Tex laughed:  “Sure.  Lord!  Won’t it be fun seein’ Sam Moore puttin’ up a scrap to save his prisoner?”

“But, how’d we git away with him?  All Sam w’d do is git a posse an’ take out after him an’ they’d round him up ’fore he got to Three-mile.  Or if we went along we’d git further but they’d git us in the end an’ then we’d be in a hell of a fix!”

“Your head don’t hurt you none, workin’ it that way, does it?” grinned Tex.  “I done thought it all out.  We’ll get the boys an’ slip down to the warehouse an’ take the pilgrim out an’ slip a noose around his neck an’ set him on a horse an’ ride out of town a-cussin’ him an’ a-swearin’ to lynch him.  He won’t know but what we aim to hang him to the first likely cottonwood, an’ we’ll have a lot of fun with him.  An’ no one else won’t know it, neither.  Then you-all ride back an’ pertend to keep mum, but leak it out that we done hung him.  They won’t be no posse hunt for him then an’ I’ll take him an’ slip him acrost to the N. P. or the C. P. R. an’ let him go.  It’s too good a chanct to miss.  Lordy!  Won’t the pilgrim beg!  An’ Sam Moore—­he’ll be scairt out of a year’s growth!”

“But, the girl,” objected Curly.

“Oh, the girl—­well, they’ll turn her loose, of course.  They ain’t nothin’ on her except for a witness.  An’ if they ain’t no prisoner they won’t need no witness, will they?”

“That’s right,” assented the other.  “By gosh, Tex, what you can’t think up, the devil wouldn’t bother with.  That’s sure some stunt.  Let’s get the boys an’ go to it!”

“You get the boys together.  Get about twenty of the live ones an’ head ’em over to the Headquarters.  I’ll go hunt up a horse for the pilgrim an’ be over there in half an hour.”

Curly passed from man to man, whom he singled out from among the dancers and onlookers, and the Texan slipped unobserved through the door and proceeded directly to the hotel.  On the street he met Bat.

“De pilgrim, she lock up in de woolhouse an’ Sam Moore she stan’ ’long de door wit two revolver an’ wan big rifle.”

“All right, Bat.  You look alive now, an’ catch up Purdy’s horse an’ see that you get a good set of bridle reins on him, an’ find the girl’s horse an’ get holt of a pack-horse somewheres an’ get your war-bag an’ mine an’ our blankets onto him, an’ go down to the store an’ get a couple more pairs of blankets, an’ grub enough fer a week for four, an’ get that onto him, an’ have all them horses around to the side door of the hotel in twenty minutes, or I’ll bust you wide open an’ fill your hide with prickly pears.”

The half-breed nodded his understanding and slipped onto his horse as the Texan entered the hotel.  Passing through the office where a coal-oil lamp burned dimly in a wall-bracket, he stepped into the narrow hallway and paused with his eyes on the bar of yellow light that showed at the bottom of the door of Number 11.