Part 55 (1/2)

”Why, so should I--if I could do it at all.” I still thought he was justifying their justice to me.

He made no answer as he rode along, looking all the while at his saddle.

But again he pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead with that frown and shutting of the eyes.

”I should like to be sure I should behave myself if I were condemned,” I said next. For it now came to me--which should I resemble? Could I read the newspaper, and be interested in county elections, and discuss coming death as if I had lost a game of cards? Or would they have to drag me out? That poor wretch in the gray flannel s.h.i.+rt--”It was bad in the stable,” I said aloud. For an after-s.h.i.+ver of it went through me.

A third time his hand brushed his forehead, and I ventured some sympathy.

”I'm afraid your head aches.”

”I don't want to keep seeing Steve,” he muttered.

”Steve!” I was astounded. ”Why he--why all I saw of him was splendid.

Since it had to be. It was--”

”Oh, yes; Ed. You're thinking about him. I'd forgot him. So you didn't enjoy Ed?”

At this I looked at him blankly. ”It isn't possible that--”

Again he cut me short with a laugh almost savage. ”You needn't to worry about Steve. He stayed game.”

What then had been the matter that he should keep seeing Steve--that his vision should so obliterate from him what I still s.h.i.+vered at, and so shake him now? For he seemed to be growing more stirred as I grew less.

I asked him no further questions, however, and we went on for several minutes, he brooding always in the same fas.h.i.+on, until he resumed with the hard indifference that had before surprised me:-- ”So Ed gave you feelings! Dumb ague and so forth.”

”No doubt we're not made the same way,” I retorted.

He took no notice of this. ”And you'd have been more comfortable if he'd acted same as Steve did. It cert'nly was bad seeing Ed take it that way, I reckon. And you didn't see him when the time came for business.

Well, here's what it is: a man may be such a confirmed miscreant that killing's the only cure for him; but still he's your own species, and you don't want to have him fall around and grab your laigs and show you his fear naked. It makes you feel ashamed. So Ed gave you feelings, and Steve made everything right easy for you!” There was irony in his voice as he surveyed me, but it fell away at once into sadness. ”Both was miscreants. But if Steve had played the coward, too, it would have been a whole heap easier for me.” He paused before adding, ”And Steve was not a miscreant once.”

His voice had trembled, and I felt the deep emotion that seemed to gain upon him now that action was over and he had nothing to do but think.

And his view was simple enough: you must die brave. Failure is a sort of treason to the brotherhood, and forfeits pity. It was Steve's perfect bearing that had caught his heart so that he forgot even his scorn of the other man.

But this was by no means all that was to come. He harked back to that notion of a prisoner helping to make it easy for his executioner.

”Easy plumb to the end,” he pursued, his mind reviewing the acts of the morning. ”Why, he tried to give me your newspaper. I didn't--”

”Oh, no,” I said hastily. ”I had finished with it.”

”Well, he took dying as naturally as he took living. Like a man should.

Like I hope to.” Again he looked at the pictures in his mind. ”No play-acting nor last words. He just told good-by to the boys as we led his horse under the limb--you needn't to look so dainty,” he broke off.

”You ain't going to get any more shocking particulars.”

”I know I'm white-livered,” I said with a species of laugh. ”I never crowd and stare when somebody is hurt in the street. I get away.”

He thought this over. ”You don't mean all of that. You'd not have spoke just that way about crowding and staring if you thought well of them that stare. Staring ain't courage; it's trashy curiosity. Now you did not have this thing--”

He had stretched out his hand to point, but it fell, and his utterance stopped, and he jerked his horse to a stand. My nerves sprang like a wire at his suddenness, and I looked where he was looking. There were the cottonwoods, close in front of us. As we had travelled and talked we had forgotten them. Now they were looming within a hundred yards; and our trail lay straight through them.

”Let's go around them,” said the Virginian.