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 sharply at Dunham as if to fix his attention on a point not duly considered, "is sixty dollars a month."

"It's purty good for these times," Bill admitted, but he was not moved.

"The va-a-a-st resources of this fer-tile plain," said Bergen, making a grand sweep with his arms, "the ad-van-tages of our climate, which I'll not call italian, for there's nothing in Europe to compare to it—"

"Haw, haw!" laughed a grizzled old cowpuncher who had ridden that fertile plain under temperatures ranging from one hundred and five in the shade to twenty below zero.

"Well, I never was in Italy," said MacKinnon, "but if they've got anything that beats this country along the middle of January they can keep it. I don't want any of it in mine."

This derogatory comment did not turn Bergen from the trend of his argument, irrelevant to the case as it seemed to be. He spread his hands as if to put his benediction on the country he invested with such purely imaginary qualities.

"When we see the temple of justice rising in our square," he said, fixing Dunham with stern and lowering eye, as if he had caught an infidel and was determined to save his soul before the matter went any farther, "and the spires of our churches pointing—"

"You can't sell any lots to this crowd, Henry," the mayor cut him off calmly. And to Dunham: "You can be sworn in at once and go on duty right now. Sixty dollars a month."

"It's a big compliment to a stranger like me to have

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 you gentlemen come with this offer and express your confidence this way," Dunham said, surprising Bergen so greatly by his easy use of words not suspected of him that he gave up and let him have the floor. "I don't think I'd do either this town or myself justice if I took this job. I need work, but I'm not lookin' for a lazy man's job. I'm not cut out for that kind."

"Sorry you won't take it, Dunham, but no harm done, I guess?" Mayor Ruddy offered his hand with the hopeful expression, which was as near an apology as they ever came to it in Pawnee Bend.

"None in the world," Bill assured him heartily. "You've favored me by the offer. If it was my kind of a job I'd jump at it, but I'm a feller that's always been used to work."

Bergen got hold of Bill's hand for a parting pump, and held it like one of those lodge pests who belong to everything. He gave it a pump and a pause, a jerk and a stop; slid his free hand along to Bill's elbow and nailed him as if determined he should take the full dose this time. He went on with his shake and pause; knowing look, pause and shake; until Bill was as red and uncomfortable as if he had been caught sneaking cigars out of MacKinnon's case.

"Whatever line engages your talents, young man—and you are a young man blessed with uncommon talents—plant your dollars in Pawnee Bend soil and watch them grow. Watch 'em grow. That's the best tip I can give you, or any young man, and I give it to you straight. Plant your dollars in Pawnee Bend dirt and watch 'em grow!"

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 "Yes, sir," said Bill, feeling almost as culpable as if he had been holding out dollars a long time on the deserving soil of Pawnee Bend. And he thought he was in for a hell of a time now, for there were others sidling up waiting for Bergen to finish with him, ready to grab him and multiply the misery of one of the most miserable days he ever had lived.

It was the whiskered man with the table manners, whom Bill had seen in the San Angelo café, who saved him from the uncomfortable situation of a public hero receiving the curious admiration of the crowd. This man had come in unnoticed by Dunham. He stepped into the opening the moment Bergen stopped pumping and dropped the handle.

"I heard you say you wanted a job," the stranger said, direct as Bill had put him down as being. "If you care to tackle the job I've got to offer, I guess I can take you on."

"We might step outside and talk it over," Dunham suggested, feeling that Pawnee Bend knew enough about his business as it was.

Outside, the stranger introduced himself as Garland. They shook hands on the exchange of names, very solemnly, as men of serious character usually do, as if about to begin a truce without daggers in their cuffs, according to the ancient assurance.

Garland looked at Dunham queerly as they faced each other, a puzzled expression in his eyes.

"I was standin' over there when you shot it out with Kellogg a little while ago," he said. "I felt for you, kid, but I couldn't reach you. Hell! I guess I sweat

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 a quart in ten seconds. They told me in that chuckjoint you was a green granger boy, but I guess they got you wrong."

"They got me dead right," Bill confessed in humility that amounted almost to self-contempt. "I'm so green the cows'd bite me if they caught me outside of the fence."

"But you can handle a gun—great smoke, kid! how you can handle a gun! Where did you get that trick?"

"I guess I come by it natural."

"Yes, like hell!" Garland chuckled. "That old stripper in the hash house told me about you missin' Ira Ingram last night. Thought you'd killed him when he'd only trowed one of his fits. Hell, yes; I know him. I asked her what that feller meant yellin' in after you. She told me about it."

"They sure had the laugh on me," Dunham said. "But I'm glad I missed him. I wouldn't want to hurt any afflicted man like him."

"He's mean," Garland said; "he's got a streak of Cherokee in him. But a man that can throw a gun like you don't have to worry about his kind. You didn't know anything about Kellogg's name with a gun when you went out there to shoot it out with him, I guess?"

"Yes," said Bill reflectively, "Mr. MacKinnon and—others, told me."

"Well, I've fooled myself into thinkin' I was kind of handy with a gun sometimes, but I wouldn't 'a' walked out there to face Ford Kellogg any sooner than I'd stand in front of the fastest train on this railroad. I'm

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 scoutin' around lookin' for your kind of men, but I'm here to tell you they're plenty scarce. I don't suppose you've heard anything about the quarantine guard we're puttin' on to keep Texas cattle out of this state?"

Dunham admitted he had heard about it, but kept to himself his late experience and ignominious rejection by Moore. He had a secret exultation in the thought of getting on that exclusive force, although he wasn't going to jump at anything again in that country. He wasn't sure yet whether it was his kind of a job.

Garland went on to tell him what Dunham had known since early that morning: that the Texas cattle were coming through earlier than expected, due, he supposed, to the uncommonly forward spring they'd had down in that country and the plentiful forage along the way.

The Texas cattlemen were in a rush to throw their beef on the market, there being a scarcity of animals fit for the butcher's block at that time, Kansas cattle not yet finished off sufficiently. They ought to have three or four weeks longer on the grass, Garland said, talking so much on that phase of it that Dunham began to suspect the fear of Texas fever was not the only motive behind this concentrated movement to stop the southern herds at the border.

Garland disclosed the fact that he was a cattleman himself, no great news to Dunham. His ranch was in the valley of the Arkansas River, but he ranged his herds to the Cherokee Nation line. He said Dunham could get a lot of experience riding the quarantine line that summer which would be useful to him if he wanted

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 to take a job with some outfit on the range later on.

Dunham admitted ambitions in that direction, Garland proposing at once that he take a job of quarantine guard, or trail-rider, with the assurance that he, himself, would give him a place when frost came and the guards would be needed no longer. The pay was fifty dollars a month, ten dollars more than cow hands were being paid on the range that summer, provisions, arms and ammunition supplied.

Garland said Bill would have to talk fast, for he was due to leave for the border in a few minutes. He had spent the day scouting for men, but had not found any he was willing to invest with the responsibility until he met Dunham.

A man need not be experienced with cattle for that job, Garland said. Cow hands in plenty could be hired, for they were anxious to jump their jobs on account of the adventure trail-riding promised, as well as for the better pay, but cow hands were needed on the range that time of the year, where they could do their country a whole lot more good, benefits to themselves out of consideration.

All right, said Dunham; he was willing to try it on. If they didn't like him they could fire him, and if it didn't suit him he'd feel free to quit. That was fair, Garland said, and a bargain was made.

So it came that Bill Dunham, late of Schoonover's nursery, with a fast-growing fame as a gunman without peer, took horse for the southern border of Kansas before the sun went down on his eventful day. He was

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 riding the forty-five-dollar horse recommended to him the night before by the mayor, heading away into far greater possibilities for trouble than he ever had dreamed of in all his romantic imaginings.

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employer had given him instructions on the point of rendezvous, appointed for the following day, and turned him loose to go his way alone. This gathering-place of the border defenders was at a certain crossing of the Cimarron River, which flowed toward the east for a matter of fifty miles so nearly on the line that Texas cattlemen used it as a marker to know when they were out of the Indian country. At places it formed the line between the two political divisions, and the point where the Kansas stockmen were gathering was one of these spots. There the old Texas cattle trail crossed.

Garland said he had to go home on his way down, which would increase the distance several miles and throw him late the next day in arriving at the meeting-place, an unnecessary detour which Dunham need not put his horse to the labor of merely for the sake of company. The most direct way to the border, he said, was to follow the old Santa Fé Trail to the crossing of the Arkansas, where it was cut by the cattle trail from Texas. It was as plain as daylight from there on, and Dunham no doubt would be joined by others heading down that way.

So it was that Dunham found himself riding the road

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 that he had tramped with Zora Moore the night before, over ground almost sacred to him out of its romantic traditions of the past. Here that hardy red-bearded uncle of his had journeyed back and forth between Independence and Santa Fé as wagon boss in the old freighting days. Many an adventurous tale Bill Dunham treasured away in his memory from the tongue of that bold-spirited man, whose eyes had looked upon these very scenes when perils shadowed every mile.

They were gone long ago, those times, thought Bill, and there was no more romance left in the world, in spite of the belief that had deluded him into venturing there. It was a sordid and depressing business when such a man as Kellogg pushed a quarrel and crowded a man until he had to slay in self-defense. A man could find romance of that kind in Kansas City, where there was shooting enough going on every day.

There was no aureate tint around the edges of that kind of stuff; it was not the romance Bill Dunham had taken it to be, this thing that pulled youth out of his heart as a greedy despoiler grabs flower, plant and all, leaving him with that old and lonely feeling pressing him down like a clod on a hill of corn.

It was a matter of fifty miles from Pawnee Bend to the line, Garland had told him, leaving it to his own contriving to get there next day without wearing his horse out, a thing of which he had not spoken. Bill, accustomed to the more civilized, furrow-plodding horses of lower altitudes, did not know what endurance was in the little brown bony creature that he straddled. It would have eaten up fifty miles without a stop and

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 been fresher at the end of the journey than the horses he was familiar with would have been at the end of twenty.

