Bill Wilson, returning gloomily to the doorway of his place, grated an oath and turned away his head. Some day, he promised himself vengefully, those two--yes, and the whole group of murderers moving briskly away from the tent--would pay for that outrage; and he prayed that the day might come soon. He went heavily into the big room where men were already foregathering to gossip between drinks of the trial and of the man who was to die. Bill bethought him of the young stranger; made some inquiries of certain inoffensive individuals among the crowd, and sent Jim out with instructions to find the kid and bring him back with him. Bill was standing in the door waiting for Jim to return, when, in a swirl of dust, came Dade galloping around a corner and to the very doorstep before he showed any desire to slow up. At the first tightening of the reins, the white horse stiffened his front legs, dug two foot-long furrows and stopped still. Bill had no enthusiasm for the perfect accomplishment of the trick. He stood with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and regarded the rider glumly. "Well, you got here," he grunted, with the brevity of utter misery. "You bet I did! I was away from the hacienda when the peon came, or I'd have got here sooner," Dade explained cheerfully, swinging to the ground with a jingle of his big, Mexican spurs that had little silver bells to swell the tinkly chimes when he moved. "Where's Jack?" Big Bill Wilson's jaw trembled with an impulse towards tears which the long, harsh years behind him would not let him shed. "They've got him," he said in a choked tone, and waved a hand toward the west. "Who's got him?" Dade clanked a step closer and peered sharply into Bill's face, with all the easy good humor wiped out of his own. "The Committee. You're too late; they're taking him out to the oak. Been gone about ten minutes. They had it in for him, and--I couldn't do a thing! The men in this town--" Epithets rushed incoherently from Bill's lips, just as violent weeping marks the reaction from a woman's first silence in the face of tragedy. Dade did not hear a word he was saying, after those first jerky sentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who was making erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious of the Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the town which could permit such outrages. "Watch Surry a minute!" he said abruptly, and hurried into the gambling hall. In a minute he was back again and lifting foot to the stirrup. "How long did you say they've been gone?" he asked, without looking at Bill. "Ten or fifteen minutes. Say, you can't do anything!" Dade was already half-way up the block, a swirl of sand-dust marking his flight. Bill stared after him distressfully.