A Century of Great Western Stories

Every aficionado of Western fiction has his or her opinion as to the finest story ever written about the Old West. It is safe to say, though, that not a few of them would cast their votes for Eugene Manlove Rhodes’s (1869–1934) brilliant novella “Pasó por Aquí,” first published in 1927. He has been called “The connoisseur’s Western writer,” and indeed his fiction is not only superb entertainment but of high literary merit as well. If “Pasó por Aquí” is the standout among his longer works, The Proud Sheriff, Stepsons of Light, and Copper Streak Trail are not far behind; and of his shorter works, “The Trouble Man” certainly ranks as one of the best.

The Trouble Man

Eugene Manlove Rhodes

Billy Beebe did not understand. There was no disguising the unpalatable fact: Rainbow treated him kindly. It galled him. Ballinger, his junior in Rainbow, was theme for ridicule and biting jest, target for contumely and abuse; while his own best efforts were met with grave, unfailing courtesy.

Yet the boys liked him; Billy was sure of that. And so far as the actual work was concerned, he was at least as good a roper and brand reader as Ballinger, quicker in action, a much better rider.

In irrelevant and extraneous matters—brains, principle, training, acquirements—Billy was conscious of unchallenged advantage. He was from Ohio, eligible to the presidency, of family, rich, a college man; yet he had abandoned laudable moss-gathering, to become a rolling bounding, riotous stone. He could not help feeling that it was rather noble of him. And then to be indulgently sheltered as an honored guest, how beloved soever! It hurt.

Not for himself alone was Billy grieved. Men paired on Rainbow. “One stick makes a poor fire”—so their word went. Billy sat at the feet of John Wesley Pringle—wrinkled, wind-brown Gamaliel. Ballinger was the disciple of Jeff Bransford, gay, willful, questionable man. Billy did not like him. His light banter, lapsing unexpectedly from Broad Doric to irreproachable New English, carried in solution audacious, glancing disrespect of convention, established institutions, authorities, axioms, “accepted theories of irregular verbs”—too elusive for disproof, too intolerably subversive to be ignored. That Ballinger, his shadow, was accepted man of action, while Billy was still an outsider, was, in some sense, a reflection on Pringle. Vicarious jealousy was added to the pangs of wounded self-love.

Billy was having ample time for reflection now, riding with Pringle up the Long Range to the Block roundup. Through the slow, dreamy days they threaded the mazed ridges and canyons falling eastward to the Pecos from Guadalupe, Sacramento, and White Mountain. They drove their string of thirteen horses each; rough circlers, wise cutting horses, sedate night horses and patient old Steamboat, who, in the performance of pack duty, dropped his proper designation to be injuriously known as “the Wagon.”

Their way lay through the heart of the Lincoln County War country—on winding trails, by glade and pine-clad mesa; by clear streams, bell-tinkling, beginning, with youth’s eager haste, their journey to the far-off sea; by Seven Rivers, Bluewater, the Feliz, Penasco, and Silver Spring.

Leisurely they rode, with shady halt at midday—leisurely, for an empire was to be worked. It would be months before they crossed the divide at Nogal, “threw in” with Bransford and Ballinger, now representing Rainbow with the Bar W, and drove home together down the west side.

While Billy pondered his problem Pringle sang or whistled tirelessly—old tunes of amazing variety, ranging from Nancy Lee and Auld Robin Gray to La Paloma Azul or the Nogal Waltz. But ever, by ranch house or brook or pass, he paused to tell of deeds there befallen in the years of old war, deeds violent and bloody, yet half redeemed by hardihood and unflinching courage.

Pringle’s voice was low and unemphatic; his eyes were ever on the long horizon. Trojan nor Tyrian he favored, but as he told the Homeric tale of Buckshot Roberts, while they splashed through the broken waters of Ruidoso and held their winding way through the cutoff of Cedar Creek, Billy began dimly to understand.

Between him and Rainbow the difference was in kind, not in degree. The shadow of old names lay heavy on the land; these resolute ghosts yet shaped the acts of men. For Rainbow the Roman virtus was still the one virtue. Whenever these old names had been spoken, Billy remembered, men had listened. Horseshoers had listened at their shoeing; card-players had listened while the game went on; by campfires other speakers had ceased their talk to listen without comment. Not ill-doers, these listeners, but quiet men, kindly, generous; yet the tales to which they gave this tribute were too often of ill deeds. As if they asked not “Was this well done?” but rather “Was this done indeed—so that no man could have done more?” Were the deed good or evil, so it were done utterly it commanded admiration—therefore imitation.