In his ignorance of his mount's capabilities, Bill figured on taking it easy until nine or ten o'clock that night, then bunking down on the soft side of a hollow. He could hit the road again at daybreak, and make it to the line about noon.

Not the same Bill Dunham in appearance as the one who had struck the he-woman of the railroaders' kitchen for a handout not more than three hours before, but a Bill Dunham who looked like any other range-roving cow hand, except for the uniform newness of his rig. Bill had preferred to keep his ignorance of usages and requirements from Garland, going to MacKinnon, instead, for advice.

He had bought boots and broad-brimmed hat, and blue-drilling overalls, wide in the leg, gray woolen shirt and a silk handkerchief as big as a tablecloth, it seemed to him, for his neck. Spurs he had passed up, fearing uncomfortable complications for both himself and horse if he should try them out. He had two blankets and a slicker back of his saddle, with some grub in the raw to hold him until he reached the camp, and a skillet to cook it, with a little pot for his coffee.

MacKinnon said he guessed the thirty-eight would do until he had another gun issued to him by the cattlemen. It didn't make so much difference what the size of the bullet was as the direction it went, when you came to figure it out, MacKinnon allowed. Bill said he guessed that was so, and they parted with mutual

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 respect, MacKinnon offering to take care of Bill's suitcase and granger clothes until good luck might bring him back to Pawnee Bend.

Bill hoped he could get past Moore's place without being seen, although he doubted if Zora would recognize him in that outfit and riding a horse, which he could do well enough to get by with it. If he could make it along there about dusk it would suit him better. To further the desired condition he loitered along, stopping now and then to turn his eyes around the country, which looked better to him, now that he had a foot within the door, than it did when he was tramping back to Pawnee Bend with his heavy suitcase earlier in the afternoon.

The bigger the country and the fewer people it contained, the greater a man's chances in it, Bill thought, which was not an original observation, to be sure. His pioneer ancestors had been urged along to the unoccupied places by the same business reasoning for the past hundred years or so. A man who likes arm-room has that comfortable feeling when he stands alone. Liberty is the big chance to such a man. He plants it in the solitudes and nurtures it to vigorous fruition.

There would be a farmhouse on every section of that land one of these days, said Bill; as soon as they learned what to plant there and how to make it yield, the farmers would drop down on that big, empty country like blackbirds out of a tree. Then there would be demand for trees such as nurseryman never confronted before, it was so bare and unfriendly in its nakedness.

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 Down in the broad flat valley of the Arkansas a nurseryman could plant his apple seeds and set out his evergreens in long straight rows, laying the foundation for certain prosperity. It was a pleasant thought; it took away some of the bitterness of regret and sense of loneliness that came of having a man's blood on his hands.

Bill drew rein where the land fell away in long slope into the valley, the point from which he had seen the first glint of Moore's lights last night. The sun had been down half an hour, but the shank of the day was getting long, and there was no sense in killing any more time. He would kick up a little speed, go by on a lope, and trust to luck for passing unrecognized.

He was ashamed for Zora, and her part in the inhospitable treatment he had received under her roof, or in the shadow of it, to be more exact. She had done him a good and friendly turn, and he didn't want to humiliate her by meeting her now, after their letting him walk away from there that morning like a tramp. Even though she had laughed at him with the bow-legged cowboy she was a good girl at heart, and she sure did have a pretty chin.

Somebody was coming along behind him; he'd kick up a little dust and go on. A little way along Zora Moore came tearing up at a clip a good deal faster than his own. She was riding a blaze-faced roan that carried its neck stretched and its ears back like it was out of humor, although Bill couldn't see the point of its displeasure. Zora was riding straddle, the wind pressing her hat-brim back, and she was so handsome and

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 light in the saddle any horse ought have been in gay good humor to have the pleasure of carrying her.

That was Bill's thought as he gave her a sidling look, only for which she would have passed him for a stranger in the road. She jerked her ill-favored horse up sharply.

"Why, Mr. Dunham!" she said, full of what Dunham could see was very respectful surprise.

Bill was embarrassed, together with the discovery that she was altogether prettier than he had thought and his desire to spare her. He didn't know where to begin, so he let it go with a solemn nod that was half a bow.

She fell in beside him, pulling her horse down to a walk.

"Mr. MacKinnon told me Hal Garland had hired you," she explained, talking fast, a little breathless, as if she had run to overtake him, "and you'd gone on south, but I thought you'd be miles ahead of me. I didn't know you in your new clothes. You sure do look fine!"

"If I look like I feel in this blame hat," said Bill, "my head's about as big as a hick'ry nut."

He wasn't sure she meant it, although she sounded sincere. He'd take it in small doses from that time onward; he'd aged a whole lot since last night.

"I'm glad Garland took you on," she said.

"Mr. Moore may fire me in the morning," he speculated.

"Not on your life he won't fire you!" she protested vehemently. "If I'd been around this morning he

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 wouldn't 'a' done it, either. I raised the roof when I got up and found you'd left. You don't know how cheap I feel, Mr. Dunham, over the way they treated you at our house this morning. I could crawl in a gimlet hole and pull it in after me."

"I wouldn't do that if I was you," Bill advised, with a gentle protestation that made her laugh.

"I guess he'll see now that my judgment of a man is as good as his own," she said with meaning emphasis, but looking straight ahead as she spoke. "When I hire a man I intend for him to stay hired, and I let him know it, good and plenty."

Bill appreciated her delicacy in referring to his late unpleasant meeting with Kellogg that way, sparing him the confusion, even the pain, of going at it untactfully with an effusion of words. She had a lot of sense as well as a lot of good looks; the way she held her chin when she spoke of hiring and firing was enough to prove to anybody she wasn't a scrub.

"I've got to go down there tomorrow," she announced, casually as if she spoke of riding to Pawnee Bend. "You might as well stay here tonight and go along with me."

"I'd be proud to," Bill said, "but I told Mr. Garland I'd bust right on through as fast as this old crowbait'd take me."

"He's not so bad," she said, running an impartial glance over the horse. "But it wouldn't hurt him any to lay over here till morning and put some hay in his hide. You'd miss 'em if you was to go on down to-

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 night—unless you've been in that country and know where the crossing is?"

"I never have seen the Cimarron River, much less the crossin' where they're goin' to meet, Miss Moore."

"You wouldn't know it was a river most of the time unless somebody told you, but this time of the year it's got some water in it along here. I've been over every inch of that country; I used to help pa out summers while he was gettin' his start. But I was only a kid then," she explained, as if to account for something that might be permitted then with propriety which would be out of ladylike bounds now.

"You could; I know by the way you ride that horse you could hold your own with any of them," Bill said, so serious and grave, nodding his head in his judicial habit, that the compliment was multiplied by five, at least.

"I've got a telegram for pa," Zora explained, pleased with this respectful sincerity where she was accustomed to either dumb monosyllabic embarrassment or shallow flippancy. "He gets a good many important ones about markets and business—I nearly always take 'em to him when he's out on the range. I have to chase him two or three days from camp to camp sometimes."

"I'd be proud if I could save you the trip," Bill said. "If you'll trust it to me I'll deliver it to Mr. Moore in the morning."

"You could," she said, gratefully.

Bill held out his hand for the telegram, but she didn't give it to him.

"You could start early in the morning and make it

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 there by noon. It's only forty-odd miles from here."

"I think maybe I'd better rack along to-night," he said, the memory of his departure from that spindle-columned mansion making him seem unfriendly and unforgiving.

They had come to the gate. Zora looked disappointed and hurt as she rested her hand on the lever to swing it open.

"That's saying you don't feel you're welcome here," she said, facing him squarely, a plea in her eyes to make amends. Bill felt like a kicked dog when she turned her head and said, a tremor in her voice as if she was going to cry: "You don't need to rub it in on me that way, Mr. Dunham."

"Miss Moore, it never crossed my mind!" Bill denied fervently, even though it was not entirely true.

"Then please stay. I'll go a piece with you in the morning and start you on the right road. If you don't stay I'll not let you take the telegram—I'll go myself, but I'll take another road."

"Any man," said Bill decisively, swinging to the ground, "would be a blame horse-thief to let you go."

Zora turned to him again with a smile, which was chiefly in her eyes, a friendly and feeling smile that made a man welcome beyond words. She flung out of the saddle to the dusty driveway leading past the bunk house to the corral, saying she would run in and send the kids out to unsaddle the horses, and for Bill to make himself ready for supper, which must be waiting.

Bill took a pretty keen look over his horse, "for leaks," he said to himself, pleased to see it had come

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 that far without anything springing. He thought maybe he'd made a very fair buy. In her end of the long bunk house Mollie Brassfield began to sing, the tune and words giving Bill a start. She sang dolefully, in an easy pitch which carried far:

Bill breathed easier. He was relieved to learn there were words to that song which a lady could sing, having heard another version that would have stood liberal expurgation before Mollie Brassfield could have given note to it in that public manner. She trailed on:

The two lads came running from the house, greeting Dunham with respectful eagerness, in wide contrast with their behavior that morning, when they, taking their example from their father's loud-mouthed ridicule, had made derogatory remarks in no very careful aside. Dunham took his roll from the cantle thongs and carried it into that part of the bunk house he had occupied the night before. Mollie Brassfield, pipe in her jaw, came out to see who had arrived. She squinted from her door at Dunham, sharply, not recognizing him until he spoke to her.

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 "Lord love you, Mr. Dunham! you're back ag'in, ain't you?" she said in her loud fashion of cordiality. "I'm sure glad to see you lookin' so hearty and pert"—one would have thought he had been gone at least a year—"after luggin' that heavy gripsack over to Pawnee Bend. Where are you bound for now?"

