The gang probably had rounded up everything that could travel, cleaning out the entire settlement, hitting a hard blow in retaliation for the loss of their eminent leader, or the damage he had suffered if he came off with his pestiferous life. The Ellisons could survive it, as they had not been left entirely without legs. But the case of that old soldier, of his lanky flat, starved, work-worn neighbor, was desperate in the extreme.
It was hard enough to fight the tough sod, the grasshoppers, the hot winds, in heroic effort to establish independence and get a living out of the land, off there forty miles from a railroad, a doctor or a store. Add to all that the misery of being stripped by a gang of brutal thieves of the means of travel, of every beast of burden, and it amounted to cutting off their legs in truth.
Tom's own case was little better. He had ridden back to the ranch in a glow of enthusiasm over the business outlook open before him and his partners. Now this band of sneaking night-riders had slammed the door to that prospect in his face. He was riding that morning on a foray for his very existence.
They had come up on that expedition to get him. Failing in that, their vindictive spite had spent itself on the entire neighborhood. They never had raided in that vicinity before, Mrs. Ellison and the sheriff had said. They probably never would have come but for the chase after Sid Coburn's silly old handbag that unlucky night. He had lured them there; he had brought this curse on the community. It was his solemn duty to adjust the wrong, even to the limit of his life.
