“We’re the jury, ma’am,” said Nabours. “You’re the judge. It looks to us like all along the McMasterses was Yankee sympathizers. It looks like this man, after all, was standing in with his own kind of politics at Austin. That explains a lot of things that’s been going on. Rangers? Arrest them folks? Huh! I’ll bet they won’t stay in jail two days! You’ll have to say sentence on this man we-all thought was square, thought was our friend, a square Texan and a good man. What shall it be?” Taisie Lockhart, Portia, spoke not of the quality of mercy. Instead, she bowed her head in her hands and wept without reserve. That act utterly changed the whole complexion of the trial. Dan McMasters threw up a hand—his left hand. An instant later he was on his feet, but his attitude had no hostility. “Wait, men!” he commanded. “Don’t move, any of you! I’ll pronounce sentence on myself! “Of course, I don’t recognize any trial or any court here—I came myself. But some men do fool things. You’d like enough say death or banishment. All right! Let it be banishment! You haven’t proved more than a suspicion. I’ll accept banishment and leave the herd quietly now—not taking anything but what I have now, here.” His face hardened into gray marble. “If Miss Lockhart has had one suspicion in her mind that I—that I’d—well, touch anything of hers, or of any other human being’s, then it’s plain enough I don’t belong here. I can’t square that for her. She can never square that with me. “I’m going now!” There was no hand or voice raised at this. Turning his back on them for the first time, McMasters swung his belt to place, buckled it, caught his saddle horn and was mounted and away, not looking back. He rode gently, easily, straight. They knew no more of him now than they had before. “Del! Del, call him back!” broke out Taisie Lockhart. But Del Williams shook his head. “I wish I could, Miss Taisie,” said he simply. “I don’t reckon any of us could now.” “It had to be,” said Nabours after a time. “I’ll pay him back after we sell our herd. Del Sol can’t have no obligations to him now. But he’s one of the mysteriousest men ever crossed this range. He’s cold, that man. He needs watching.” “Pay him back? What do you mean, Jim?” Taisie was still in open tears. But she got no reply from her foreman. “He’s a killer, Jim,” broke in Cal Taney. “We know his ree-cord. He’s done killed five or six men a’ready, young as he is—four since he was sher’f and not countin’ Mexicans. He’s bad, that feller.” “He never killed no man as sher’f that didn’t resist comin’ along,” ventured Del Williams. “Them two other men—one was coming at him with a ax, on the buffalo range, and t’other had a even break on the street o’ Uvalde. But no man has a chance with him on a even break.” “He’s cold,” reiterated Nabours, hesitant. But he suddenly was agonized over the discharge of what he had held duty to his owner—the hardest duty he had ever known.