“Ho!  Pronto—­Vien aqui!”

Banion’s command again quieted the animal.  His ears forward, he came up, whickering his own query as to what really was asked of him.

Banion caught the bridle rein once more and eased the rope.  Jackson by now had his shotgun and was shouting, crazed with anger.  Woodhull’s life chance was not worth a bawbee.

It was his enemy who saved it once again, for inscrutable but unaltered reasons of his own.

“Drop that, Jackson!” called Banion.  “Do as I tell you!  This man’s mine!”

Cursing himself, his friend, their captive, the horse, his gun and all animate and inanimate Nature in his blood rage, the old man, livid in wrath, stalked away at length.  “I’ll kill him sometime, ef ye don’t yerself!” he screamed, his beard trembling.  “Ye damned fool!”

“Get up, Woodhull!” commanded Banion.  “You’ve tried once more to kill me.  Of course, I’ll not take any oath or promise from you now.  You don’t understand such things.  The blood of a gentleman isn’t anywhere in your strain.  But I’ll give you one more chance—­give myself that chance too.  There’s only one thing you understand.  That’s fear.  Yet I’ve seen you on a firing line, and you started with Doniphan’s men.  We didn’t know we had a coward with us.  But you are a coward.

“Now I leave you to your fear!  You know what I want—­more than life it is to me; but your life is all I have to offer for it.  I’m going to wait till then.

“Come on, now!  You’ll have to walk.  Jackson won’t let you have his horse.  My own never carried a woman but once, and he’s never carried a coward at all.  Jackson shall not have the rope.  I’ll not let him kill you.”

“What do you mean?” demanded the prisoner, not without his effrontery.

The blood came back to Banion’s face, his control breaking.

“I mean for you to walk, trot, gallop, damn you!  If you don’t you’ll strangle here instead of somewhere else in time.”

He swung up, and Jackson sullenly followed.

“Give me that gun,” ordered Banion, and took the shotgun and slung it in the pommel loop of his own saddle.

The gentle amble of the black stallion kept the prisoner at a trot.  At times Banion checked, never looking at the man following, his hands at the rope, panting.

“Ye’ll try him in the camp council, Will?” began Jackson once more.  “Anyways that?  He’s a murderer.  He tried to kill us both, an’ he will yit.  Boy, ye rid with Doniphan, an’ don’t know the ley refugio Hasn’t the prisoner tried to escape?  Ain’t that old as Mayheeco Veeayho?  Take this skunk in on a good rope like that?  Boy, ye’re crazy!”

“Almost,” nodded Banion.  “Almost.  Come on.  It’s late.”

It was late when they rode down into the valley of the Platte.  Below them twinkled hundreds of little fires of the white nation, feasting.  Above, myriad stars shone in a sky unbelievably clear.  On every hand rose the roaring howls of the great gray wolves, also feasting now; the lesser chorus of yapping coyotes.  The savage night of the Plains was on.  Through it passed three savage figures, one a staggering, stumbling man with a rope around his neck.