He made a short cut to the heart of the matter, at which she expressed her satisfaction.

"And I bet you must be as holler as a gourd, too," she said, sympathetically. "You come right in, Mr. Dunham, and set down at the table. I've got the nicest mess of greens I've picked this spring—they're powerful scarce in this country, I had to skirmish along the river a mile, I reckon, to gether a apurnful, but I got 'em."

Dunham thanked her, saying he thought he was supposed to eat with Zora and the boys. Mrs. Brassfield said she was sorry to miss his company, and she'd take him over a dish of greens if he wanted her to. Bill said they might take it as a reflection on their table, to which she agreed, saying some folks was techy about them things.

"I wouldn't want 'em to think I was bemeanin' their grub," she said quite seriously, "for you don't find two such good-hearted souls as Mizz Moore and Zora every day. That girl she hitched up to the buggy this morning and racked out after you as soon as she found you was gone, but I knowed she wouldn't overhaul you, 'cause I seen you cuttin' acrost when you went over the hill."

Bill inquired after Shad, to learn that he had been

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 ordered to take a chuck-wagon and supplies down to the Cimarron crossing by Moore, who had come home in a sweat and a stew about noon.

"There's goin' to be trouble down there, Mr. Dunham," she said, twisting her head to give her words gravity. "Them Texas fellers ain't the kind of men to be stopped after drivin' their cows all that ways. They'll fight. Somebody's goin' to git hurt, sure as shootin'."

"I wouldn't doubt it, ma'am," Bill agreed, thinking it looked like a pretty good line-up for trouble himself.

"Well, I can count on one that ain't a goin' to be hurt," she said with contemptuous confidence, "and that's my old man. He can smell powder furder 'n any man that ever was born. I'll bet that man can git in a crack you couldn't shove a caseknife through when bullets begin to hum, but to hear him talk and blow you'd think he was a big man from Bitter Crick. You take what he says in at one year and out at the other, Mr. Dunham, when he goes to tellin' you what he has done and's goin' to do. He's a powerful onery man."

Dunham was glad to have this confirmation from headquarters of his own private conclusions on Shad Brassfield's character. He took it for granted that the elastic word onery covered the trickery that was plain in Shad's shallow blue eyes, which were as shifty as botflies.

The boys came after Bill when they had put the horses away, so deferential in their manner that Mrs. Brassfield eyed them with suspicion. Dunham was

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 more saddened than swelled with pride by this respectful adulation, knowing, as Mrs. Brassfield did not know, the reason of his growth to heroic stature in their eyes since morning. Zora had told them of the shooting affair in town. This altered attitude of respect and admiration was only the sad proof of his own glum conclusion last night: that the difference between heroism and obscurity in that country was the difference between a hit and a miss.

Mrs. Moore was an unaffected, friendly woman, somewhat loud and effusive, like her husband. It was easy to see where Zora got her good looks. Mrs. Moore was still fresh, youthful and slim, some evidence of refinement about her such as school teachers who marry farmers retain a long time against the wear and tear of life's hardships in that situation.

Zora and her mother proved entirely worthy of Mollie Brassfield's high commendation. They took Dunham into the parlor after supper, where Zora played the organ and the boys wanted to get him into a game of seven-up. When their mother reprimanded them for their forwardness they changed around from chair to chair, gazing at Bill with great admiration and deep respect from different angles, as if trying to get hold of his method of putting notable gunmen on the shelf by observing his movements down to the slightest degree.

The parlor was a large room flaming with brightflowered wallpaper, so congested by furniture one had to move about with care. The chairs were adorned by cotton-twine doilies, the handiwork of Mrs. Moore,

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 so fashionable in that day in homes of that sort. An ingrain carpet, flowered with giant roses, showed worn paths between the larger pieces of furniture, like rabbit trails around shocks of fodder in a field. There was an enlargment in black crayon of Mrs. Moore and her husband, in wedding garments, hanging over the organ.

It was an inharmonious array of decorations and furnishings such as delights simple rustic people, quite in keeping with the outward design and color of the house, but altogether rich and grand in Bill Dunham's eyes. He was not at ease in the midst of so much splendor 'and evidence of wealth, for all the kindly questioning by Mrs. Moore on his past life and future intentions. He gave her his uneventful history up to the time of his arrival in Pawnee Bend, grateful from the well of his simple heart that none of them spoke of his encounter with Kellogg, or even hinted at it remotely.

It was impossible that they hadn't heard of it, he knew. Zora had seen MacKinnon, who would have told her the story with trimmings of his own. They kept silent on it, Dunham believed, because they felt instinctively that he would feel the indelicacy of such intrusion.

After a pleasant hour that seemed like a benediction on the straining adventures of his day, Dunham returned to the bunk house to take up, as it appeared to him, the troubles he had put down for this happy interlude. He stretched on the bunk he had occupied last night, to fall into a long train of thought and speculation that dispersed repose like a turmoil before his door.

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 He could not believe himself clear of that trouble with Kellogg, or understand the town's cool and unconcerned acceptation of the outcome. He thought of a coroner's inquest, of a summons and questioning; of a grand jury and a court. Then he remembered that Pawnee Bend was in territory beyond the jurisdiction of organized law. It seemed to be the rule there that if a man stood on the defensive and won, that ended the case. They simply carried the unfortunate party away and the victor went about his business unchallenged in the public regard.

But it was not so easy for Bill Dunham to obliterate a finished problem of that gravity from the slate and go ahead as before. It had seared him deeply, it bore on him like a galled place, bending his spirits down, troubling him to the core.

When he slept at last it was to fight over again the battle with Kellogg; to slip out of MacKinnon's door on tiptoe, edge along the wall to the corner and try to draw his gun against some cloying influence that bound his hand at his side. Or, weapon out, only to see a futile dribble from its muzzle, and the mocking insult of Kellogg's eyes as he threw down his gun to fire.

So it went, sweating, groaning, tossing; starting from his harassed sleep to wonder where he was, confused for a moment, staring out of the open door. Then to sigh, lie down and try it again, and wear the night out wearily at last, to rise dispirited, and so burdened by remorse that he would have leaped for joy if Shad Brassfield had arrived with the news that Kellogg had risen up from his cooling-board with a sardonic grin.

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was well past noon when Dunham arrived at the cattlemen's camp on the Cimarron. Zora had been as good as her word about giving him a start. She had accompanied him ten miles or more, posting him on the landmarks which would assure him he was following the trail, although there was little chance of straying from it.

Texas cattlemen had opened that trail a good many years ago on their drives to Fort Hays, and later to Dodge City. Cattle by hundreds of thousands had walked that unhappy road leading to the stockyards and slaughter; it was worn in the tough sod like a brand. The tracks of Shad Brassfield's wagon were in the dust; Dunham knew he only had to follow them to come to the place he sought.

The cattlemen had gathered under the cottonwoods on bank of the river, which had water enough in it to give it a fair right to that designation, although Dunham thought it would pass more respectably as a creek. There were several horses standing around, and a dozen or more men in sight, three of them sitting on the tongue of the chuck-wagon, which was propped up to a comfortable level by the neckyoke. It looked more like a casual meeting of travelers, who were passing a

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 pleasant pause in friendly chat, than a gathering of men on a grim and serious business.

Dunham approached at the hand-gallop his horse had held for miles, casting around for sight of Moore, thinking of the telegram he carried in the buttoned pocket of his shirt. Zora had enclosed it in a thick envelope, along with what written information he did not know. He spotted Moore as one of the trio roosting on the wagon tongue, although Moore did not recognize him in his new outfit until he pulled up in front of him.

Moore jumped up after giving the supposed cowboy a surprised squint, opened his mouth in uncouth expression of astonishment, which was as much real as pretended, lifting his big bunchy gray eyebrows until they moved his hat.

"Well, who in the hell said I was dead!" said Moore, with the feigned seriousness which, to be master of, was held one of the highest cowboy accomplishments. "This is him, gentlemen—this is the kid that killed Ira Ingram. Git down off your high horse, kid; let 'em take a squint at you in your new togs."

Bill grinned, trying to make the best of it, swung down a little stiffly, for that was the longest ride by many miles he ever had made in his life, and stood before his critics in all the rawness of unsullied hat and unbroken boots. It had jolted him to have Moore open up on him that way, with that derisive, belittling whang in his voice. It was, as he had thought before, as if he had said that fool thing himself, and must stand—to account for it all the rest of his life.

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 Syn. Gen-seï, Seki-seï, Tai-seï, and is used in Chinese medicine as a caustic against some diseases of the eye and malignant ulcers. But the chief use is as a drawing and painting material.

It should be observed that the name is a common name used by the common people for the most different blue dyes, and principally for the Japanese indigo (Dye of Polygonum tinctorium ) This latter substance has, however, its own proper name, namely,  or Ai-no-ori. True Kon-jo is blue copper-malachite.

A sandy variety of this ore is found also in Japan and is called or. It should be known that, after the introduction in Japan of European Ultramarine, the name Suna-konjo is also given by Japanese drug-merchants to this latter substance. Real Suna-konjo is mountain-blue.

Seventh,—, (sulphate of copper) is found in several Japanese coppermines either as an earthy aggregate, or in solution as “blue water,” both being disintegrating products of copper-pyrites formed by a long continued action of air and water. The Japanese also know how to prepare this salt by roasting copper-pyrites with free access of air and treating the roasted mass with water. This salt is, however, very impure. It can be found in every drug-shop under the name of or, Syn. Sei-seki-shi, Ao-ishi-no-ko. Since the earliest times it has been used in Chinese medicine as a caustic in eye-disease, blennorrhœa and bites of snakes and other animals. Its conserving properties for wood are also known to the Chinese and Japanese. Tan-pan is prepared either out of the mineral, or by evaporation of the “blue water” in Akita province of Dewa; Tokoro-no-kuchi in Noto; Satsuma; Ashiwo-yama in Kotsuke and many other places.

