"Loudon! Loudon!" shrinked Blakely. "It was me swore out that warrant for yuh for stealin' the chestnut I sold yuh. I sent the sheriff up the Bend after yuh, an' I'd 'a' hanged yuu sure as ---- if I'd ever laid hands on yuh. Now hang me! Hang me quick, an' get it over with!"
"Telescope!" exclaimed Loudon, "I guess we'll go down to the corrals."
When Blakely perceived that there was no hope for him, that his was to be no easy death, he went frantic. Hysteria seized him. He sobbed, laughed, and uttered the most blood-chilling screams, his body thrashing about like a shark in its death-throes.
Laguerre, sitting cross-legged on the floor, had been whetting his skinning-knife on his boot-leg for the past half-hour. Now he held up the knife and thumbed the broad blade.
Loudon and the others, their eyes lowered, passed out of the ranch house into the pale light of dawn. The morning star blazed diamond-bright above the lemon-yellow splendour in the east. A little wind blew past their faces. The air was fresh with the promise of the new day. They drew long, grateful breaths and looked from under their eyebrows at each other.
"I feel sick," Johnny Ramsay said, frankly.
The horse which Johnny had tied to the post had been lying down. It rose with a heave and a plunge and stood blowing and cracking its nostrils.
"Well, if there ain't Telescope's gray," announced Loudon. "So the fellahs we chased out o' Farewell was Blakely an' O'Leary after all. They shore picked the best hosses in the corral when they took Brown Jug an' the gray. No wonder we couldn't catch 'em."
"Yo're right," Johnny and Chuck chorused, loudly.
"Life's a funny thing," Loudon rambled on, speaking quite rapidly. "Here we run our legs off after them two fellahs, an' they turn 'round an' come back to us all prompt an' unexpected. I guess I'll water that hoss an' take his saddle off."
He turned back. The others crawled up on the corral fence.
"Wish I'd thought o' the hoss," grumbled Johnny. "I want somethin' to do."
With shaking fingers he rolled a cigarette and spilled most of the tobacco. The clamour within the ranch house suddenly became louder.
"He shore takes it hard," muttered Chuck Morgan, repressing a shudder with difficulty.