The Gringos | Page 9

agreed
equably. "Jack owes me some money."
The Captain muttered unintelligibly and passed on, and Bill chose to
interpret the mutter as consent. He strolled over to the tent, joked
condescendingly with the guard who stood before it, and announced
that the Captain had said he might talk to the prisoners.
"I did not," said the Captain unexpectedly at his shoulder. "I said you
couldn't. After the trial, you can collect what's coming to you, Mr.
Wilson. That is," he added hastily, "in case Allen should be convicted.
If he ain't, you can do as you please." He looked full at the guard.
"Shoot any man that attempts to enter that tent or talk to the prisoners
without my permission, Shorty," he directed, and turned his back on
Bill.
Bill did not permit one muscle of his face to twitch. "All right," he
drawled, "I guess I won't go broke if I don't get it. You mind what your
Captain tells you, Shorty! He's running this show, and what he says
goes. You've got a good man over yuh, Shorty. A fine man. He'll weed
out the town till it'll look like grandpa's onion bed--if the supply of rope
don't give out!" Whereupon he strolled carelessly back to his place, and
went in as if the incident were squeezed dry of interest for him. He
walked to the far end of the big room, sat deliberately down upon a
little table, and rewarded himself for his forbearance by cursing
methodically the Captain, the Committee of which he was the leader,
the men who had witlessly given him the power he used so ruthlessly
as pleased him best, and Jack Allen, whose ill-timed criticisms and
hot-headed freedom of speech had brought upon himself the weight of
the Committee's dread hand.
"Damn him, I tried to tell him!" groaned Bill, his face hidden behind
his palms. "They'll hang him--and darn my oldest sister's cat's eyes,
somebody'll sweat blood for it, too!" (Bill, you will observe, had
reached the end of real blasphemy and was forced to improvise milder
expletives as he went along.) "There ought to be enough decent men in

this town to--"
"Did you git to see Jack?" ventured Jim, coming anxiously up to his
boss.
The tone of him, which was that hushed tone which we employ in the
presence of the dead, so incensed Bill that for answer he threw the
hammer viciously in his direction. Jim took the hint and retreated
hastily.
"No, damn 'em, they won't let me near him," said Bill, ashamed of his
violence. "I knew they'd get him; but I didn't think they'd get him so
quick. I sent a letter down by an Injun this morning to his pardner to
come up and get him outa town before he--But it's too late now. That
talk he made last night--"
"Say, he shot Swift in the arm, too," said Jim. "Pity he didn't kill him.
They're getting a jury together already. Say! Ain't it hell?"
CHAPTER III
THE THING THEY CALLED JUSTICE
Jack stared meditatively across at the young fellow sitting hunched
upon another of the boxes that were the seats in this tent-jail, which
was also the courtroom of the Vigilance Committee, and mechanically
counted the slow tears that trickled down between the third and fourth
fingers of each hand. A half-hour spent so would have rasped the
nerves of the most phlegmatic man in the town, and Jack was not
phlegmatic; fifteen minutes of watching that silent weeping sufficed to
bring a muffled explosion.
"Ah, for God's sake, brace up!" he gritted. "There's some hope for
you--if you don't spoil what chance you have got, by crying around like
a baby. Brace up and be a man, anyway. It won't hurt any worse if you
grin about it."
The young fellow felt gropingly for a red-figured bandanna, found it

and wiped his face and his eyes dejectedly. "I beg your pardon for
seeming a coward," he apologized huskily. "I got to thinking about
my--m-mother and sisters, and--"
Jack winced. Mother and sisters he had longed for all his life. "Well,
you better be thinking how you'll get out of the scrape you're in," he
advised, with a little of Bill Wilson's grimness. "I'm afraid I'm to blame,
in a way; and yet, if I hadn't mixed into the fight, you'd be dead by now.
Maybe that would have been just as well, seeing how things have
turned out," he grinned. "Still--have a smoke?"
"I never used tobacco in my life," declined the youth somewhat primly.
"No, I don't reckon you ever did!" Jack eyed him with a certain amount
of pitying amusement. "A fellow that will come gold-hunting without a
gun to his name, would not use tobacco, or swear, or do anything