The preparation of cement copper out of the “blue water” by means of precipitation with iron or zinc, seems to be unknown to the Japanese.

Eighth.— (copper mass) seems to be rare in Japan, according to Burger l. c.

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 He felt a sick disappointment, a heavy dread of what was to come. He was thrown into such discord by this unexpected greeting, although why he had not expected it he could not tell, that all thought of the telegram and its accompanying note, which might have made things look a little different to Moore and put a bit on his loud tongue, went completely out of his head.

The gentlemen addressed by Moore turned from their talking and card-playing to gather around Bill, whom Moore drew away from his horse a little distance and turned with grave and silent demeanor, presenting him from all sides to the company. Bill couldn't hide the red of embarrassment, and something more, that he felt burning in his face, but he covered any other outward indication of what was going on inside. He hoped they'd let the thing drop if he took his initiation like a sport.

"This is the little gun he done it with, gentlemen," said Moore, lifting Bill's holster, out of which he had cut the end to give his extra-long barrel room.

The others exclaimed, and looked at each other with feigned surprise and incredulity, a thing which men of the range could do as well as actors on stages not so expansive as their own.

"Where did you think you was wanderin' off to, kid?" one inquired with gentle solicitation.

"Is Mr. Garland here?" Bill asked Moore, hoping to put an end to the uncomfortable experience before it grew any harder to bear, the telegram as completely forgotten in the roiling of his emotions as if it never had been.

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 "No, Garland ain't arrived yet, son. What was you wantin' Garland for?"

"He sent me down here. I met him in Pawnee Bend yesterday and he gave me a job ridin' the quarantine line."

Moore looked at Bill with comical expression of melting pity. He did it so well the effect was all he could have asked. Some of the crowd writhed and shrilled in high-keyed mirth, although each struggled manfully to hold back something for the real big laugh which everybody knew this was leading up to. The thought of being unmannerly or inhumane never entered their onedoor minds. It was lawful entertainment to them to badger a greenhorn, as it was delightful diversion to the savage Indians to burn strange specimens of the genus who fell into their hands.

"Hired you for the quarantine, huh? Kid, them Texas fellers they'd twist you up and fry you in grease. I told you yesterday morning we didn't have any use for boys down here, and I thought you had a litele bit of sense when you went back to town." Moore looked at him with glowering face, his humorous vein diverted in contemplation of this raw piece of effrontery. "I thought you was goin' to take a train out of this country?"

"So did I," Bill admitted, looking down in his abashed, nonplussed appearing habit, which didn't do him a bit of good before such a crowd as that.

"Garland's hirin' ain't final, it's only a beginnin'," Moore said hotly, taking it out on Bill. "I've got to put my OK on every man that goes out to ride that

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 line, and if I ever put my OK on such a green-gourd specimen as you it'd be with a redhot wagon-rod! You'd better git to hell out o' here before I lose my temper and knock what little sense you've got in you so damn fur you'll never be able to find it!"

Here a young man came swaggering forward, thumb hooked in his belt, scowling in apparently great displeasure. He posted himself squarely in front of Dunham, looking at him savagely, legs spread, mouth slewed in ugly expression, his whole carriage one of insolent challenge. He was two or three years younger: than himself, Dunham thought, not a bad-looking chap in spite of his malicious expression, real or assumed. He was evidently a cowboy, not one of the important men of the gathering, of the type born to the trade.

"No, he's not goin' to leave this camp till he settles with me!" this young man declared. "No man can't go around shootin' up my old pardner Arry Ingram just when he's throwin' a fit without comin' to grunts with me."

Moore waved his hand in gesture of delivery, while winks, grins and nudges ran round the expectant crowd.

"It's between you and him," Moore said, resigning all claim and authority over Dunham's future movements. "Step it off and shoot it out, for all I give a damn."

"Back off there, feller, and claw for your little gun!" the cowboy ordered, stepping back, hand thrown to his gun as if he meant it.

"I'm in on this!" another one said, coming in like a late creditor, all in a sweat. "I ain't around 'lowin'

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 no man to kill off a feller that owes me money before he's got a chance to pay me."

The older men moved aside a little to give them a clear field for their operations, well pleased with the show these young humorists were getting up to enliven the day. Bill Dunham felt like he was in a hot whirlpool. There was trouble spinning him around and nothing on the bank to grab. It was their notion of a joke, he knew, at the same time realizing how little it would take to make it serious. This time he must keep his temper, let them go as far as they would. He would stand almost anything short of trying to make him give up his gun.

His disappointment over losing that job again was very great, and he was sore and vindictive against Moore, whose arrogance he would willingly have brought low, but he didn't want to have trouble with the rest of them. He stood his ground, wondering how far they'd go with it, telling himself over and over again with feverish repetition of anxiety, that he must not pull his gun. No matter how far they crowded him, he must not pull his gun.

The two cowboys were glaring at each other as if this clash over avenging Ira Ingram's most diverting death had set them at odds.

"Don't crosshackle me, boy!" the second, and older, of them warned. "He's mine. He'll either hand me that ten dollars old Arry owed me or I'll spang 'im in the abdomen."

"You pusillanimous old ape!" the first one said, with fine scorn, "I've already promised them boots to Arry's

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 little brother. Don't you snake out any gun on my meat, feller!"

"New boots!" said the first comedian, very much like the boys at school used to say the same thing when one of their number appeared so arrayed, all crowding up to trample and spit on the unsullied leather and humble the pride of the wearer.

"New boots!" the other one squeaked, in voice of delight that was meant to asperse the feminine character of the owner.

With these words he flipped out his gun and threw a shot close enough to Bill's left foot to splash sand over the offending boot. The other fellow came in with a whoop, pitching lead considerably nearer Bill's other foot than he would have chosen for the tranquillity of his nerves.

Bill stood still, thinking he ought to be getting used to that sort of thing, and it wouldn't do to lose his temper over it this time and go after his gun. Whatever happened, so long as they didn't plug him through the foot, he must not go after his gun.

It was pretty hard to stand there, blinking at each chuck of lead in the sand, some of the bullets so near he could feel the dirt creep under him, and keep his hand away from his gun. It was the old imposition increased and aggravated. They had picked him again for the under dog.

Bill knew he could turn their festival into mourning by one swift pass for his gun, and the temptation was so strong it made him quiver; he could make them throw dirt as high as the trees hunting cover, but it

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 wouldn't do to take the risk of having it turn out something else. He must keep his hand away from that gun—keep his hand away from that gun!

Shad Brassfield, who had been asleep in the wagon making up what he had lost in the night drive, popped his head out of the front end, boozy with sleep. When he saw the camp had not been assailed by the Texans he hustled over the dashboard and hopped to the ground. He hit it as the last chamber was emptied at Dunham's feet, recognizing the victim of the torment as he struck.

"Well, who—in—the—hell said I was dead!" Shad drawled, with such obfuscated drollery that Dunham himself would have laughed if the joke had been on somebody else.

In the roar that resulted from Shad's ludicrous appearance and rusty, amazed exclamation, which could not have been funnier from the original source, Bill turned to his horse. He stopped a moment before mounting, to turn a look on the two young men who had picked him for easy money. His face was as white as if he had risen from the amputation of a leg without ether, and there was a cold fury in his eyes that made the younger of them catch his breath and start back, his empty gun in his hand.

The older one scowled, sore that their show had fallen so flat. He was cramming cartridges into his gun; he mumbled some malediction under his breath, but there was no blood in his lips, and there was a tremor in his hand.

Moore was braying like a mule in the turmoil of

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 laughter which the combination of gunnery and Brassfield had thrown him into. He stood with hands on his sides, bending and straightening, bending and straightening, as if he had a colic, all the time letting out a bray that would have done credit to any hybrid on the range.

Dunham's arm rustled the letter in his shirt pocket as he took up his reins. He paused, reaching to unbutton the pocket and deliver his charge. Moore looked up at that moment, strangled and purple, reared back and let out a louder howl than any before it.

"Who in the—yaw-haw-haw—hell—aw-aw-haw-haw—" he said, and gave it up, to double upon himself and let out a stream of laughter that was as truly obscene in Bill Dunham's ears as any sound ever issuing from the mouth of man. Bill left the letter where it was and rode away, slowly, heading down the river, which ran along there for a little way in a general direction toward the east.

A little way on he stopped, thinking he ought to go back and give Moore the letter with its enclosure, which might be of the first importance to him. There was where Moore caught his breath. He shot the hateful taunt after Dunham, who heard the crowd go off again in another roar. To clinch his determination to let Moore whistle for his telegram, somebody sent a bullet over Bill's head. It was high, but Bill heard it go over him with a noise similar to that he often had heard running ahead of him through solid ice—a sharp, diminishing sigh—when skating on a cold still day.

Garland rode into camp at sundown. His first word to Moore was:

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 "I picked up a good man in Pawnee Bend yesterday. Did he get here?"

"If you mean a kid by the name of Dunham, he got here, all right. But went on ag'in, like the Irish section boss's train."

Moore had to have a laugh at his own wit and the recollection of Dunham's reception in that camp.

"Why? What happened to him?" Garland inquired, looking around queerly.

"Oh, some of the boys took exceptions to his new boots and splashed dirt on 'em," Moore explained, in the casual, careless way of a man who discusses a trifle.

Garland asked for particulars, that queer puzzled look in his face that made the situation all the funnier to Moore. It was as if Garland had trusted a stranger with his pocketbook and couldn't quite get it through him when he came back and found the fellow had hopped. Moore supplied details with zest; he related with loud mirth the comical incident in Bill Dunham's history that had set the range laughing.

"Yes, I heard about that," Garland said, unmoved.

