"In the Big Bend affair you were one of the men who entered and cleaned up the bank?"
"Si, senor," was the reply, almost in a whisper.
"And you kept back five hundred dollars in gold, thereby adding to your share and lessening ours," the cold voice continued.
The man's lips writhed. "Sefior, eet ees a meestak," he cried. "Dere was one beeg haste--I no theenk--"
"That I would find out," the other concluded. "Fool ! All that happens is revealed to me by powers you could not comprehend. Listen: you gave one of the gold pieces to your woman, Anita; the others are buried beneath your blankets. You see, I know all. You have broken your oath to me, and robbed your comrades. The penalty for either is--death."
The accused tried to speak but his trembling lips were incapable of forming words. Save for the support of the two who held him he would have fallen to the floor. His judge contemplated him with contempt.
"I shall be merciful," he said, "but you must be punished."
He paused, and the cowboy saw a gleam of hope in the dark, fearful eyes. "You will receive--fifty lashes."
The gleam died instantly and stark terror took its place.
Speech came again in a shrill cry: "Not the wheep, senor; keel me, but not the wheep." He would have dropped on his knees but the guards rudely jerked him upright, and at a sign from their master, dragged him away, still mouthing wild, incoherent entreaties.
Satan motioned to his servant. "See to it, and let me know when all is ready," he said, and to Sudden, "Well, what do you think?"
"It will kill him."
"Of course, but it will save me from slaying others for the same offence," was the callous reply. "That is civilization's excuse for hanging a murderer--he dies that the rest may live, so even this contemptible coward will have served the community." From without, the muffled, brazen voice of a bell came to them. "Have you ever seen a man thrashed, Sudden? Come, it is an interesting sight."
Little as he wished to witness such a spectacle, the puncher could not refuse. A deed of violence was no new thing to him, and in the course of his adventurous career he had encountered men who, spurred on by greed or revenge, would commit any crime in the calendar, but never had he met the like of the inhuman devil at his side. Throughout the mock trial he sensed that the Red Mask was revelling in his power to hurt, and his so-called promise of mercy was no more than calculated cruelty to a culprit already doomed.
They stepped out into the sunlight to find a curious scene awaiting them. At a point where the street widened, stood a stout post, and beside it, fixed to the cliff, a big bell. Sudden had noticed them earlier but without suspecting their sinister purpose. Tied to the post, stripped to the waist, his bound wrists- high above his head, was the half-breed, and by hisale a burly fellow holding a short-handled whip of plaited rawhide, the tapering end of which was knotted at intervals. Ringed round the pair were some two-score onlookers, summoned by the sonorous notes of the bell. Mostly men, their coarse, cruel faces were alight with anticipation. They were about to be entertained, and Sudden, seeking for some sign of sympathy, remembered that the condemned had endeavoured to rob these people; there could be no compassion from them.
The excited chattering ceased and the circle opened as the Red Mask and his companion appeared. A little behind where they stood the cowboy could hear two men muttering. "Five dollars he don't stand twenty-five strokes."
"Yo're on; Pedro is tougher than he 'pears."
"But he got the gal Muley wanted an' that hombre ain't the forgettin' sort. Look at him."
The man with the whip was drawing the lash almost caressingly through his fingers, with a gloating expression which only too plainly betrayed eagerness to begin his ghoulish task. Sudden's remonstrance brought only a sneer to the Chief's thin lips.
"I picked him for that reason," he said coldly. "I shall get good service."
He was about to give the awaited signal when, from behind a group of spectators, a woman rushed forward and flung herself at his feet. Not yet thirty, she had a bold kind of beauty, but now her face had the pallor of death, the cheeks sunken, the eyes filled with bitter anguish.
"Spare him," she pleaded. "He did not want the gold--he took it for me, because I taunted him with his poverty. It was my fault, let me take the punishment. I do not fear the whip, but Pedro is ill--it will kill him."
The impassioned appeal might have been made to a statue. One piteous glance at those implacable eyes told her that she had failed.
"Take her away," Satan ordered.
The woman stood up. Despair had transformed her from a broken suppliant into a raging fury. She raised a hand heavenwards.
"You devil!" she raved. "May God's fire strike you--"
Ere she could finish, the words were stifled in her throat. The men who had seized her were about to drag her from the scene when the Chief stayed them.
"Let her remain," he said harshly. "She shall see her lover suffer, and if she utters but one word, I will double the sentence."
But the spirit of passion was spent; with a low moan, the woman sank to the ground and buried her face in her hands. The man with the whip, whose advances she had rejected, gazed at the bowed form with brutal satisfaction; every blow he dealt would lacerate her also; his vengeance would be complete.
A curt command and the lash whistled through the air, sweeping across the bared back and cutting a livid weal from shoulder to hip. The half-breed's whole frame quivered and from his ashen lips sprang a shriek of agony.
"I figured Muley would draw blood at the first lick," one of the wagerers commented.
"Bah! He ain't started yet--that was just a taster," the other replied. "He don't want Pedro to pass out too soon."
The cruel work went on, blow succeeding blow, and with fiendish accuracy the wielder of the weapon contrived that each should fall on a new spot, so that by the time a dozen had been delivered, the victim's back became a red, raw mass. The pain must have been atrocious but after the first cry there was no further sound save the hiss of the lash. Dangling limply from his bound wrists, head bowed between hisbiceps, the sufferer was spared the sight of the brute beasts gathered there to witness his torment.
"Gittin' tired Muley?" one asked jeeringly. "Somebody did oughta spell you."
The flogger, already exasperated by the silence of his subject, spat an oath at the speaker and, measuring his distance, rained stroke after stroke, slashing the pulped flesh to ribbons and sending the blood flying. Then he paused, panting, his eyes glaring murder. But his work was done; the drooping head of the half-breed sagged sideways. Muley darted forward and grasped it by the hair.
"Cashed!" he cried disgustedly. "He's cheated me, damn him."
With a gesture, the Chief stilled the babel which broke out. "Justice is done," he said grandiloquently.
As they walked away, the puncher was aware that his companion was eyeing him closely.
"Well, what do you think of my method of treating traitors?"
"'Pears to make yu popular with yore people," was Sudden's non-committal answer.
Satan laughed mockingly. "They hate, but are afraid of me," he boasted, "and that is how I would have it. Poets prate of love, but fear is the strongest of the passions; it is the great governing factor of life; fear of pain, punishment, death and damnation turns us all into cowards and makes so-called civilization possible. Have you ever thought of that?"
"Too high-falutin' for me," Sudden said. "What I'm worryin' about right now is where I'll sleep an' put my hoss; I ain't due back at the Double K till to-morrow evenin'."
"Silver will see to it, and there is a corral at the other end of the place."