"Frank I got, and made a clean job of it. And yesterday morning the girl played into my hands. She rode over to the Sawtooth, and I got her at Thurman's place, on her way home, and figured I'd marry her and take a chance on keeping her quiet afterwards. I'd have been down the Pass in another two hours and heading for the nearest county seat. She'd have married me, too. She knows I'd have killed her if she didn't--which I would. I've been square with her--she'll tell you that. I told her, when I took her, just what I was going to do with her. So that's all straight. She's been scared, I guess, but she ain't gone hungry, and she ain't suffered, except in her mind. I don't fight women, and I'll say right now, to her and to you, that I've got all the respect in the world for this little girl, and if I'd married her I'd have been as good to her as I know how, and as she'd let me be. "Now I want to tell you folks a few more things about Bill Warfield. If you want to stop the damnest steal in the country, tie a can onto that irrigation scheme of his. He's out to hold up the State for all he can get, and bleed the poor devils of farmers white, that buys land under that canal. It may look good, but it ain't good--not by a damn sight. "Yuh know what he's figuring on doing? Get water in the canal, sell land under a contract that lets him out if the ditch breaks, or something so he _can't_ supply water at any time. And when them poor suckers gets their crops all in, and at the point where they've got to have water or lose out, something'll happen to the supply. Folks, I _know_! I'm a reliable man, and I've rode with a rope around my neck for over five years, and Warfield offered me the same old five hundred every time I monkeyed with the water supply as ordered. He'd have done it slick; don't worry none about that. The biggest band of thieves he could get together is that company. So if you folks have got any sense, you'll bust it up right now. "Bill Warfield, what I've got to say to _you_ won't take long. You thought you'd make a grand-stand play with the law, and at the same time put me outa the way. You figured I'd resist arrest, and you'd have a chance to shoot me down. I know your rotten mind better than you do. You wanted to bump me off, but you wanted to do it in a way that'd put you in right with the public. Killing me for kidnapping this girl would sound damn romantic in the newspapers, and it wouldn't have a thing to do with Thurman or Frank Johnson, or any of the rest that I've sent over the trail for you. "Right now you're figuring how you'll get around this bawling-out I'm giving you. There's nobody to take down what I say, and I'm just a mean, ornery outlaw and killer, talking for spite. With your pull you expect to get this smoothed over and hushed up, and have me at a hanging bee, and everything all right for Bill! Well----" His eyes left Warfield's face and went beyond the staring group. His face darkened, a sneer twisted his lips.