"Pity he didn't kill
him. They're getting a jury together already. Say! Ain't it hell?"
CHAPTER III
THE THING THEY CALLED JUSTICE
Jack stared meditatively across at the young fellow sitting hunched
upon another of the boxes that were the seats in this tent-jail, which
was also the courtroom of the Vigilance Committee, and mechanically
counted the slow tears that trickled down between the third and fourth
fingers of each hand. A half-hour spent so would have rasped the
nerves of the most phlegmatic man in the town, and Jack was not
phlegmatic; fifteen minutes of watching that silent weeping sufficed
to bring a muffled explosion.
"Ah, for God's sake, brace up!" he gritted. "There's some hope for
you--if you don't spoil what chance you have got, by crying around
like a baby. Brace up and be a man, anyway. It won't hurt any worse if
you grin about it."
The young fellow felt gropingly for a red-figured bandanna, found it
and wiped his face and his eyes dejectedly. "I beg your pardon for
seeming a coward," he apologized huskily. "I got to thinking about
my--m-mother and sisters, and--"
Jack winced. Mother and sisters he had longed for all his life. "Well,
you better be thinking how you'll get out of the scrape you're in," he
advised, with a little of Bill Wilson's grimness. "I'm afraid I'm to
blame, in a way; and yet, if I hadn't mixed into the fight, you'd
be dead by now.
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