On they went, a hundred yards, two hundred, reached the railroad track, stopped. In the midst of the leaders, looming over their heads, was a whitened telegraph pole. Of a sudden a lariat shot up over the painted cross-arm, and dropped, the two ends dangling free; and, understanding it all, the spectators again became silent. Everything moved like clockwork. From somewhere in the darkness a bare-backed pony was produced and brought directly under the dangling rope. Astride him a dark-bearded figure with hands tied behind his back was placed and firmly held. Swiftly a running noose, fashioned from the ends of the lariat, was slipped over the captive's neck. A man grasped the bit of the mustang. Before him, the crowd began to give way. The great bull-necked leader--Mick Kennedy, every one now saw it was--held up his hand for silence, and turned to the helpless figure astride the pony.
"Tom Blair!" he said,--and such was now the silence that a whisper would have been audible,--"Tom Blair, have you anything you wish to say?"
The dark shape took no notice. Apparently it did not hear.
Mick Kennedy hesitated. Upon his lips a repetition of the question was forming--but it got no farther. In the midst of the mass of spectators there was a sudden tumult, a scattering from one spot as from a lighted bomb.
"Make way!" demanded an insistent voice. "Let me through!" And for a moment, forgetting the other interest, the spectators turned to this newer one.
At first they could distinguish nothing perfectly; then amidst the confusion they made out the form of a long-armed, long-faced youth, his head lowered, his shoulder before him like a wedge, crowding his way to the fore.
"Make room there!" he repeated. "Make room!" and again into the crowd, like a snow-plough into a drift, he penetrated until his momentum was exhausted, then paused for a fresh plunge.
But before him a pathway was forming. Seemingly the thing was impossible, but the trick of a spoken name was sufficient.
"It's Ben Blair!" someone had announced, and others had loudly taken up the cry. "It's Ben Blair! Let him through!"
Along the pathway thus cleared the youth made his way and approached the centre of activity. Previously the drama had moved swiftly,--so swiftly that the spectators could merely watch developments, but under the interruption it halted. The man at the pony's bridle--cowboy Buck it was--paused, uncertain what to do, doubtful of the intent of the long-faced man who so suddenly had come beside him. Not so Mick Kennedy. Well he knew what was in store, and reaching over he gave the pony a resounding slap on the flank.