Something of all this he got into words. Pringle nodded gravely. “You’ve got it sized up, my son,” he said. “Rainbow ain’t strictly up-to-date and still holds to them elder ethics, like Norval on the Grampian Hills, William Dhu Tell, and the rest of them neck-or-nothing boys. This Mr. Rolando, that Eusebio sings about, give our sentiment to a T-Y-ty. He was some scrappy and always blowin’ his own horn, but, by jings, he delivered the goods as per invoice and could take a major league lickin’ with no whimperin’. This Rolando he don’t hold forth about gate money or individual percentages. ‘Get results for your team,’ he says. ‘Don’t flinch, don’t foul, hit the line hard, here goes nothing!’

“That’s a purty fair code. And it’s all the one we got. Pioneerin’ is troublesome—pioneer is all the same word as pawn, and you thrown away a pawn to gain a point. When we drive in a wild bunch, when we top off the boundin’ bronco, it may look easy, but it’s always a close thing. Even when we win we nearly lose; when we lose we nearly win. And that forms the stay-with-it-Bill-you’re-doin’-well habit. See?

“So, we mostly size a fellow up by his abilities as a trouble man. Any kind of trouble—not necessarily the fightin’ kind. If he goes the route, if he sets no limit, if he’s enlisted for the war—why, you naturally depend on him.

“Now, take you and Jeff. Most ways you’ve got the edge on him. But you hold by rules and formulas and laws. There’s things you must do or mustn’t do—because somebody told you so. You go into a project with a mental reservation not to do anything indecorous or improper; also, to stop when you’ve taken a decent lickin’. But Jeff don’t aim to stop while he can wiggle; and he makes up new rules as he goes along, to fit the situation. Naturally, when you get in a tight place you waste time rememberin’ what the authorities prescribe as the neat thing. Now, Jeff consults only his own self, and he’s mostly unanimous. Mebbe so you both do the same thing, mebbe not. But Jeff does it first. You’re a good boy, Billy, but there’s only one way to find out if you’re a square peg or a round one.”

“Aw, stay all night! What’s the matter with you fellows? I haven’t seen a soul for a week. Everybody’s gone to the roundup.”

Wes’ shook his head. “Can’t do it, Jimmy. Got to go out to good grass. You’re all eat out here.”

“I’ll side you,” said Jimmy decisively. “I got a lot of stored-up talk I’ve got to get out of my system. I know a bully place to make camp. Box canyon to hobble your horses in, good grass, and a little tank of water in the rocks for cookin’. Bring along your little old wagon, and I’ll tie on a hunk o’ venison to feed your faces with. Get there by dark.”

“How come you didn’t go to the work your black self?” asked Wes’ as Beebe tossed his rope on the wagon and let him up.

Jimmy’s twinkling eyes lit up his beardless face. “They left me here to play shinny-on-your-own-side,” he explained.

“With the Three Rivers sheep,” said Jimmy. “I’m to keep them from crossing the mountain.”

“Oh, I see. You’ve got an agreement that the east side is for cattle and the west side for sheep.”

Jimmy’s face puckered. “Agreement? H’m, yes, least ways, I’m agreed I didn’t ask them, but they’ve got the general idea. When I ketch ’em over here I drive them back. As I don’t ever follow ’em beyond the summit they ought to savvy my the’ries by this time.”

Pringle opened the gate. “Let’s mosey along—they’ve got enough water. Which way, kid?”

“But why don’t you come to an understanding with them and fix on a dividing line?” insisted Beebe.

Jimmy lolled sidewise in his saddle, cocking an impish eye at his inquisitor. “Reckon ye don’t have no sheep down Rainbow way? Thought not. Right there’s the point exactly. They have a dividing line. They carry it with ’em wherever they go. For the cattle won’t graze where sheep have been. Sheep pertects their own range, but we’ve got to look after ours or they’d drive us out. But the understanding’s all right, all right. They don’t speak no English, and I don’t know no paisano talk, but I’ve fixed up a signal code they savvy as well’s if they was all college aluminums.”

“Oh, yes—sign talk,” said Billy. “I’ve heard of that.” Wes’ turned his head aside.

