"And I reckon Soapy and Bad Bill left you lads at Saguache to hold the sack," Buck suggested sympathetically. Curly grew wary. He did not intend to betray his accomplices. "Wrong guess. Soapy and Bad Bill weren't in this deal," he answered easily. "We know there were two others in it with you. I guess they were Soapy and Bad Bill all right." "There's no law against guessing." The foreman of the Bar Double M interrupted impatiently, tired of trying to pump out the information by finesse. "You've got to speak, Flandrau. You've got to tell us who was engineering this theft. Understand?" The young rustler looked at the grim frowning face and his heart sank. "Got to tell you, have I?" "That's what?" "Out with it," ordered Buck. "Oh, I expect I'll keep that under my hat," Curly told them lightly. They were crowded about him in a half circle, nearly a score of hard leather-faced plainsmen. Some of them were riders of the Circle C outfit. Others had ridden over from neighboring ranches. All of them plainly meant business. They meant to stamp out rustling, and their determination had been given an edge by the wounding of Luck Cullison, the most popular man in the county. "Think again, Curly," advised Sweeney quietly. "The boys ain't trifling about this thing. They mean to find out who was in the rustling of the Bar Double M stock." "Not through me, they won't." "Through you. And right now." A dozen times during the evening Curly had crushed down the desire to beg for mercy, to cry out desperately for them to let him off. He had kept telling himself not to show yellow, that it would not last long. Now the fear of breaking down sloughed from his soul. He rose from the bed and looked round at the brown faces circled about him in the shine of the lamps. "I'll not tell you a thing--not a thing." He stood there chalk-faced, his lips so dry that he had to keep moistening them with the tip of his tongue. Two thoughts hammered in his head. One was that he had come to the end of his trail, the other that he would game it out without weakening. Dutch had a new rope in his hand with a loop at one end. He tossed it over the boy's head and drew it taut. Two or three of the faces in the circle were almost as bloodless as that of the prisoner, but they were set to see the thing out. "Will you tell now?" Bonfils asked. Curly met him eye to eye. "No." "Come along then." One of the men caught his arm at the place where he had been wounded. The rustler flinched. "Careful, Buck. Don't you see you're hurting his bad arm?" Sweeney said sharply. "Sure. Take him right under the shoulder." "There's no call to be rough with him." "I didn't aim to hurt him," Buck defended himself. His grip was loose and easy now. Like the others he was making it up to his conscience for what he meant to do by doing it in the kindest way possible.