"The damn fool was layin' for Ford Kellogg that night, just before my train got in. My girl Zora got him out of that and saved his fool hide by tellin' him I'd give him a job ridin' trail. She had to do something; she hated to see the fool boy killed. But I told him—hell—I told him he wouldn't no more do for a quarantine-line guard than he would for president of the Santa Fé railroad. Him layin' for Ford Kellogg with that blame little toy gun he's packin' around!"

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 "Well, he got him yesterday afternoon," Garland told them, quietly.

"Got him what? A drink, or a new necktie?" Moore scoffed, certain of himself and his wisdom in keeping clear of a sell.

"Got him through the heart at sixty feet, with that same little old toy gun," Garland replied in his quiet way, but with a stress of exultation over Moore.

"He got him from behind if he done it!" Moore declared, resenting the news. "He never got Ford Kellogg in a fair and open fight!"

The others were crowding around to listen, for the name of Ford Kellogg was a familiar one from the Arkansas to the Rio Grande.

"No, it wasn't a fair fight," Garland admitted. "The kid gave him every advantage a man could ask for in a sure thing. He let Kellogg get to his gun before he ever made a start for his own. I was across the street, and saw it all. Dunham's the quickest man with a gun, and the surest, I ever saw in my life, and I've seen some purty damn speedy ones, I'm here to tell you."

"I told you!" an old cowman said, nodding sagely around at his comrades. "I could see that boy was holdin' himself in like his arm was in a bear trap. I told you!"

"Where did he go?" Garland inquired.

"Off down the river," somebody replied.

Moore was standing by the wagon, gripping the tire with one big hand, looking like a man who had heard bad news from home. The ready words were frostbitten on his forward tongue; his gizzard felt cold.

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 "If that boy ever gets mean and takes a notion to clean up on some of you fellers that thought you was havin' a hell of a time with a granger, I'd hate to be in your boots," Garland said.

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the camp of the enemy; but it was not his enemy.

That was Bill Dunham's thought as he crossed the river and headed south, keeping to the old cattle trail. There was no loyalty owing to those behind him, not even as citizens of his native state. They were to him as strangers in a strange land, and he had contemptuous doubt on the loyalty of any one of them to anything in the soil of Kansas but the grass. They were exploiters, out to profit on a range they did not own, lease or pay tribute for the use of to the extent of one lone dime.

They had insulted him, put affronts on him, and hurt him as cruelly as he ever had been injured in his life. It was worse that he had the means within the reach of his hand to salt their hides, but had restrained his passions out of respect to himself and consideration for his own internal peace. He didn't want to kill anybody else. It was better to bear insult and injustice than to face the agony and self-crimination, and the sweat of remorse in the night.

He had a grudge to pay those Kansas cowmen, and the shortest cut to it was to ride down until he met the Texas drover, offer his services, pay or no pay, in helping get his cattle to Pawnee Bend. He knew there was

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 no law to sustain the action of the Kansas cattlemen, while he felt that justice and fair-dealing made a strong plea for the Texas drover who had herded his cattle more than a thousand miles to come to a market outlet.

It was base injustice to turn him back. If one man's arm and gun could be of any use to the Texan, Dunham was in the proper frame of mind to serve.

Dunham encountered the Texas cattle much nearer the line than he had expected. From the lolling, unconcerned, unprepared attitude of the men who had gathered at the line to repel them, he had thought the Texans at least a day or two away. They were not more than five miles south of the river, where they apparently had ended that day's march. The cattle, to the number of many thousand, it appeared to Dunham, were spread out grazing, cowboys on the edges of the herd holding them in compact formation, which the luxuriant grass of that section permitted.

Bill headed for the nearest of these herdsmen, who faced his horse around to watch his approach with suspicious attention. This young man returned a civil reply to Bill's friendly greeting, although he was bristling with hostile suspicion. On Dunham's inquiry for the boss, he pointed out a man riding toward the chuck-wagon, which was anchored on a knoll a quarter-mile or so to the south of the trail.

This man also squared around in the same suspicious fashion when he saw Dunham making a line for him. He passed greetings reservedly, a look of stern inquiry in his direct gray eyes.

Dunham introduced himself, to be told by the boss

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 of the outfit that his name was Hughes. There was a carriage of authority, a careworn wariness, about the man that made it unnecessary to inquire whether he was owner of the herd or boss of the outfit. Like Garland, he was the type of man whose actions were not determined by somebody else.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Dunham?" he inquired, civilly enough, but coldly, as the leader of one hostile force addressing the emissary from another.

"I don't hardly know how to get at it, Mr. Hughes," Bill confessed, bending his head cogitatively, to look up presently with a timid grin. "But I guess I might as well tell you first as last that one man hired me in Pawnee Bend yesterday to ride this quarantine line of theirs along here, and when I got down here to-day another one fired me. I'm out scoutin' for a job."

Hughes looked him over silently, but with no offense in his grave measurement, his exact weighing, as it appeared to be. He was a man well past fifty, broad in the shoulders, straight, hard-muscled, brown. He wore a mustache clipped close t6 his lip, which added to the naturally stern lines of his features.

Not an unkindly man in appearance; unmistakably a firm one. His coat was unbuttoned, showing his pistol carried in shoulder holster; a weather-beaten, broad-brimmed hat that once had been white, was settled firmly down to his ears. The crown of it was pushed up to its full height, every wrinkle and dent smoothed out of it with meticulous care, it seemed.

"If they've sent you over here to find out how many men I've got, bud, I'll tell you, and you can trot on

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 back," he said. "I've got thirty besides the cook. That's not a big force to handle a herd of four thousand cattle on the trail, but we've handled 'em, and we expect to go right on handlin' 'em up to Pawnee Bend. You can go on back and tell your folks that."

Hughes spoke kindly, without inflection of sarcasm or hostility. He made a gesture toward his grazing cattle as if to say "there they are; count them for yourself."

"Blamed if I know how to get at it!" said Bill, in genuine perplexity. "I'm not one of that crowd; I owe 'em a grudge I'd travel a thousand miles to pay, but danged if I know how I'm to get at it to convince you I'm straight."

"Maybe the best way to do it would be to tell a straight story," Hughes suggested, his careworn features relieved by a smile.

Bill told him a straight story, leaving nothing to his discredit, or what might set him up for ridicule, out of it, down to the shooting at his new boots and Moore's contemptuous refusal to allow him to go to work. He said nothing about his fight with Kellogg, fearing it might sound like a boast.

"How long have you been in this part of the country?" Hughes inquired.

"I'yve been here—I've been here—why, only three days!" Bill replied, amazed that calculation proved it to be no longer, so much had piled up on him in that time.

Hughes looked at him kindly, appearing to understand and sympathize.

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 "Go over to the wagon and turn your horse out," he directed. "You'll find an old Mexican feller there; he'll give you something to eat if you're hungry. I'll be along direc'ly and we'll talk it over."

"I don't care anything about pay—I'll help you drive your cattle to Pawnee Bend without a damn cent of pay!" Bill declared passionately. "There's something between me and that man Moore wider than the Cimarron."

"We'll talk it over later on," Hughes replied.

He rode away, leaving Bill to go to the wagon as directed, or to any other place that might suit his inclination better.

Bill spent the rest of the afternoon at the wagon, making indifferent headway with the Mexican cook, whose English vocabulary was not wide, such as he was master of being altogether too emphatic and passionate for a man of Bill Dunham's disposition. Hughes did not come to the wagon until nearly sundown, after the cook had sounded a long blast on a conch-shell. He was accompanied by a young man of about Dunham's age, whom he introduced as his son.

Young Hughes was an alert, lithe man, fresh and boyish in appearance. He was shingled and shaved in striking contrast with the other men of the outfit who began to ride in for supper. He shook hands with Dunham, but with something of reserve in his manner, in the expression of his eyes, not in keeping with the ingenuous frankness that Dunham believed naturally was his. They had discussed the presence of this stranger in their camp, Bill knew. Suspicion attached

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 to him in their eyes. Dunham rightly divined they considered him a spy who wished to attach himself to their force for some dishonest purpose.

They did not appear to think it necessary to introduce Dunham any farther to the company, although the cowboys addressed him civilly as they sat around with their well-filled tin plates, including him in the conversation as if he belonged. But there was an air of restraint over them, the elder Hughes being especially silent and thoughtful, as if the troubles which lay ahead of him at the Kansas line wore on him'wearily.

Dunham had the appetite of a clear conscience, in spite of the cloud he knew himself to be under. He contrasted the courtesy they extended him in this camp, suspected of no honest purpose that he was, with the treatment he had met at the hands of the Kansas cattlemen and their employees. If there was anything ridiculous in his appearance or behavior, these strangers were gentlemanly enough to keep it to themselves. There was not even a covert grin or a sly wink passed, as far as Dunham saw, and his observation was more than passing keen.

As they finished supper some of the cowboys rode off to relieve their comrades who were drawing the herd together preparatory to bedding down for the night, the elder Hughes issuing brief orders. A few remained in camp, these stretching out to relax their saddle-weary limbs, smoking and passing the usual chaff that goes among a crowd of young fellows, even when they stand with one foot on the brink of trouble, as these were

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 situated that placid evening on the south shore of the Cimarron.

"You've changed your appearance since I saw you in Pawnee Bend yesterday evenin'," young Hughes remarked, quite affably, offering Dunham his tobacco as he spoke.

"Yes, I got this set of harness to suit a job I thought I had," Dunham explained, easy of conscience and free of embarrassment, quite an illumination falling upon his affairs.

"I couldn't see,why you didn't grab that job they offered you in town," young Hughes, whom the others addressed as Bob, seemed to wonder. "Nothin' to do but loaf around, with free drinks as long as a man could stand up under 'em, I guess, and everything his own way. City marshal is another name for king in a little town like Pawnee Bend."

