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Then Parish Thornton, and a handful of lesser designates, would die or else the "riders" would encounter defeat and see their leaders go to the penitentiary. Bas Rowlett, himself a traitor to the Ku Klux, had promised Sim safety, but Sim had never known Bas to keep faith, and he did not trust him now.
How much later he did not know, though he knew that it was twilight now, Bas Rowlett seemed to come out of a heavy and disturbed sleep in which there had been no rest, and he found himself lying with his feet hanging over the precipice edge, and with Thornton looking intently down upon him. In Thornton's hand was the recovered pistol so there must have been time enough for that.
On the fringe of the gathering an old woman's whispered words carried to those about her: "Did ye heer thet? Jase called him Parish Thornton I thought he give ther name of Cal Maggard!" Even Bas Rowlett, whose nerves were keyed for an ordeal, started and almost let the leaning bridegroom fall.
"Couldn't ye contrive ter persuade Bas Rowlett ter jine us, Pete?" inquired one of the two men who had swaggered with Sam Opdyke up the court-house aisle, and gone out in crestfallen limpness. "Hit looks like he'd ought ter hold with us. He war entitled ter leadership an' they cast him over."
Thornton's eyes went over, and in the lighted doorway fell upon Bas Rowlett sitting with his features schooled to a masked and unctuous hypocrisy, but back of that disguise the wounded man fancied he could read the satisfaction of one whose plans march toward success. His own teeth clicked together and the sweat started on his temples.
Sim knew that when Rowlett had quietly stirred into life the forces from which the secret body was born he had been building for one purpose and one purpose only.
"I hain't keerin' none much erbout ther feller thet fired ther shot...." went on the voice. "Ther man I aims ter git ... air ther one thet hired him.... He's goin' ter die ... hard!" "What makes ye think" the listener licked his lips furtively "thar war more'n one?" "Because I knows who ... t'other one is." Rowlett rose from his seat, and lifted a clenched fist.
"I'm a-comin' ter thet ... atter thet pitch-battle folks began turnin' ter them they'd been laughin' ter scorn ... they come an' begged me ter head ther Thorntons an' ther Harpers. They went similar ter Jim Rowlett an' besaught him ter do ther like fer ther Rowletts an' ther Doanes.
His bull-dozin' terrified me ... his power over me made me a craven, an' his dollars in my pocket paid me fer them dasterdly jobs. Thet man war Bas Rowlett thar!" The leader of the mob stood for an instant with the stunned senses of an ox struck by a cleaver, and after that first dumfounded moment he wanted the truth, as a starving man wants food.
Eyes, both shrewd and determined, gave the impression of missing nothing, but his voice was pleasant as he introduced himself. "My name's Bas Rowlett, an' I reckon you're Cal Maggard, hain't ye? I've done heered ye 'lowed ter dwell amongst us." Maggard nodded.
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