Nothing more was said.  The two men adjusted the noose round the doomed man’s neck.  Texas refused the black cap.  And he did not wait for the drop to be sprung.  He walked off the platform into space as Joan closed her eyes.

Again that strange, full, angry, and unnatural roar waved through the throng of watchers.  It was terrible to hear.  Joan felt the violent action of that crowd, although the men close round her were immovable as stones.  She imagined she could never open her eyes to see Texas hanging there.  Yet she did—­and something about his form told her that he had died instantly.  He had been brave and loyal even in dishonor.  He had more than once spoken a kind word to her.  Who could tell what had made him an outcast?  She breathed a prayer for his soul.

The vigilantes were bolstering up the craven Frenchy.  He could not stand alone.  They put the rope round his neck and lifted him off the platform—­then let him down.  He screamed in his terror.  They cut short his cries by lifting him again.  This time they held him up several seconds.  His face turned black.  His eyes bulged.  His breast heaved.  His legs worked with the regularity of a jumping-jack.  They let him down and loosened the noose.  They were merely torturing him to wring a confession from him.  He had been choked severely and needed a moment to recover.  When he did it was to shrink back in abject terror from that loop of rope dangling before his eyes.

The vigilante leader shook the noose in his face and pointed to the swaying forms of the dead bandits.

Frenchy frothed at the mouth as he shrieked out words in his native tongue, but any miner there could have translated their meaning.

The crowd heaved forward, as if with one step, then stood in a strained silence.

“Talk English!” ordered the vigilante.

“I’ll tell!  I’ll tell!”

Joan became aware of a singular tremor in Kells’s arm, which she still clasped.  Suddenly it jerked.  She caught a gleam of blue.  Then the bellow of a gun almost split her ears.  Powder burned her cheek.  She saw Frenchy double up and collapse on the platform.

For an instant there was a silence in which every man seemed petrified.  Then burst forth a hoarse uproar and the stamp of many boots.  All in another instant pandemonium broke out.  The huge crowd split in every direction.  Joan felt Cleve’s strong arm around her—­ felt herself borne on a resistless tide of yelling, stamping, wrestling men.  She had a glimpse of Kells’s dark face drawing away from her; another of Gulden’s giant form in Herculean action, tossing men aside like ninepins; another of weapons aloft.  Savage, wild-eyed men fought to get into the circle whence that shot had come.  They broke into it, but did not know then whom to attack or what to do.  And the rushing of the frenzied miners all around soon disintegrated Kells’s band and bore its several groups in every direction.  There was not another shot fired.