“I’ll come.” McMasters spoke as though with difficulty.
Nabours pointed to a little fire whose smoke arose at the edge of a clump of cover a quarter of a mile away; a small tent, two white-topped carts making an individual encampment, apart from the trail cook’s mess. Without a word the accused man, his head slightly dropped forward, rode toward the fire, both hands on the pommel of his saddle, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
Anastasie Lockhart came from her little tent at the call of Nabours. Her hands suddenly were clasped at her throat as she saw the tall figure among these other stern-faced men. It was too late for her now to reason, to withdraw her charge.
“We brung in the man,” announced Nabours. “You are the judge. We’ll hear what he has to say.”
A strange, inscrutable quality was one of the singular characteristics of Dan McMasters. His face was a coldly serene mask now as he stood beside his horse, looking straight at the tall girl who stood, woman in spite of her man’s garb, her men’s surroundings. If any emotion could be traced on his face it was a shade of pity, of great patience. Concern for his personal safety seemed not to be in his mind. This indifference to danger, this calm, did not lack effect. The men who guarded him suddenly wished they were well out of it.
“I a judge? No! I’ve nothing to say,” Taisie choked.
“Yes, you have had something to say, and you done said it to me,” rejoined Nabours. “You started something and you got to go through with it. Set down there on that bed roll. You got to tell us all what you told me. As owner of this herd, you’re the main judge. There can’t nobody shirk no right and no duty here.
“Set down here, prisoner. It seems to me you’d orto give up your weapons to the court.”
“I’ll give Miss Lockhart anything on earth but my guns,” said McMasters evenly. “No one touches them but me.”
“I reckon no man here is scared to do what he’s got to do,” remarked Nabours simply.
McMasters made no reply. He never had a hand far from his revolvers. He seated himself now so that he could face all his accusers, flat on the ground. His buckled pistol belt lay over one leg. An exact observer must have noted that the toe of one boot rested inside the farther end of the buckled belt, so that proper resistance would be offered in case their owner should snatch at the butts of the heavy guns, both of which were turned ready for convenient grasp. So he sat, facing the jury, facing his Portia—facing what was a far worse thing than death itself to any man of honor.