He did not look as the
boy believed a man should look who has just been condemned to die the
ignominious death of hanging. The boy shuddered and went out into
the sunlight, dazed with this glimpse he had got of the inexorable
hardness of life.
Jack did not even know when the boy left. He, also, was looking upon
the hardness of life, but he was looking with the eyes of the fighter.
So long as Jack Allen had breath in his body, he would fight to keep
it there. His incredulity against the verdict swung to a tenacious
disbelief that it would really come to the worst. So long as he
was alive, so long as he could feel the weight of the dagger in his
sleeve, it was temperamentally impossible for him to believe that he
was going to die that day.
Plans he made and smoothed them in the dirt with his toe. If they did
not bind his arms... They had not tied Sandy's arms, he remembered;
and he wondered if a dagger concealed in Sandy's sleeve would have
made any essential difference in the result of that particular crime
of the Committee. He sickened at a vivid memory of how Sandy had
ridden away, just a week or so before; and of the appealing glance
which he had sent toward Bill's place when Shorty started to lead the
buckskin from before the prison tent with six men walking upon either
side and a curious crowd straggling after. Would a dagger in Sandy's
sleeve have made any difference?
Then his thoughts swung to the Mexican who had told him of the trick,
only the night before.
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