"I guess I was born common," Dunham laughed, but with indifferent success, trying to appear easy when he was beginning to squirm in the discomfort that is the plague of true modesty. "Well, I wasn't cut out for a lazy man's job, anyhow."

"You didn't say anything to me about killin' Ford Kellogg up in Pawnee Bend yesterday," Hughes said. "Maybe that was such a triflin' occurrence in your daily life you forgot it."

Hughes was a little sarcastic about it. At the mention of Ford Kellogg, and the part Dunham had borne in bringing his notorious career to a close, the cowboys rolled over to lean on their elbows and stare, some of them sitting up with startled suddenness to look at

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 this unassuming stranger who had accomplished a feat so incredible. Ford Kellogg was as well known to them, in his far-reaching notoriety for putting men out of the world, as Jesse James.

"I didn't want you to think I was travelin' around to advertise it," Dunham replied, looking down in the habit that had made more than one person take him for a thick-headed slow fellow before that day.

"How does it come Moore and them fellers let a slick gun-slinger like you leave 'em?" Hughes asked, accusation of duplicity and low designing in his words.

"You've got me wrong," Dunham protested almost indignantly, looking frankly into Hughes's eyes. "I never slung a gun on but one other man before in my life."

"I don't see why a man that could beat Ford Kellogg to his gun would stand still and let a bunch of cowboys shoot dirt all over him, or why they'd have the nerve to try it if they knew how handy he was with his iron."

"They didn't know it, Mr. Hughes," Dunham assured him gravely. "The man that hired me—you must have heard him offer me a job if you were at the hotel with the crowd?" Dunham appealed suddenly to Bob Hughes.

"Yes, I heard him say he could give you a job and saw you walk away with him," Bob honestly admitted.

"He was to meet me down here—his name's Hal Garland—but I arrived ahead of him. The news of my—of that—business with Kellogg hadn't got down that far. I could 'a' stopped them boys peggin' at my

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136

Rat. My lord?

K. Rich. The sun will not be seen to-day;

The sky doth frown and lower upon our army.

I would these dewy tears were from the ground.

Not shine to-day! Why, what is that to me

More than to Richmond? for the self-same heaven

That frowns on me looks sadly upon him.

Nor. Arm, arm, my lord! the foe vaunts in the field.

K. Rich. Come, bustle, bustle; caparison my horse.

Call up Lord Stanley, bid him bring his power:

I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain,

And thus my battle shall be ordered:

My forward shall be drawn [out all] in length,

Consisting equally of horse and foot;

Our archers shall be placed in the midst:

John Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Earl of Surrey,

Shall have the leading of the foot and horse.

They thus directed, we will follow

In the main battle, whose puissance on either side

Shall be well winged with our chiefest horse.

This, and Saint George to boot! What think'st thou, Norfolk?

Nor. A good direction, warlike sovereign.

This found I on my tent this morning.

'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold,

For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.'

K. Rich. A thing devised by the enemy!

Go, gentlemen; every man to his charge:

 289 vaunts: boasts

290 caparison: put trappings on

301 winged: flanked

303 direction: order of battle

305 Jockey; cf. n.

306 Dickon: a cognomen of the Devil, with a quibble on the nickname 'Dick' for Richard

bought and sold: i.e. betrayed for a bribe

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 boots"—the cowboys grinned when he mentioned them, all eyes on the offending tight leather—"and I'm here to tell you, Mr. Hughes, it's a whole lot harder to keep from shootin' than it is to shoot, sometimes."

"You said something, kid!" a gray-haired cowpuncher said, nodding in friendly endorsement through the smoke of his cigarette.

"And I'm goin' to tell you why I didn't pull my gun and stop their fun," Dunham said.

The cowboys leaned to hear him, some of them moving nearer. The Mexican cook, who had appeared to have such an indifferent ear for Dunham's conversation earlier in the day, stopped rattling his pans to come up behind the group and hear the tale this stranger, who seemed about to turn out somebody after all, was to tell.

Bill Dunham gave them the true story of the death and miraculous resurrection of Ira Ingram, described by Shad Brassfield as the fittified man. He told how Moore had laughed down his aspirations to a job with the revivified Ira's demand to be told who had numbered him with the dead, and how he had been met with the sally at the camp across the river. They heard him through with straight faces, although it cost them a mighty effort to make it, as Dunham could see.

"They throwed it up to me like I was the one that said the damn fool thing!" Bill complained.

There they let go and laughed, the younger ones rolling on the ground, even sedate, troubled Hughes shaking under the violent irruption of his mirth. Dunham felt so relieved to have it out of his craw, and so

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 warm and friendly toward them all for their respectful restraint, that he laughed with them, more comfortable and at home among them than he had felt anywhere since coming to the land of short grass.

"I was so blame glad," he resumed when the gale of laughter passed, "to hear that dang fittified man wasn't dead, I made up my mind right there I'd never lose my temper and hit the first lick over anything like that again. That's why I let 'em go to the end of their string."

This frank recital of his adventures appeared to put Dunham on better standing with Hughes, who asked him how many men were gathered on the other side of the river. Twenty-five or thirty, Dunham said, but more were coming. It was their intention to assemble a hundred men, Garland had told him. Let 'em come, Hughes said; he was bound to go on to Pawnee Bend and load his cattle even if they assembled the whole male population of the state to stop him. Bob had been to Pawnee Bend to order the cars, which were to be on the siding, with engines to pull them, five days from that day.

He had to get his cattle to Pawnee Bend by that time, Hughes said, or lose heavily in demurrage on the cars and head tax to the Indians if he kept his cattle in the Cherokee Nation. Under the arrangement by which cattle were allowed to pass through these Indian lands the herd must move toward its destination at least ten miles a day. Hughes had only one more move; his time would be up to be clear of the Indian country the day after tomorrow morning.

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 It would mean bankruptcy to him if he was forced to turn back. He could not drive eastward to the railroad that crossed the Indian Territory; there would be no course open to him but to return to Texas. He had a herd of young beef cattle, especially bought up on a speculative venture for the drive. If he could hit the market within ten days it meant five or six dollars, or maybe ten dollars, a head more to him than his beef would bring three weeks later, when Kansas stock would begin to pour into the yards.

Hughes was bitter against the Kansas cattlemen, whose action in establishing a quarantine line at the border of their state had been spread far down the Texas trails. He could not believe that healthy Texas cattle spread disease; he denied that such a thing ever had been proved. Any plague that had carried off Kansas cattle was purely local, he contended, and he would appeal to the federal court for relief if he felt that he could get action in time to do him any good, which was a hope without foundation. So he had to get through to the railroad on his own resources, and he was bound to do it.

He wasn't going to recognize their authority by seeking a parley with them, Hughes said. Up to that hour they had not sent him any word of their intentions; as far as he was concerned he had no official information, if it could be dignified by such a name coming from a band of ruffians, that any quarantine had been established against Texas cattle. His intention was to drive to the river in the morning and start across. If it had to be a fight, he'd give them the best he had.

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 Texas men had made that trail, Hughes said; it belonged to them. He had driven over it twenty years ago, delivering cattle to Custer at Fort Hays, before ever a Kansas man thought of putting a herd on the range. It was too perilous for them in those days; they had to wait till Texas men made the country safe, and now they showed their gratitude, as well as their valor, by coming down to the line in overwhelming force to deny honest men their rights. If they wanted a fight they could have it, and he'd give them the best he had.

He repeated that declaration pointedly, as if to drive it into Dunham's understanding. Bill knew he was talking in the expectation that he would sneak away during the night and carry all this back to the Kansas guards.

This evidence of distrust made Dunham uncomfortable, although he was not troubled by any upbraiding of conscience for his act in crossing the river and offering his services on the Texan's side. There was something between him and John Moore far wider than the Cimarron, indeed. Youth is generous in its forgiveness of injuries, injustices and slights, but ridicule will fire its resentment so fiercely that all the placative oil in the cruse of hypocrisy will not ease the brand.

The cattleman wound up his frank presentation of the situation with a sigh. It pressed upon him heavily, as it touched with a troubled shadow even the lightest mind in the company. The stars were out above the herd, which had settled down to the night's repose. All was quiet down there, where vigilant riders circled the satisfied cattle. Hughes stood looking down at

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 the dark blotch the big herd made on its bedding-ground, dim through the night.

"So, if you're on the square, Dunham," he said by way of finality, "and want to prove it, figure out some way to get that herd across the river and on the trail to Pawnee Bend."

Hughes said this in a grim jesting way, as if proposing what he knew to be at once beyond the inclination and limitations of the man addressed. Dunham felt it as a taunt and a mockery, as if Hughes had said: "You're crooked, and I know it, but we are gentlemen. We scorn you, and let you go your way."

But that proposal, mockingly made, set the wheel of Dunham's thoughts turning. He got out his new blankets and stretched himself on a cowboy's bed for the first time in his life, to lie for hours looking at the stars, planning and plotting, scheming and devising, not toward any undertaking that might add to his own fame or profit, but to some bold stratagem or shrewd maneuver that would humble the loud arrogance of John Moore and make his name a jest on the tongues of men.

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next morning the herd was on the march toward the crossing of the Cimarron. Hughes appeared considerably mollified in his bearing toward Dunham, who rode with him and Bob at the head of the long line of cattle, so thoroughly trail-broken after their months of this daily routine they filed along like soldiers.

Hughes said the Cimarron was treacherous, like all those western Kansas rivers, full of quicksands in which cattle would mire down, causing endless trouble and delay to pull them out. There always was more or less panic in a herd when one of those quagmires was struck, with attendant loss and suffocation.

To avoid such a calamity as this, Hughes was going to ford the river at the old crossing, instead of trying to get over at some other place not so strongly guarded, where the river ran entirely inside the Indian country. The law was on his side, as far as any law went in that country, and he would proceed under the assumption that he had a law-abiding citizen's right to follow a public road. He had not been informed, officially, of anybody's objection.

