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Before night you'll be swinging underneath the big live-oak on the plaza. That's a prophecy for you to swallow, you four-flushing bully." It went home like an arrow. The furtive eyes of the killer slid sideways to question this public which had scattered so promptly to save itself. Would the mob turn on him later and destroy him? Young Beaudry's voice flowed on.
The shadow was beginning to climb the eastern wall of the pit before Beaudry's shout reached her ears faintly. Her first thought was that she must already be delirious. Not till she saw him at the edge of the prospect hole was she sure that her rescuer was a reality. At the first sight of her Roy wanted to trumpet to high heaven the joy that flooded his heart. He had found her alive.
To put such a mark on a man for life was a liberty that might well be taken as a personal affront. No wonder Charlton hated him and as their eyes met now, Roy had no doubt about that. The man was his enemy. Some day he would even the score. Again Beaudry's heart felt the familiar drench of an icy wave. Charlton did not answer his greeting.
He took one look at the harassed youth and jumped up. "Say, you're all right. Put her there." Royal's cold hand met the rough one of Ryan. The shrewd eyes of the Irishman judged the other. "I knew youse couldn't be a quitter and John Beaudry's son," he continued. "Why, come to that, the sooner you start the quicker." "I'll have to change my name." "Sure you will.
This left of Beaudry's foes only Hart, who did not really count, and Dan Meldrum, at the present moment facing starvation in a prospect hole. On the whole, it had been a surprisingly good twenty-four hours for Roy. His partner saw this, though he did not know the best thing Roy had won out of it. "Listens fine," the old-timer commented when the young man had finished.
Why should I embroil myself with a lot of murderous outlaws when what I want is to sit here and make friends ?" The Irishman hammered his fist on the table and exploded. "Then sit here, damn ye! But why the hell should any one want to make friends with a white-livered pup like you? I thought you was Jack Beaudry's son, but I'll niver believe it.
I'll go through hell to fix Beaudry's cub the way he did me." His voice shook from the bitter intensity of his feeling. Rutherford paced up and down the room in a stress of sentiency. "No, Jess. I know just how you feel, but I'm going to give this kid his chance. We gunned Beaudry because he wouldn't let us alone. Either he or a lot of us had to go. But I'll say this.
As the tender light of daybreak was in the hills, so there was a lilt in her heart that found expression in her voice, her buoyant footsteps, and the shine of her eyes. She had slept soundly in Beaudry's blankets while he had lain down in his slicker on the other side of the fire. Already she was quite herself again. The hours of agony in the pit were obliterated.
Most of them would have backed John Beaudry's son both in their hopes and in their opinion of the result. Into saloons and gambling-houses word was carried, and from there to the hillmen of the park by industrious peddlers of trouble, that the young cattleman from the Lazy Double D could be found by his enemies heeled for business whenever they wanted him. Charlton kept morosely to the park.
This man was a notorious "killer" and the lust of murder was just now on him. Young Beaudry's brain reeled. It was only by an effort that he pulled himself back from the unconsciousness into which he was swimming. The Bad Man The eyes of Beaudry, held in dreadful fascination, clung to the lupine face behind the revolver.
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