The man looked up.  Nobody stirred or spoke.  He was a stranger there, being a chance confederate picked up by Red Pete, and known to no one.  Still young, but an outlaw from his abandoned boyhood, of which father and mother were only a forgotten dream, he loved horses and stole them, fully accepting the frontier penalty of life for the interference with that animal on which a man’s life so often depended.  But he understood the good points of a horse, as was shown by the one he bestrode—­until a few days before the property of Judge Boompointer.  This was his sole distinction.

The unexpected question stirred him for a moment out of the attitude of reckless indifference, for attitude it was, and a part of his profession.  But it may have touched him that at that moment he was less than his companion and his virago wife.  However, he only shook his head.  As he did so his eye casually fell on the handsome girl by the doorpost, who was looking at him.  The ringleader, too, may have been touched by his complete loneliness, for he hesitated.  At the same moment he saw that the girl was looking at his friendless captive.

A grotesque idea struck him.

“Salomy Jane, ye might do worse than come yere and say ‘good-by’ to a dying man, and him a stranger,” he said.

There seemed to be a subtle stroke of poetry and irony in this that equally struck the apathetic crowd.  It was well known that Salomy Jane Clay thought no small potatoes of herself, and always held off the local swain with a lazy nymph-like scorn.  Nevertheless, she slowly disengaged herself from the doorpost, and, to everybody’s astonishment, lounged with languid grace and outstretched hand towards the prisoner.  The color came into the gray reckless mask which the doomed man wore as her right hand grasped his left, just loosed by his captors.  Then she paused; her shy, fawn-like eyes grew bold, and fixed themselves upon him.  She took the chewing-gum from her mouth, wiped her red lips with the back of her hand, by a sudden lithe spring placed her foot on his stirrup, and, bounding to the saddle, threw her arms about his neck and pressed a kiss upon his lips.

[Illustration]

They remained thus for a hushed moment—­the man on the threshold of death, the young woman in the fullness of youth and beauty—­linked together.  Then the crowd laughed; in the audacious effrontery of the girl’s act the ultimate fate of the two men was forgotten.  She slipped languidly to the ground; she was the focus of all eyes,—­she only!  The ringleader saw it and his opportunity.  He shouted:  “Time’s up—­Forward!” urged his horse beside his captives, and the next moment the whole cavalcade was sweeping over the clearing into the darkening woods.