.
It was met in the distance by a far-off cry. With an oath taking the place of his supplication, the leader sprang to his feet. But too late! The cry was repeated as a nearer slogan of defiance--the plain shook--there was the tempestuous onset of furious hoofs--a dozen shots--the scattering of the embers of the camp-fire into a thousand vanishing sparks even as the lurid gathering of savage humanity was dispersed and dissipated over the plain, and Gideon and the prisoner stood alone. But as the sheriff of Contra Costa with his rescuing posse swept by, the man they had come to save fell forward in Gideon's arms with a bullet in his breast--the Parthian shot of the flying Vigilante leader.
The eager crowd that surged around him with outstretched helping hands