“Death!” he read, sonorously, and laid it down to pick up another.  Again he spoke that grim word.  The third brought forth the same, and likewise the next, and all, until the verdict had been called out thirty times.

“At daylight we’ll meet,” boomed out that heavy voice.  “Instruct Glidden’s guards to make a show of resistance....  We’ll hang Glidden to the railroad bridge.  Then each of you get your gangs together.  Round up all the I.W.W.’s.  Drive them to the railroad yard.  There we’ll put them aboard a railroad train of empty cars.  And that train will pass under the bridge where Glidden will be hanging....  We’ll escort them out of the country.”

* * * * *

That August dawn was gray and cool, with gold and pink beginning to break over the dark eastern ranges.  The town had not yet awakened.  It slept unaware of the stealthy forms passing down the gray road and of the distant hum of motor-cars and trot of hoofs.

Glidden’s place of confinement was a square warehouse, near the edge of town.  Before the improvised jail guards paced up and down, strangely alert.

Daylight had just cleared away the gray when a crowd of masked men appeared as if by magic and bore down upon the guards.  There was an apparent desperate resistance, but, significantly, no cries or shots.  The guards were overpowered and bound.

The door of the jail yielded to heavy blows of an ax.  In the corner of a dim, bare room groveled Glidden, bound so that he had little use of his body.  But he was terribly awake.  When six men entered he asked, hoarsely:  “What’re you—­after?...  What—­you mean?”

They jerked him erect.  They cut the bonds from his legs.  They dragged him out into the light of breaking day.

When he saw the masked and armed force he cried:  “My God!...  What’ll you—­do with me?”

Ghastly, working, sweating, his face betrayed his terror.

“You’re to be hanged by the neck,” spoke a heavy, solemn voice.

The man would have collapsed but for the strong hands that upheld him.

“What—­for?” he gasped.

“For I.W.W. crimes—­for treason—­for speeches no American can stand in days like these.”  Then this deep-voiced man read to Glidden words of his own.

“Do you recognize that?”

Glidden saw how he had spoken his own doom.  “Yes, I said that,” he had nerve left to say.  “But—­I insist on arrest—­trial—­justice!...  I’m no criminal....  I’ve big interests behind me....  You’ll suffer—­”

A loop of a lasso, slung over his head and jerked tight, choked off his intelligible utterance.  But as the silent, ruthless men dragged him away he gave vent to terrible, half-strangled cries.

The sun rose red over the fertile valley—­over the harvest fields and the pastures and the orchards, and over the many towns that appeared lost in the green and gold of luxuriance.