“We-ell, not exactly. Sound talk’d be nearer. One shot means ‘Git!’ two means ‘Hurry up!’ and three—”

“But you’ve no right to do that,” protested Billy, warmly. “They’ve got just as much right here as your cattle, haven’t they?”

“Surest thing they have—if they can make it stick,” agreed Jimmy cordially. “And we’ve got just as much right to keep ’em off if we can. There ain’t really no right to it. It’s Uncle Sam’s land we both graze on, and Unkie is some busy with conversation on natural resources, and keepin’ republics up in South America and down in Asia, and selectin’ texts for coins and infernal revenue stamps, and upbuildin’ Pittsburgh, and keepin’ up the price of wool and fightin’ all the time to keep the laws from bein’ better ’n the Constitution, like a Bawston puncher trimmin’ a growin’ colt’s foot down to fit last year’s shoes. Shucks! He ain’t got no time to look after us. We just got to do our own regulatin’ or git out.”

Jimmy’s eyes flashed. “If my brain was to leak out and I subsequent took to sheep herdin’, I’d like to see any dern puncher drive me out,” he declared belligerently.

“He don’t,” interrupted Pringle. “None of us complain—nary a murmur. If the sheep men want to go they go, an’ a little shootin’ up the contagious vicinity don’t hurt ’em none. It’s all over oncet the noise stops. Besides, I think they mostly sorter enjoy it. Sheep herdin’ is mighty dull business, and a little excitement is mighty welcome. It gives ’em something to look forward to. But if they feel hostile they always get the first shot for keeps. That’s a mighty big percentage in their favor, and the reports on file with the War Department shows that they generally get the best of it. Don’t you worry none, my son. This ain’t no new thing. It’s been goin’ on ever since Abraham’s outfit and the LOT boys got to scrappin’ on the Jordan range, and then some before that. After Abraham took to the hill country, I remember, somebody jumped one of his wells and two of Isaac’s. It’s been like that, in the short-grass countries ever since. Human nature’s not changed much. By Jings! There they be now!”

Through the twilight the winding trail climbed the side of a long ridge. To their left was a deep, impassable canyon; beyond that a parallel ridge; and from beyond that ridge came the throbbing, drumming clamor of a sheep herd.

“The son of a gun!” said Jimmy. “He means to camp in our box canyon. I’ll show him!” He spurred by the grazing horses and clattered on in the cad, striking fire from the stony trail.

On the shoulder of the further ridge heaved a gray fog, spreading, rolling slowly down the hillside. The bleating, the sound of myriad trampling feet, the multiplication of bewildering echoes, swelled to a steady, unchanging, ubiquitous tumult. A dog suddenly topped the ridge; another; then a Mexican herder bearing a long rifle. With one glance at Jimmy beyond the blackshadowed gulf he began turning the herd back, shouting to the dogs. They ran in obedient haste to aid, sending the stragglers scurrying after the main bunch.

Jimmy reined up, black and gigantic against the skyline. He drew his gun. Once, twice, thrice, he shot. The fire streamed out against the growing dark. The bullets, striking the rocks, whined spitefully. The echoes took up the sound and sent it crashing to and fro. The sheep rushed huddling together, panic-stricken. Herder and dogs urged them on. The herder threw up a hand and shouted.

“That boy’s shootin’ might close to that paisano,” muttered Pringle. “He orter quit now. Reckon he’s showin’ off a leetle.” He raised his voice in warning. “Hi! You Jimmy!” he called. “He’s agoin’! Let him be!”

“Vamos! Hi-i!” shrilled Jimmy gaily. He fired again. The Mexican clapped hand to his leg with an angry scream. With the one movement he sank to his knees, his long rifle fell to a level, cuddled to his shoulder, spitting fire. Jimmy’s hand flew up. His gun dropped; he clutched at the saddle horn, missed it, fell heavily to the ground. The Mexican dropped out of sight behind the ridge. It had been but a scant minute since he first appeared. The dogs followed with the remaining sheep. The ridge was bare. The dark fell fast.

FROM MALAGRA TO Willow Spring, the next available water, is the longest jump on the Bar W range. Working the “Long Lane” fenced by Malpais and White Mountain is easy enough. But after cutting out and branding there was the long wait for the slow day herd, the tedious holding to water from insufficient troughs. It was late when the day’s “cut” was thrown in with the herd, sunset when the bobtail had caught their night horses and relieved the weary day herders.

