PROLOGUE:
'WELL, Forby, yu got anythin' to say afore we string yu up?'
The harsh question conveyed the inevitability of death, and the speaker evidently regarded it as a mere formality. A powerfully-built man of little more than thirty, attired in the garb of the cattle ranges, he stood rocking on his heels, both thumbs caught in his gun-belt. His deep-set eyes, hooked nose and out-thrust jaw gave him a predatory appearance, and had the thin, cruel lips not been concealed by a drooping black moustache he would have suggested a vulture even more patently. That he possessed both force and passion was evident.
The man to whom he spoke was of a different type. Older by twenty years, with greying hair and beard, he had the strong patient face of one who plods on, knowing his task in life is well-nigh hopeless, but doing it nevertheless to the best of his ability. He was of those who peopled the great waste spaces of the American continent, fighting against almost impossible odds, and wresting a bare subsistence from the untamed soil. He sat now on a log, hands tied behind his back, chin sunk in his chest, his whole attitude one of despair. At the words, however, he straightened up, and his gaze went instinctively to the rough little log cabin he had built with his own hands, the rude corral, the patch of fenced ground, which was only now beginning to be productive, and the stream with its shady willows and cottonwoods. He had made the place, he loved it, and now he must leave it, perhaps in a shameful way. Somehow it seemed unreal. The sun shone, the birds chirped, the murmur of the stream came like a whisper, and yet the air was pregnant with tragedy.
His gaze swept the six men who stood round in a half-circle regarding him curiously but implacably. They were cowboys--hired creatures of the man who had spoken, and he knew he had nothing to hope for from them; they would do as they were bid. And then he looked their leader squarely in the face and spoke, his voice low, steady and without rancour.
'I can on'y repeat what I said afore--I never touched any o' yore stock, Bartholomew,' he said heavily.
'Yet we find 'em in yore pasture, with the brand changed from Bar B to Four B,' retorted the other; adding with a sneer, 'Yu chose a mighty convenient brand, didn't you?'
'The Four B was my brand years afore I come to these parts, an' I'm usin' my own name, too,' the older man pointed out. 'If I'd done what yu say, d'yu think I'd be such a fool as to leave 'em run along with my cattle with the brands unhealed?'
'Oh, yu dam nesters think yu can get away with anythin', an' yu didn't know we suspected yu,' said Bartholomew. 'How d'yu account for 'em bein' there anyways? Yore pasture's fenced an' cows ain't got wings.'
'I dunno how they come there,' said the other dully. 'I was in Hope last night, gettin' supplies. Someone musta driven 'em in while I was away.'
'Likely tale that,' said the big man. 'Yu done it yoreself an' went to town to put up an alibi. Mighty smart, but it don't go.'
The accused man shook his head dubiously. This was the end. Ever since he had taken up his quarter section he had had to fight. He had been threatened, his cattle stolen, his horses maimed, and once his little crop of hay for winter feed burned, but he had hung on doggedly, hoping that strict attention to his own affairs would overcome the local prejudice against 'nesters'. And this might have come about but for the hostility of the man before him.
'I've a right here,' he said, answering his own thought. 'It's State land.'
'It's 'free range',' Bartholomew said tersely.
'Yes, free to yu an' not to me,' flashed the prisoner.
'I was here first,' the other pointed out; then : 'but we've had all this out a'ready; nothin's free to a rustler except a rope.'
The seated man shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation. 'I ain't a thief, but seein' yu got me thrown an' tied, I reckon I gotta pull my freight,' he said. 'If it warn't for my boy I dunno as I'd care; I'm tired o' buckin' the odds, but he ain't got no one else.'
'Pull yore freight?' gibed the big man, a cruel scorn in his tone. 'It's too late, my fine fella, yu should 'a' done that when yu were told to, months back.'
The bound man looked at him in slow surprise. Hitherto he had believed that he had only to quit the country, but now he saw that Bartholomew was ruthless and meant to have his life. The charge against him was a 'frame- up', probably contrived by the man who had condemned him, but he could not prove his innocence. He studied the faces of the other men, but while one of them, whom he knew as Darby, turned his eyes away, the rest showed nothing but sardonic contempt; to them he was a cattle thief and deserved no mercy.
'Yu boys stand for this?' he asked hopelessly.
Darby was the only one who spoke. 'Aw, boss, if he clears out o' the country--' he suggested.
Bartholomew swore an oath. 'No, by God ! ' he gritted. 'Nesters is like Injuns--the on'y good 'uns are dead 'uns. He had notice, an' now we've got him with the goods he's had a fair hearin'. He's outstayed his welcome, an' p'raps it'll be a warnin' to others that nesters ain't wanted here. Get yore rope, Penton.'
The man addressed walked to where the horses were grouped, took his lariat from the saddle-horn and returned with it swinging in his hand.
'Yu turn my dad loose or I'll blow yu to hellamile, Bartholomew.'
The command came in a shrill, childish treble, that trembled with rage or fear, and every eye turned to the speaker. He had stolen up unperceived and now stood only a few yards from the group round the condemned man. A mere lad of about twelve, shabbily dressed in a blue flannel shirt and faded overalls, his ultimatum would have been something for men to laugh at but for the fact that his youthful fingers gripped a heavy rifle, the barrel of which was directed full at Bartholomew's breast. The boy's features were distraught with passion.
'I'm meanin' it ! ' he cried. 'Turn dad loose, or yu'll get yores, Bartholomew.'
The threatened man laughed. 'All right, kid,' he said, and stepped towards the prisoner, at the same tirne winking significantly to the man with the rope. The boy, watching the leader, did not see Penton's sudden wrist- flick, and only realised the truth when the noose settled over his shoulders and a sharp jerk flung him from his feet. Nevertheless, even as he fell, he pulled the trigger, but the bullet went wide.
'Young hell-cat,' snarled the rancher, when the boy had been overcome and bound. 'If he was a bit older I'd make a clean job of it. One o' yu take hirn into the house an' keep him there until--after.'
Darby volunteered for the job, and carried the lad, kicking and mouthing boyish curses, into the building. Bartholomew turned to the others.
'Put a light to the shack when yu done, an' fetch the stock along,' he ordered curtly, and, mounting his horse, rode away without another look at the man he had left to die.
An hour later the boy crept from the brush fringing the stream, and, with a sob as he passed the smouldering ruins, made his way to the big cottonwood in front of what that morning had been his home. A violent fit of trembling seized him when he saw the gruesome limp form hanging from a lower limb, and for a moment he could not move. Then, making an effort, he went on. Beneath the body was a small heap--a worn purse, a tobacco pouch and pipe, a locket, which he knew contained his dead mother's portrait, a jack-knife and a slip of paper. Scrawled in pencil on the paper were the words :
'Goodbye, son. I'm goin' game. Don't forget me. I know yu'll do what's right. Dad.'
With blurred eyes, and strangling the sobs that nearly choked him, the boy read the pitiful message.
'I'll shore do what's right, dad, to that hell-hound,' he muttered thickly.
Then, as he had done many a time before just for amusement, he climbed the tree, and severing the rope, allowed the corpse to slump to the ground. For an instant he clung to the branch, sick and dizzy, and then dropped down to kneel by his father's body. He kissed the cheek, and the cold contact sent a shiver through him. Presently he got up, and, going to the little garden patch, returned with a spade and began to dig.
It was a big job for hands so young, and the sun was low in the sky before the hole was large and deep enough. Dragging the body into it the boy covered it with a layer of green boughs, to shield the poor clay from the earth from which it sprang, and, ere the opening was completely filled in, he fetched heavy stones from the stream
