CHAPTER NINETEENWhile Wade sat on a log, sweating and shuddering from the reaction to that hideous execution, the cowboys searched the dead rustlers and tied Blue on his saddle.
Jerry brought Wade a heavy money belt and a huge roll of greenbacks surprisingly clean and new. “I found these on Drake,” he said. “Steele an’ thet oldish hombre were also well-heeled, accordin’ to Strothers, who searched them.”
“Tell Strothers to divide with you all.”
“Doggone it, boss, rustlin’ appears to be a profitable business in these parts.”
“It was, Jerry.”
They packed Blue to the outskirts of Pine Mound, where they hanged him on the notorious cottonwood tree. They tagged his slack figure with a paper bearing the word: Rustler.
Then the sleepy little hamlet of Pine Mound awakened to the end of the Dra
