“I see you got this party all ready for me,” said the sheriff more amiably to Riley Sinclair, who was watching in disgust the clumsy method of Jig’s mounting.  “You’re Sinclair, I guess?”

“I’m Sinclair, sheriff.”

They shook hands.

“Nice bit of work you done for me, Sinclair, keeping the boys from stringing up Jig, yonder.  These here lynchings don’t set none too well on the reputation of a sheriff.  I guess we’re ready to start.  S’long Sally—­Jerry.  Are you riding our way, Sinclair?”

“I thought I’d happen along.  Ain’t never seen Woodville yet.”

“Glad to have you.  But they ain’t much to see unless you look twice at the same thing.”

They started down the trail three abreast.

“Ride on ahead,” commanded Sinclair to Jig.  “We don’t want you riding in the same line with men.  Git on ahead!”

John Gaspar obeyed that brutal order with bowed head.  He rode listlessly, with loose rein, letting the pony pick its own way.  Once Sinclair looked back to Sally Bent, weeping in the arms of her brother.  Again his face grew black.

“And yet,” confided the sheriff softly, “I ain’t never heard no trouble about this Gaspar before.”

“He’s poison,” declared Sinclair bitterly, and he raised his voice that it would unmistakably carry to the shrinking figure before them.  “He’s such a yaller-hearted skunk, sheriff, that it makes me ashamed of bein’ a man!”

“They’s only one thing I misdoubt,” said the sheriff.  “How’d that sort of a gent ever get the nerve to murder a man like Quade?  Quade wasn’t no tenderfoot, and he could shoot a bit, besides.”

“Speaking personal, sheriff, I don’t think he done it, now I’ve had a chance to go over the evidence.”

“Maybe he didn’t, but most like he’ll hang for it.  The boys is dead set agin’ him.  First, he’s a dude; second, he’s a coward.  Sour Creek and Woodville wasn’t never cut out for that sort.  They ain’t wanted around.”

That speech made Riley Sinclair profoundly thoughtful.  He had known well enough before this that there were small chances of Jig escaping from the damning judgment of twelve of these cowpunchers.  The statement of the sheriff made the belief a fact.  The death sentence of Jig was pronounced the moment the doors of the jail at Woodville clanged upon him.

They struck the trail to Sour Creek and almost immediately swung off on a branch which led south and west, in the opposite direction from the creek.  It was a day of high-driving clouds, thin and fleecy, so that they merely filtered the sunlight and turned it into a haze without decreasing the heat perceptibly, and that heat grew until it became difficult to look down at the blazing sand.

Now the trail climbed among broken hills until they reached a summit.  From that point on, now and again the road elbowed into view of a wide plain, and in the center of the plain there was a diminutive dump of buildings.