"Justice!" says Charley, talking as dignified as a just-swore-in sheriff. "As I explained to you this morning, sir, nobody in Palomitas ever stands in the way of a fair fight--like the one you happened to come in on at the finish a few hours ago--any more than good citizens, elsewhere and under different conditions, interfere with the processes of the courts. But when the fight is not fair, as in the present instance--the gravamen of the charge against Brother Smith being that he loosed off into Brother Hart's back when the latter did not know it was coming and hadn't his gun out--then the moral sense of our community crystallizes promptly into the punitive action that the case demands: as you will see for yourself, inside of the next ten minutes, when you see Brother Smith run up on that second telegraph-pole to the left and kicking his legs in the air until he kicks himself into Kingdom Come!" "Good Heavens!" says the little man. "You're not going to--to hang him?" "We just rather are!" says Santa Fé. And then he says, talking kind of cutting: "May I ask, sir, what you do in England with murderers? Do you pay 'em salaries, and ask 'em out to tea-parties, and hire somebody to see they have all the drinks they want?" The little man begun telling how English folks manage such matters, and was real excited. But nobody but the Hen paid no attention to him. The Hen--she and Kerosene was standing close aside of him--turned round to him and said pleasant she always enjoyed most the hangings they had by moonlight (the moon was at the full, and shining beautiful) because the moonlight, she said, cast over them such a glamour of romance. And her looking at moonlight hangings that way seemed to give him such a jolt he stopped talking and give a kind of a gasp. There wasn't no more time for talking, anyway--for just then the train backed in to the platform and the conductor sung out the Friendly Aiders had got to get a move on 'em, if them going by it was to see the doings, and put Shorty through. Being moonlight, and the shadows thick, helped considerable--keeping from showing how the boys had fixed Shorty up so his hanging wouldn't come hard: with a lariat run round under his arms, his shirt over it, and a loop just inside his collar where they could hitch the rope fast. When they did hitch to it, things looked just as natural as you please.