I

Only one shot had been fired.  It had gone wide of its mark,—­the ringleader of the Vigilantes,—­and had left Red Pete, who had fired it, covered by their rifles and at their mercy.  For his hand had been cramped by hard riding, and his eye distracted by their sudden onset, and so the inevitable end had come.  He submitted sullenly to his captors; his companion fugitive and horse-thief gave up the protracted struggle with a feeling not unlike relief.  Even the hot and revengeful victors were content.  They had taken their men alive.  At any time during the long chase they could have brought them down by a rifle-shot, but it would have been unsportsmanlike, and have ended in a free fight, instead of an example.  And, for the matter of that, their doom was already sealed.  Their end, by a rope and a tree, although not sanctified by law, would have at least the deliberation of justice.  It was the tribute paid by the Vigilantes to that order which they had themselves disregarded in the pursuit and capture.  Yet this strange logic of the frontier sufficed them, and gave a certain dignity to the climax.

“Ef you’ve got anything to say to your folks, say it now, and say it quick,” said the ringleader.

Red Pete glanced around him.  He had been run to earth at his own cabin in the clearing, whence a few relations and friends, mostly women and children, non-combatants, had outflowed, gazing vacantly at the twenty Vigilantes who surrounded them.  All were accustomed to scenes of violence, blood-feud, chase, and hardship; it was only the suddenness of the onset and its quick result that had surprised them.  They looked on with dazed curiosity and some disappointment; there had been no fight to speak of—­no spectacle!  A boy, nephew of Red Pete, got upon the rain-barrel to view the proceedings more comfortably; a tall, handsome, lazy Kentucky girl, a visiting neighbor, leaned against the doorpost, chewing gum.  Only a yellow hound was actively perplexed.  He could not make out if a hunt were just over or beginning, and ran eagerly backwards and forwards, leaping alternately upon the captives and the captors.

The ringleader repeated his challenge.  Red Pete gave a reckless laugh and looked at his wife.

At which Mrs. Red Pete came forward.  It seemed that she had much to say, incoherently, furiously, vindictively, to the ringleader.  His soul would roast in hell for that day’s work!  He called himself a man, skunkin’ in the open and afraid to show himself except with a crowd of, other “Kiyi’s” around a house of women and children.  Heaping insult upon insult, inveighing against his low blood, his ancestors, his dubious origin, she at last flung out a wild taunt of his invalid wife, the insult of a woman to a woman, until his white face grew rigid, and only that Western-American fetich of the sanctity of sex kept his twitching fingers from the lock of his rifle.  Even her husband noticed it, and with a half-authoritative “Let up on that, old gal,” and a pat of his freed left hand on her back, took his last parting.  The ringleader, still white under the lash of the woman’s tongue, turned abruptly to the second captive.  “And if you’ve got anybody to say ‘good-by’ to, now’s your chance.”