In less than sixty seconds they shall have finished the “job.”
“Now then, Bill! Are ye ready?” shouts one to the other—by the question proclaiming, that they no longer intend to wait for the word.
“All right!” responds Bill. “Up with the son of a skunk! Up with him!”
There is a pull upon the rope, but not sufficient to raise the body into an erect position.
It tightens around the neck; lifts the head a little from the ground, but nothing more!
Only one of the hangmen has given his strength to the pull.
“Haul, damn you!” cries Bill, astonished at the inaction of his assistant. “Why the hell don’t you haul?”
Bill’s back is turned towards an intruder, that, seen by the other, has hindered him from lending a hand. He stands as if suddenly transformed into stone!
“Come!” continues the chief executioner. “Let’s go at it again—both together. Yee—up! Up with him!”
“No ye don’t!” calls out a voice in the tones of a stentor; while a man of colossal frame, carrying a six-foot rifle, is seen rushing out from among the trees, in strides that bring him almost instantly into the thick of the crowd. “No ye don’t!” he repeats, stopping over the prostrate body, and bringing his long rifle to bear upon the ruffians of the rope. “Not yet a bit, as this coon kalkerlates.
You, Bill Griffin; pull that piece o’ pleeted hoss-hair but the eighth o’ an inch tighter, and ye’ll git a blue pill in yer stummuk as won’t agree wi’ ye.
Drop the rope, durn ye! Drop it!”
The screaming of Zeb Stump’s mare scarce created a more sudden diversion than the appearance of Zeb himself—for it was he who had hurried upon the ground.
He was known to nearly all present; respected by most; and feared by many.
Among the last were Bill Griffin, and his fellow rope-holder.
No longer holding it: for at the command to drop it, yielding to a quick perception of danger, both had let go; and the lazo lay loose along the sward.
“What durned tom-foolery’s this, boys?” continues the colossus, addressing himself to the crowd, still speechless from surprise.
“Ye don’t mean hangin’, do ye?”
“We do,” answers a stern voice.
“And why not?” asks another.
“Why not!
Ye’d hang a fellur-citizen ’ithout trial, wud ye?”
“Not much of a fellow-citizen—so far as that goes.
Besides, he’s had a trial—a fair trial.”
“I’deed.
A human critter to be condemned wi’ his brain in a state o’ dulleerium!
Sent out o’ the world ’ithout knowin’ that he’s in it!
Ye call that a fair trial, do ye?”
“What matters it, if we know he’s guilty?
We’re all satisfied about that.”
“The hell ye air!
Wagh!
I aint goin’ to waste words wi’ sech as you, Jim Stoddars.
But for you, Sam Manly, an yerself, Mister Peintdexter—shurly ye aint agreed to this hyur proceeding which, in my opeenyun, ’ud be neyther more nor less ’n murder?”
“You haven’t heard all, Zeb Stump,” interposes the Regulator Chief, with the design to justify his acquiescence in the act. “There are facts—!”
“Facts be durned!
An’ fancies, too!
I don’t want to hear ’em.
It’ll be time enuf for thet, when the thing kum to a reg’lar trial; the which shurly nob’dy hyur’ll objeck to—seein’ as thur aint the ghost o’ a chance for him to git off.
Who air the individooal that objecks?”
“You take too much upon you, Zeb Stump. What is it your business, we’d like to know?
The man that’s been murdered wasn’t your son; nor your brother, nor your cousin neither! If he had been, you’d be of a different way of thinking, I take it.” It is Calhoun who has made this interpolation—spoken before with so much success to his scheme.
“I don’t see that it concerns you,” he continues, “what course we take in this matter.”
“But I do. It consarns me—fust, because this young fellur’s a friend o’ mine, though he air Irish, an a strenger; an secondly, because Zeb Stump aint a goin’ to stan’ by, an see foul play—even tho’ it be on the purayras o’ Texas.”
“Foul play be damned! There’s nothing of the sort.
And as for standing by, we’ll see about that.
Boys! you’re not going to be scared from your duty by such swagger as this?
Let’s make a finish of what we’ve begun.
The blood of a murdered man cries out to us.
Lay hold of the rope!”