“This here rope hurts tur’ble—­seems like my wrists are on fire,” whined the man.  “You let me down, Mr. Clanton, and I’ll explain eve’ything.  I want to be yore friend.  I sure do.  I don’t feel noways onfriendly to you.  Mebbe I used to be a bad lot, but I’m a changed man now.”

Go-Get-’Em Jim said nothing.  He had not spoken once, and his silence filled the roped man with terror.  The shifting eyes of Devil Dave read doom in the cold, still ones of his enemy.

Sometimes Roush argued in a puling whimper.  Sometimes his terror rose to the throat and his entreaties became shrieks.  He died a dozen deaths while his foe watched him with a chill stillness more menacing than any threats.

The first impulse of Clanton had been to stamp out the life of this man just as he would that of a diamond-backed rattlesnake; but he meant to take his time about it and to see that the fellow suffered.  Not until he was halfway through the meal did the memory of his pledge to Pauline jump to his mind.  Quickly he pushed it from him.  He had not meant to include Roush in his promise.  As soon as he had made an end of this ruffian he would turn over a new leaf.  But not yet.  Roush was outside the pale.  His life belonged to Jim.  He would be a traitor to the memory of his sister if he let the villain go.

The lust for vengeance swelled in the young man’s blood like a tide.  It was his right to kill; more, it was his duty.  So he tried to persuade himself.  But deep within him a voice was making itself heard.  It whispered that if he killed Roush now, he could never look Pauline Roubideau in the face again.  She had fought gallantly for his soul, and at last he had pledged his honor to a new course.  Not twelve hours ago she had risked her reputation to save his life.  If he failed her now, it would be a betrayal of all the desires and purposes that had of late been stirring in him.

Clammy beads of sweat stood on his forehead.  He had been given a new chance, and it warred with every inherited instinct of his nature.  The fight within was cruel and bitter.  But when he rose, his breakfast forgotten, it was won.  He would let Roush go unhurt.  He would do it for the sake of Polly Roubideau, who had been such a good friend to him.

Devil Dave, ghastly with fear, was still pleading for his life.  Clanton, who had heard nothing of what the fellow had been saying in the past ten minutes, came to a sudden alert attention.

“I’ll go into court an’ swear it if you’ll let me be.  I’ll tell the jedge an’ the jury that Joe Yankie told me an’ Albeen an’ Dumont that he bushwhacked Webb an’ then cut his stick so that you-all got the blame.  Honest to God, I will, Mr. Clanton.  Jest you trust me an’ see.”

“When did Yankie tell you that?”

“He done told us at the camp-fire one night.  He made his brags how you got the blame for it an’ would have to hang.”

“Albeen heard him say it—­an’ Dumont too?”