“Most any fool thing would do to tell the girl.  But I’ve got to make it some plausible to put it acrost on Jennie.  I’m afraid I kind of over-played my hand a little when I let her in on this, but—­damn it!  I felt kind of sorry for the girl even if it was her own fool fault gettin’ into this jack-pot.  I thought maybe a woman could kind of knock off the rough edges a little.  Well, here goes!” He knocked sharply, and it was a very grave-faced cowboy who stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.  “I’ve be’n doin’ quite some feelin’ out of the public pulse, as the feller says, an’ the way things looks from here, the pilgrim is sure in bad.  You see, the jury is bound to be made up of cow-men an’ ranchers with a sheep-man or two mixed in.  An’ they’re all denizens that Choteau County is infested with.  Now a stranger comin’ in that way an’ kind of pickin’ one of us off, casual, like a tick off’n a dog’s ear, it won’t be looked on with favour——­”

Jennie interrupted, with a belligerent forefinger wagging almost against the Texan’s nose:  “But that Jack Purdy needed killin’ if ever any one did.  He was loose an’——­”

“Yes,” broke in Tex, “he was.  I ain’t here to pronounce no benediction of blessedness on Purdy’s remains.  But, you got to recollect that most of the jury, picked out at random, is in the same boat—­loose, an’ needin’ killin’, which they know as well as you an’ me do, an’ consequent ain’t a-goin’ to establish no oncomfortable precedent.  Suppose any pilgrim was allowed to step off’n a train any time he happened to be comin’ through, an’ pick off a loose one?  What would Choteau County’s or any other county’s he-population look like in a year’s time, eh?  It would look like the hair-brush out here in the wash-room, an’ you could send in the votin’ list on a cigarette paper.  No, sir, the pilgrim ain’t got a show if he’s got to face a jury.  There’s only one way out, an’ there’s about fifteen or twenty of the boys that’s willin’ to give him a chance.  We’re a-goin’ to bust him out of jail an’ put him on a horse an’ run him up some cottonwood coulee with a rope around his neck.”

Alice Marcum, who had followed every word, turned chalk-white in the lamplight as she stared wide-eyed at the Texan, with fingers pressed tight against her lips, while Jennie placed herself protectingly between them and launched into a perfect tirade.

“Hold on, now.”  Both girls saw that the man was smiling and Jennie relapsed into a warlike silence.  “A rope necktie ain’t a-goin’ to hurt no one as long as he keeps his heft off’n it.  As I was goin’ on to say, we’ll run him up this coulee an’ a while later the boys’ll ride back to town in the same semmey-serious mood that accompanies such similar enterprises.  They won’t do no talkin’ an’ they won’t need to.  Folks will naturally know that justice has be’n properly dispensed with, an’ that their taxes won’t raise none owin’ to county funds bein’ misdirected in prosecutin’