So Hughes talked as he rode at the head of his herd, as if trying to assure himself, or build up an argument that would stand him in good service when needed. He

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 was strained to the highest pitch of anxiety, and in spite of his apparently calm determination to proceed Dunham could see that he realized the gravity of his situation and the hopelessness of trying to fight his way into Kansas against such heavy odds. Ruin was waiting at the old trail crossing of the Cimarron.

The Texans were not to be left long without official notification of the quarantine against their cattle. While they were still two miles from the river a delegation of Kansans made their appearance under the leadership of John Moore, whom Dunham recognized some distance off.

Dunham said he believed he'd drop back a piece, as he wasn't looking for trouble right then, and thought it would be for the good of all concerned if he passed unrecognized.

"I guess you've got your own reasons," Hughes said, his opinion of Dunham's valor appearing to take a slump.

"I'd rather they didn't know I'm with you yet a while," Dunham said, putting it in the form of a request.

Bob Hughes flushed, something hot on his tongue, which his father stopped by lifting his hand.

"Let him go," he said. "Maybe he's got better reasons than we can see right now. I never judge a man before he's tried."

Dunham thanked him, and rode back at a canter as if he had been sent on some detached duty. The head of the long string of cattle came to a halt when Hughes pulled up to wait the arrival of the Kansas delegation.

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 All down the winding column the cattle stopped as if at command, the cowboys who rode along the flanks leaning to look forward anxiously, aware that they had come to the big obstacle in that long trail at last.

Dunham rode back a safe distance, where he drew in beside the cattle, which were already beginning to break ranks and browse on the tempting dewy grass. One of the herders rode up, inquiring anxiously if the big fight was coming off. Dunham said he expected it was about to pop. They watched the conference, which was soon over. The Kansas men, having force behind them, were not pushed to the use of many words.

Hughes and his son sat looking after the Kansas men as they galloped back to the river, making no move to proceed. The cattle spread wider and wider, unchecked by the disheartened cowboys, who realized gloomily that they had come to the end of that drive. Dunham rode forward.

Father and son still sat in that crushed, hopeless attitude, drooping in their saddles, watching the band of riders kicking dust for the forbidden line. As Dunham came up, Hughes turned to his son, throwing out his hand in a despairing gesture that seemed to say it was all over.

"Well, Dunham, your friends say we can't take this herd into Kansas on any kind of terms," Hughes said.

"He knows damn well what they said without hearin' 'em!" Bob charged hotly. "You don't need to tell him."

"Yes, I knew about what they'd say," Dunham ad-

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 mitted with the calm frankness of a clear conscience.

But he was nettled by their meanness in throwing their suspicions in his face that way, although he reasoned they hardly could be blamed. What they expected he was to gain by attaching himself to them that way passed his understanding.

"We're prohibited from even waterin' in the Cimarron," Hughes said bitterly. "They're afraid the river'll carry our poison, but I reckon you know all about that."

Bill flushed under the repeated nagging and harping on that fool note of his treason and treachery. He was getting tired of it. His long solemn face was as earnest as honesty could pull it when he pinned Hughes with a look so hard it was almost like an icicle thrust against his hide. The two little bony processes in the bridge of Bill's big nose, uncommonly prominent in that structure, grew white as he drew his long face a bit longer, and sat there drilling his sentiments into the Texas cowman's understanding without the assistance of words.

Hughes had ridden the trails a long time, and met all manner of men. He knew pretty well he had hold of one now who had taken about all he would carry without bucking off the load.

"I didn't mean any offense, Dunham," he said.

"You come purty damn close to givin' it," Dunham replied.

Bob Hughes gave his horse a little prod with the spurs, not that he had to charge to get up to Dunham, but to take some of his rising spleen out on something,

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 it seemed. The animal jumped, and reared against the hard rein the young man pulled to restrain it.

"You may be a big gunman where you come from," Bob said, fury in his face, hand on his pistol, "but you don't look big enough to throw a scare into me!"

The elder Hughes stopped this foolish bid for trouble by lifting his hand in the commanding gesture of silence that seemed so potent between father and son. The young fellow subsided, but sat there scowling, hand on his gun, a good deal more bluff than earnest in the whole demonstration, for a man in hotter pickle of passion than he could have seen that Dunham had no intention of taking up any quarrel between them.

"I've heard a good deal of talk about fightin' your way through," Dunham said, addressing the elder man, maybe just a tinge of slight and depreciation in his tone. "When are you goin' to start?"

"If we didn't have anything but ourselves to take across that river we'd go," Hughes replied, his look fixed on the cottonwoods which marked the stream.

"Nobody would object in that case," Dunham reminded him. "That would be easy enough. But it happens you've got a million or so cows—"

"Four thousand," Hughes corrected the extravagant estimate.

"They look like at least a million to me," said Bill. "The next thing is, what are you goin' to do about it?"

"Men can't put up a fight against three or four to one, and it would be that if I could fetch all of mine up to the front, and ford a herd of cattle across a tricky river at the same time," Hughes replied to this not very

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 well hidden taunt. "They've got us, and they know it."

"Um-m-m," Dunham grunted, his eyes on the ground, his mind so completely concentrated on something of his own that he seemed miles away from the Cimarron and the troubles lined up at its crossing that bright morning hour.

"To be honest with you, Dunham, I thought they'd put up a bluff that a bigger one would meet and we might strike a compromise between them. But it ain't a bluff. All I can see to be done is hold my herd here till I go to Wichita and get a lawyer to head some of Uncle Sam's men down this way. I guess the United States marshal might be able to argue with them fellers to a better effect than I can."

"It might take a week or two to get action that way," Dunham seemed to reflect, as if he studied his own problem. "You'd either have to countermand your order for cars, or pay demurrage on what you've ordered, with no tellin' how much charge for the train crews that are to be there to pull you to Kansas City. That'll eat you holler in no time."

"Well, if you've got something better to offer, Dunham, spit it out,' Hughes invited, hard in the scorn that only a hopeless man can give his words.

"Hell!" Bob sneered.

He gave his horse another rake with his big spurs. It sidled and pranced, writhing in the smart of it, furious against the restraint it could not understand.

"I don't mind tellin' you, Mr. Hughes," Dunham spoke evenly, learning rapidly and well the advantage of a calm man over a passionate one, "that I'm not so

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 much interested in helpin' you get your cattle to Pawnee Bend on your account as I am on my own."

"I'm willin' to make it worth while to you, Dunham." Hughes turned to him slowly, taking his eyes reluctantly from the straggling line of stumpy cottonwoods, a light of understanding appearing to break in them suddenly. "If this is part of the hold-up, if this is you fellers' way—"

"I'm not biddin' for money—I'd see you in hell before I'd take a dime!" Dunham cut in, almost losing the rein over his temper there. He grabbed it again, frantically, feeling himself cooling from the nose downward, in that easing relief that comes over a man when he has rushed to save something and found it safe.

"How in the hell do we know what you're out for?" said Bob, resenting this vehement protestation.

"There's a man on the other side of that river I want to ride till he slobbers like a clovered horse," Dunham said, ignoring Bob, looking in his turn at the sentinel cottonwoods along the weak little river which was a barrier that day between so many men and their desires. "I want to ride that man till his head hangs so low his tongue'll lop the road when he walks! I want to soak him so hard he'll walk knock-kneed all the rest of his life. If I can bust that man I'll bust him, and that's what I'm over here to try."

Hughes looked at him with the slow-waking expression of a man who is beginning to see things in their proper shape. Dunham didn't wait for yea, nay nor maybeso, but pushed on with his bill of intentions.

"Your dang cattle may be clean and they may be

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 lousy for all I know, but I hope they're so full of p'ison they'll drip it along the road. If I can help you put 'em through I'm here to do it, but I want you to understand I'm not goin' to tackle the job because I want to help a set of Texas fellers out of a hole. I don't give a damn whether any more Texas cattle ever make it across the Kansas line if I can put these over. I'll not be doin' it for you, but for myself. If I can bust that man, I'll bust him!"

"They're clean cattle," Hughes said, not vehemently as a man might be expected to speak in a matter of such heated controversy, but with the disheartened weariness of utter futility. "What have you got in mind, Dunham?"

The cattleman spoke with growing respect, more as man to man. Even Bob sneaked his hand away from his gun, still surly and sour, but no longer feeling as if he must fight somebody, the handiest man preferred.

"It's a wild scheme, maybe it's impossible," Dunham replied, lapsing into his inscrutable, self-communing silence, which he kept for some moments, his gaze on the trampled road. "It's not likely you'd think much of it, Mr. Hughes"—looking up suddenly—"so I guess I'd better keep it under my hat. I'm gittin' damn tired of bein' laughed at in this country, anyhow."

"If you can overlook what's been said, Dunham, we'll cross it out and start over," Hughes proposed, offering his hand.

Dunham shook hands with him solemnly, taking the initiative himself with Bob, whom he knew how to forgive better than one who had not misjudged and

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 been misjudged would have known. They all felt easier for the truce. They drew breath with a lighter and freer feeling, as people always do when the mists of prejudice and suspicion have been blown away.

Bill turned and looked back as if estimating the job he had laid out for himself. There were more cattle waiting to cross the river than Dunham ever had seen together at one time outside the stockyards at Kansas City. Four thousand in the open looked more impressive to him than twenty thousand in the stockyards pens.

The anxious cowboys were looking ahead for some signal, making little effort to hold the cattle in marching order. As the minutes passed the animals spread to graze, inaction during working hours being strange to the program of their lives. They had been bred on a range where constant foraging was necessary to existence. This luxurious pasture presented allurements which even a strong-minded Texas white-face could not resist.

