free hand.' He paused a moment, considering. Slype's lips moved, but no sound came from them. Sudden's narrowed gaze swept the silent assembly, and when he spoke again his words fell like hammer-blows upon the numbed brain of the man to whom they were addressed.
'These men made yu marshall it is for them to judge yu.'
As the puncher passed through the empty bar Slype's agonized accents followed him. He could vision the fellow, crazed by the dread of death, frantically appealing on his knees for the mercy he could not hope to receive. Hesitation claimed him for an instant, and then another picture presented itself--that of a little grey-eyed man who had said sternly, 'Make a clean job of it.'
He went on, out into the sunlight.
Some weeks later a rider, on a big black horse, paced slowly in the direction of the tiny cemetery. It was early morning, and the oblique rays of the rising sun filtered through the foliage and blotched the track along which he rode with dancing splashes of shadow. There were little currents of air, pine-laden, and the whistling of the birds accentuated the silent peacefulness. In the depths of the valley an opalescent haze was lifting.
Sudden had said good-bye to the C P, and it had not been easy. To all Purdie's offers--they had been more than generous--he had but one reply:
'That little Governor fella will be wantin' my repawt.'
To the young couple who owed him so much, and the outfit generally, he used the same excuse, but to Bill Yago --whose pride in his promotion to the post of foreman was entirely submerged by the fact that in gaining it he lost a friend--he gave a different reason--he had another task. And Bill, who knew what it was, snorted in disgust.
'Aw, hell, yu'll never find them hombres, Jim.'
'Not if I wait for 'em to come to me, ol-timer,' Sudden had replied. 'No, I got a good reason for goin' an' none for stoppin'--now.'
Which cryptic remark Yago might have better understood had he seen his late foreman bending over the recent grave to lay upon it an armful of blooms gathered in a certain glade which had taken him somewhat out of his way. And Bill would scarcely have known him. The hard lines which playing a man's part in a world of men had graven upon his young face had gone, the steel-like eyes which could be so forbidding were gentle, even misty.
'Yu was fond o' flowers,' he said softly. 'I won't be here, but Miss Nan has promised ...' And then, after a pause, 'I wish he had got me.'
He rose and stood, hat in hand, looking down upon the simple mound beneath which lay the gay, tempestuous girl who had given her life for him. What freak of fate had brought her to this wild corner of the world? Misfortune, a spirit of adventure inherited from some filibustering forbear--she had Spanish blood in her--or a rank rebellion against the restraints of civilization? He would never know now.
'I reckon Life gave yu a raw deal, ma'am,' he whispered. 'Mebbe Death will be--kinder.'
Slowly mounting his horse, he turned to face a world which, all at once, seemed strangely empty.
THE END
