put it down, Bud," Park admonished. "That's too dangerous a toy for you to be playing with—and yuh know damn well yuh can't hit anything."
"I killed a steer once," Thurston reminded him meekly, whereat the laugh hushed; for they remembered.
"I know I can't shoot straight," he went on frankly, "but you're taking that much the greater chance. If I have to, I'll cut loose—and there's no telling where the bullets may strike."
"That's right," Park admitted. "Stand still, boys; he's more dangerous than a gun that isn't loaded. What d'yuh want, m'son?"
"I want to talk to you for about five minutes. I've got a game leg, so that I can neither run nor fight, but I hope you'll listen to me. The Wagners can't get away—they're locked up, with a deputy standing over them with a gun; and on top of that they're handcuffed. They're as helpless, boys, as two trapped coyotes." He looked down over the crowd, which shifted uneasily; no one spoke.
"That's what struck me most," he continued. "You know what I thought of Bob, don't you? And I didn't thank them for boring a hole in my leg; it wasn't any kindness of theirs that it didn't land higher—they weren't shooting at me for fun. And I'd have killed them both with a clear conscience, if I could. I tried hard enough. But it was different then; out in the open, where a man had an even break. I don't believe if I had shot as straight as I wanted to that I'd ever have felt a moment's compunction. But now, when they're disarmed and shackled and altogether helpless, I couldn't walk up to them deliberately and kill them could you?
"It could be done, and done easily. You have Lauman where he can't do anything, and I'm not of much account in a fight; so you've really only one deputy sheriff and two women to get the best of. You could drag these men out and hang them in the cottonwoods, and they couldn't raise a hand to defend themselves. We could do it easily—but when it was done and the excitement had passed I'd have a picture in my memory that I'd hate to look at. I'd have an hour in my life that would haunt me. And so would you. You'd hate to look back and think that one time you helped kill a couple of men who couldn't fight back.
"Let the law do it, boys. You don't want them to live, and I don't; nobody does, for they deserve to die. But it isn't for us to play judge and jury and hangman here to-night. Let them get what's coming to them at the hands of the officers you've elected for that purpose. They won't get off. Hank Graves says they will hang if it takes every hoof he owns. He said he would bring Bowman down here to help prosecute them. I don't know Bowman—"
"I do," a voice spoke, somewhere in the darkness. "Lawyer from Helena. Never lost a case."
"I'm glad to hear it, for he's the man that will prosecute. They haven't a ghost of a show to get out of it. Lauman here is responsible for their safe keeping and I guess, now that he knows them better, we needn't be afraid they'll escape again. And it's as Lauman said; he'll hang them quite as dead as you can. He's drawing a salary to do these things, make him earn it. It's a nasty job, boys, and you wouldn't get anything out of it but a nasty memory."
A hand that did not feel like the hand of a man rested for an instant on his arm. Mona brushed by him and stepped out where the rising moon shone on her hair and into her big, blue-gray eyes.
"I wish you all would please go away," she said. "You are making mamma sick. She's got it in her head that you are going to do something awful, and I can't convince her you're not. I told her you wouldn't do anything so sneaking, but she's awfully nervous about it. Won't you please go, right now?"
They looked sheepishly at one another; every man of them feared the ridicule of his neighbor.
"Why, sure we'll go," cried Park, rallying. "We were going anyway in a minute. Tell your mother we were just congratulating Lauman on rounding up these Wagners. Come on, boys. And you, Bud, hurry up and get well again; we miss yuh round the Lazy Eight."
The three who were sitting on Lauman got up, and he gave a sigh of relief. "Say, yuh darned cowpunchers don't have no mercy on an old man's carcass at all," he groaned, in exaggerated self-pity. "Next time yuh want to congratulate me, I wish you'd put it in writing and send it by mail."
A little ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Then they swung up on their horses and galloped away in the moonlight.
Chapter 8 A Question of Nerve
"That was your victory, Miss Stevens. Allow me to congratulate you." If Thurston showed any ill grace in his tone it was without intent. But it did seem unfortunate that just as he was waxing eloquent and felt sure of himself and something of a hero, Mona should push him aside as though he were of no account and disperse a bunch of angry cowboys with half a dozen words.
She looked at him with her direct, blue-gray eyes, and smiled. And her smile had no unpleasant uplift at the corners; it was the dimply, roguish smile of the pastel portrait only several times nicer. Re could hardly believe it; he just opened his eyes wide and stared. When he came to a sense of his rudeness, Mona was back in the kitchen helping with the supper dishes, just as though nothing had happened—unless one observed the deep, apple-red of her cheeks—while her mother, who showed not the faintest symptoms of collapse, flourished a dish towel made of a bleached flour sack with the stamp showing a faint pink and blue XXXX across the center.
"I knew all. the time they wouldn't do anything when it came right to the point," she declared. "Bless their hearts, they thought they would—but they're too soft-hearted, even when they are mad. If yuh go at 'em right yuh can talk 'em over easy. It done me good to hear yuh talk right up to 'em, Bud." Mrs. Stevens had called hi Bud from the first time she laid eyes on him. "That's all under the sun they needed—just somebody to set 'em thinking about the other side. You're a real good speaker; seems to me you ought to study to be a preacher."
Thurston's face turned red. But presently he forgot everything in his amazement, for Mona the dignified, Mona of the scornful eyes and the chilly smile, actually giggled—giggled like any ordinary girl, and shot him a glance that had in it pure mirth and roguish teasing, and a dash of coquetry. He sat down and giggled with her, feeling idiotically happy and for no reason under the sun that he could name.
He had promised his conscience that he would go home to the Lazy Eight in the morning, but he didn't; he somehow contrived, overnight, to invent a brand new excuse for his conscience to swallow or not, as it liked. Hank Graves had the same privilege; as for the Stevens trio, he blessed their hospitable souls for not wanting any excuse whatever for his staying. They were frankly glad to have him there; at least Mrs. Stevens and Jack were. As for Mona, he was not so sure, but he hoped she didn't mind.
This was the reason inspired by his great desire: he was going to write a story, and Mona was unconsciously to furnish the material for his heroine, and so, of course, he needed to be there so that he might study his subject. That sounded very well, to himself, but to Hank Graves, for some reason, it seemed very funny. When Thurston told him, Hank was taken with a fit of strangling that turned his face a dark purple. Afterward he explained brokenly that something had got down his Sunday throat—and Thurston, who had never heard of a man's Sunday throat, eyed him with suspicion. Hank blinked at him with tears still in his quizzical eyes and slapped him on the back, after the way of the West—and any other enlightened country where men are not too dignified to be their real selves—and drawled, in a way peculiar to himself:
"That's all right, Bud. You stay right here as long as yuh want to. I don't blame yuh—if I was you I'd want to spend a lot uh time studying this particular brand uh female girl myself.
She's out uh sight, Bud—and I don't believe any uh the boys has got his loop on her so far; though I could name a dozen or so that would be tickled to death if they had. You just go right ahead and file your little, old claim—"
"You're getting things mixed," Thurston interrupted, rather testily. "I'm not in love with her. I, well, it's like this: if you were going to paint a picture of those mountains off there, you'd want to be where you could look at them— wouldn't you? You wouldn't necessarily want to—to own them, just because you felt they'd make a fine picture. Your interest would be, er, entirely impersonal."
"Uh-huh,"