"That's a lot of cows," Bill said, speaking mainly to himself. He turned to Hughes again, briskly. "They used to say I was a damn fool where I was raised, and I don't blame you if the same thing's passin' in your mind. I'm used to it. It does look kind of foolish for a greenhorn to tell a cattleman like you what to do with his herd, but you'll have to act on my suggestion if you want to be ready to take advantage of my scheme."

"Shoot," said Hughes.

Bob fidgeted in his saddle, not impressed by Dun-

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 ham's preface, plainly wanting faith in his scheme, whatever it might turn out to be.

"Work your herd up to the river, takin' it easy and slow," Dunham directed. "I wouldn't let 'em down to the water if I was you—there's no use crowdin' trouble. You be around the ford where you can spot me, ready to start 'em over. If I come back, I'll be all set to lead the way; if I don't come—I wish you luck."

Dunham headed toward the river, not a good-by nor a good-luck going after him. Bob Hughes snorted his impatient contempt for such palpable duplicity.

"If he thinks he can toll us on into a trap that way they named him right where he was raised," he said.

"I don't know," Hughes pondered, far from clear in his own mind, "but I don't see what there'd be in it for them to try to trick us. They don't want us in Kansas; they'd rather have us down here than along the river. Whatever his scheme is, I think it's all his own."

"What're you goin' to do?"

"Go on to the river. That boy's green; it's plain he's give us the straight of that, but I don't believe he's anybody's fool, and I'm goin' to gamble on it that he's straight."

"Then here's where you lose," said Bob.

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cattlemen who had carried the warning across the river to Hughes were still sitting on their dripping horses when Dunham rode into the ford. Others had been waiting to hear how the Texans took the news, evidently, for there was a group of men, on foot and mounted, numbering about twenty, collected around Moore and the other delegates, one of whom Dunham recognized as Garland, the man who had hired him for Moore to discharge so contemptuously.

Moore was lolling slouchily with one thigh across his saddle, pretty well pleased with something, it seemed, for his loud laugh came clacking like the voice of a crow as Dunham struck the shallows of the ford and headed across. Somebody called attention to his approach. Moore threw a startled look around and slid into his saddle like a turtle going across a log, the ripple of Dunham's identity running through the crowd.

John Moore was neither a coward nor a gunman. He was a fellow who would bull up against any kind of bare-handed encounter with a roar, and claw, hammer and bite his way through. He had the fist-fighter's contempt for weapons, never carrying a gun except on extraordinary occasions such as this. From the way he turned white around the gills now it was plain he

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 thought Dunham had come back for a settlement, and he knew he never could get his gun out in time to do him a bit of good. He let it hang where it was.

Dunham lifted his right hand to indicate his peaceful disposition, legs doubled against his horse's sides to keep the water from overflowing his boot-tops. The current ripped along there in a narrow channel with great rapidity and force, although the water was only a little more than belly-deep to a horse. As Bill cleared the ford and lowered his feet, Moore rode down a little way to meet him.

"Hello, Bill," Moore greeted, his voice hearty but his grin sort of weak and flickering, "where you been keepin' yourself all this time?"

Dunham returned the greeting without going into particulars of his last night's lodging-place; spoke to Garland cordially, and gave the others a blanket greeting in a "Good-morning, gentlemen," although he was certain he had stretched the noun until it cracked.

Taking them as they ran, they were about the toughest-looking collection he ever had faced. He wondered if Moore and Garland had sifted the range and picked the scoundrels, or if the crowd was a fair representation of the human stock that frequented the Kansas range.

Garland looked at him questioningly, as if to ask him if he had been associating with those outcasts from south of the fever line.

"Everything all right with you, Dunham?" he asked, more to fill an awkward chink in the openly embarrassing situation than to elicit information.

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 "Why," said Dunham, bending his head as if a hard question had been propounded and he must go into it carefully, "I can't exac'ly say anything's wrong."

"I'm damned sorry for the reception you got down here yesterday, Dunham," Garland said with frank sincerity.

"Oh, he knows how to take a joke," Moore said, with ingratiating assurance.

"I'm learnin' right along," Dunham agreed, looking at Moore so coldly the cowman's gizzard sagged, "but it's a hard matter for a green man like me to know where the joke stops and the insult begins."

"Them damn-fool boys ain't accountable, Bill," Moore said, apparently full of regret for the incident. "A man like you can afford to pass a little thing like that by."

"I don't hold the boys accountable, but I took you for a full-grown man," Bill told him, with more indifference than censure. "But that don't matter; I didn't come over here to take that up with you."

"You came over to ask me what in the hell I mean when I tell a man he's hired, I guess," Garland said. "I mean what I say, when I say it that way. If you want to go to work, you're still hired."

"No, I didn't exac'ly come to take that up with you, either, Mr. Garland. Mr. Moore shot off a lot of talk yesterday about the kind of men he needed down here to keep Texas cattle out of Kansas. I'm here to show him what kind of a man it takes to bring them in."

"What do you mean, Dunham?"

Garland was all on edge in a moment, and if the

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 others could have raised their ears there would have been a general pointing in Bill Dunham's direction. Since these erectile muscles had fallen into disuse in Kansas at that time, although a breed of politicians developed later in that state that could waggle their ears like any ass, the movement among the cattlemen was that of feet. They swayed a little nearer, braced for what was coming next.

"I've got a herd of four thousand cattle over there that I'm goin' to take up to Pawnee Bend."

"Do you mean you own that herd? Do you mean to tell me you hired out to me for a quarantine guard and you owner of that herd all the time?"

Garland was so outraged by what he took to be Dunham's underhanded treason that he clapped his hand to his gun.

"No, I don't own a hair of 'em," Dunham replied calmly, unmoved by the demonstration, but watching for the next foolish move. "I've assumed responsibility for their delivery to the pens at Pawnee Bend. They stand under my orders; that's what I mean."

"If you've taken the contract to drive that herd to Pawnee Bend you'll need a whole lot of help, young feller," Moore said, assured again, and full of words, since Dunham had not come gunning for him.

But there were others in that camp who did not feel this pleasant freedom to draw a long breath and look away for a minute as the news of Bill Dunham's arrival ran like a wind through tall grass. It reached Shad Brassfield where he was hobbling his horses to turn them out for the day, giving him such a palsy he

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 couldn't pull a knot. Two young cowpunchers lolling under the trees near their horses, swapping boastful yarns of their latest conquests among the dance-hall ladies of Pawnee Bend, stopped breathing a moment to look a startled question into each other's eyes. It took them only about three seconds to reach an undivided opinion that their urgent business was not on the shore of the Cimarron that day, but at some undetermined point toward the north.

"Hughes didn't tell us he'd turned things over to you," Garland said. "If this is a joke, kid, it looks to me like you're showin' kind of poor judgment in pickin' your day to put it over."

"I leave jokin' to you people; it's more in your line than mine. Hughes didn't say anything about me because I hadn't taken the job then."

"Do you expect us to stand here hands-down and let you pass?" an elderly, bearded, Scottish-looking man inquired, bending over his saddle-horn to glare at Dunham wrathfully.

"This is a public road," Dunham replied. "You gentlemen have taken one end of the law in your own hands; I'll take the other in mine. I'm as good a Jayhawker as any of you—better, I expect, for I was born in this state—and I know the laws of my state as well as any of you do. There's no law that gives you authority to close the public roads against the peaceable citizens of another state. What I'm here for is to tell you to either step out of the way when you see that herd comin', or be treated the same as any other band of outlaws if you try to stop us."

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 "Dunham, I thought you had more sense than that. Don't you know you can't run a bluff on this crowd of men that have got everything they own up on this throw?"

Garland spoke with patronizing friendliness, as if he had an honest interest in seeing Dunham spared the humiliation of attempting a thing so preposterously impossible. Others were not so friendly. There was derisive laughter, which rounded out in daring challenges, and damnation enough uttered to make Dunham limp under curses all the rest of his life if there had been half efficacy in the weakest of them.

"You don't stand to lose any more, individually, than Hughes," Dunham argued. "When a man loses all he's got he's cleaned, if it's much or little. Where's he to go with his cattle if he can't go on to Pawnee Bend and ship?"

"That's for him to settle," the Scotsman said.

"I'm here to make a fair proposal to you, gentlemen," Dunham continued. "We'll keep to the trail if you don't molest us, grazin' no further on each side than is reasonable and necessary. You can easily keep your cattle away from where we've passed. There are a lot of Texas cattle headed up the trail; you can't keep them all out without more fightin' than you've contracted for, not to mention damage suits that'll clean you out quicker than any fever, and keep you cleaned. You might as well step out of the way first as last."

"That herd can't come into this state—not along here, anyhow," Moore declared. "If you try to bring

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 them rotten cattle in here, we'll be right here to stop you."

"We'll come," Dunham said, ominously calm, "and we'll give you the best thirty men with pump-guns can deliver. Unless you back up and stay backed, there's goin' to be more than one funeral tomorrow, gentlemen. We're comin' over here not only ready to fight, but all set to stampede that herd over this range if we can't get it in any other way."

"You'll find one man that won't back up," the hairy Scotsman said.

And that was a stern fact, others averred, in various tints of individual expression, none of them subdued. Only Garland seemed to be thinking about the serious complications which could very well develop out of a fight, even though the Texans were strongly outnumbered. They had not expected it to come to a fight, when all was said, their reliance being in numbers to make their prohibition good.

The threat of a stampede was another thing to fix the thought of reasonable men like Garland. Even Moore had jumped when Dunham spoke of it. Such a stampede could be started by a few men; the turmoil of a fight would accelerate it, and all the men gathered there would be no more than a handful of chaff in the faces of those four thousand animals once they were beyond human restraint. They would run until they fell of exhaustion, fifteen miles, twenty-five miles, sowing their dreaded, mysterious plague far and wide.

Another thing to be considered was that Texas range-

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