Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 184: what you’re looking at

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® 690 Nothing was wrong with it, from their viewpoint. The mob planned to have its work done in less than thirty minutes. IV. Once outside the jail, the mob moved swiftly. Despite Sam Morgan’s assertion that there were four or five hundred of them, they actually numbered less than a hundred, but they were grim, silent, deter- mined men and under perfect control of their leader. To Danny the silence was ponderous, op- pressive. If they would only talk—if he could only ‘hear the voices of the six hulk- ing brutes that had him in charge! But only twice was the silence broken: once, when they discussed briefly which road to take; again, when the leader asked one of the mob the time of night. At the half hour after midnight they ar- ‘rived at the Kelley Springs and came to a stop near the historic sycamore to which the miser, Anderson Bone, had tied his horse a generation before. To Danny the scene was too unreal to be terrible. The strangeness of the hour— after midnight; the shadowy eyes peering at him from behind grotesque masks—it was like a fancy ball. He would not have been surprised to wake and find it all a dream. Nor was the illusion of unreality entirely dispelled when the leader addressed him: “You may wonder why we don’t shoot you and be done with it. you committed is punishable in this State by death through hanging. And so you~ will die to-night, hung by the neck till you are dead. “You shot one of our men two nights ago and to-day you killed our leader and friend. The laws of the State might turn you loose; that fool policeman and that damfool mayor as good as said so. But we tried you to-night, a jury of twelve men, and convicted you of murder, and now we've come to execute the sentence. Got anything to say for yourself?” Silence. : “You’ve no hope -for mercy or rescue,” pursued the leader. ‘ The officers will only gitiz ry GO ogle _ Well, the crime | ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. come in time to cut you down. For us there will be no hereafter; nobody knows—- ever will know—who did this work. Any- thing to say?” <4 No. ) “ All right, boys; tie his legs and fix the noose. And remember, no shooting till the rope has done its work.” The prisoner struggled, but his feet were made fast, the noose slipped around his neck and the other end of the rope thrown over a limb of the tree. He was too dazed to realize fully the situation. He was va- guely conscious of, the great trees and the moonlight, ghostly, funereal. The water was trickling noisily from the big spring, and somewhere in the woods a dog was barking. Still, clutching at a very fragile straw, he hoped that the officers would come in time. Morgan knew of his danger; surely he had given the alarm. But inch by inch the straw drifted beyond his reach. Though he strained his eyes peering into the night, and though he could see half a mile across the valley, not a human form was in sight. Nothing but moonlight and trees and dark- ened houses. “ Ready?” said the leader. with him, boys And Danny felt himself being lifted from the ground. “Then up V. THE dog that Danny had heard barking in the woods was not a hunting dog. He was a yard dog that had followed his master into the woods, and while his “master amused himself with other pursuits, the dog whiled away the time following the trails of rab- bits, chipmunks and other wild game. He was the chattel and companion of Dan Tucker. Dan was up in the hills looking for the fabled treasure. For two weeks, under cover of darkness, he had instituted a care- ful, methodical search. But though he had prodded every square foot of the ground and torn up some of the larger boulders with dynamite, he had had no luck. He was of half a mind to quit. He would quit for the night, anyway; it was past midnight and the moon was sinking low. Or JI Nal fre TE UGOHRGDOOKS-CS