Sudden Law o The Lariat

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"WELL, Forby, yu got anythin' to say afore we string yu up?"

The harsh question conveyed the inevitability of death, and the speaker evidently regarded it as a mere formality. A powerfully-built man of little more than thirty, attired in the garb of the cattle ranges, he stood rocking on his heels, both thumbs caught in his gun-belt. His deep-set eyes, hooked nose and out-thrust jaw gave him a predatory appearance, and had the thin, cruel lips not been concealed by a drooping black moustache he would have suggested a vulture even more patently. That he possessed both force and passion was evident.

The man to whom he spoke was of a different type. Older by twenty years, with greying hair and beard, he had the strong patient face of one who plods on, knowing his task in life is well-nigh hopeless, but doing it nevertheless to the best of his ability. He was of those who peopled the great waste spaces of the American continent, fighting against almost impossible odds, and wresting a bare subsistence from the untamed soil. He sat now on a log, hands tied behind his back, chin sunk in his chest, his whole attitude one of despair. At the words, however, he straightened up, and his gaze went instinctively to the rough little log cabin he had built with his own hands, the rude corral, the patch of fenced ground, which was only now beginning to be productive, and the stream with its shady willows and cottonwoods. He had made the place, he loved it, and now he must leave it, perhaps in a shameful way. Somehow it seemed unreal. The sun shone, the birds chirped, the murmur of the stream came like a whisper, and yet the air was pregnant with tragedy.

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