The bobtail moves the herd to the bed ground—some distance from camp, to avoid mutual annoyance and alarm—and holds it while night horses are caught and supper eaten. A thankless job, missing the nightly joking and banter over the day’s work. Then the first guard comes on and the bobtail goes, famished, to supper. It breakfasts by starlight, relieves the last guard, and holds cattle while breakfast is eaten, beds rolled and horses caught, turning them over to the day herders at sunup.

Bransford and Ballinger were two of the five bobtailers, hungry, tired, dusty, and cross. With persuasive, soothing song they trotted around the restless cattle, with hasty, envious glances for the merry groups around the chuck wagon. The horse herd was coming in; four of the boys were butchering a yearling; beds were being dragged out and unrolled. Shouts of laughter arose; they were baiting the victim of some mishap by making public an exaggerated version of his discomfiture.

Turning his back on the camp, Jeff Bransford became aware of a man riding a big white horse down the old military road from Nogal way. The horse was trotting, but wearily; passing the herd he whinnied greeting, again wearily.

The cattle were slow to settle down. Jeff made several circlings before he had time for another campward glance. The horse herd was grazing off, and the boys were saddling and staking their night horses; but the stranger’s horse, still saddled, was tied to a soapweed.

Jeff sniffed. “Oh, Solomon was sapient and Solomon was wise!” he crooned, keeping time with old Summersault’s steady fox trot. “And Solomon was marvelously wide between the eyes!” He sniffed again, his nose wrinkled, one eyebrow arched one corner of his mouth pulled down; he twisted his mustache and looked sharply down his nose for consultation, pursing his lips. “H’m! That’s funny!” he said aloud. “That horse is some tired. Why don’t he turn him loose? Bransford, you old fool, sit up and take notice! ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’”

He had been a tired and a hungry man. He put his weariness by as a garment, keyed up the slackened strings, and rode on with every faculty on the alert. It is to be feared that Jeff’s conscience was not altogether void of offense toward his fellows.

A yearling pushed tentatively from the herd. Jeff let her go, fell in after her, and circled her back to the bunch behind Clay Cooper. Not by chance. Clay was from beyond the divide.

“Know the new man, Clay?” Jeff asked casually, as he fell back to preserve the proper interval.

When the first guard came at last Jeff was on the farther side and so the last to go in. A dim horseman overtook him and waved a sweeping arm in dismissal.

Jeff turned back slowly, so meeting all the relieving guard and noting that Squatty Robinson, of the V V, was not of them, Ollie Jackson taking his place.

He rode thoughtfully into camp. Staking his horse in the starlight he observed a significant fact. Squatty had not staked his regular night horse, but Alizan, his favorite. He made a swift investigation and found that not a man from the east side had caught his usual night horse. Clay Cooper’s horse was not staked, but tied short to a mesquite, with the bridle still on.

Pete Johnson, the foreman, was just leaving the fire for bed. Beyond the fire the east-side men were gathered, speaking in subdued voices. Ballinger, with loaded plate, sat down near them. The talking ceased. It started again at once. This time their voices rose clear and distinct in customary bandiage.

“Why, this is face up,” thought Jeff. “Trouble. Trouble from beyond the divide. They’re going to hike shortly. They’ve told Pete that much, anyhow. Serious trouble—for they’ve kept it from the rest of them. Is it to my address? Likely. Old Wes’ and Beebe are over there somewhere. If I had three guesses the first two’d be that them Rainbow chasers was in a tight.”

He stumbled into the firelight, carrying his bridle, which he dropped by the wagon wheel. “This day’s sure flown by like a week,” he grumbled, fumbling around for cup and plate. “My stomach was just askin’ was my throat cut.”

As he bent over to spear a steak the tail of his eye took in the group beyond and intercepted a warning glance from Squatty to the stranger. There was an almost imperceptible thrusting motion of Squatty’s chin and lips; a motion which included Jeff and the unconscious Ballinger. It was enough. Surmise, suspicion flamed to certainty. “My third guess,” reflected Jeff sagely, “is just like the other two. Mr. John Wesley Pringle has been doing a running high jump or some such stunt, and has plumb neglected to come down.”

He seated himself cross-legged and fell upon his supper vigorously, bandying quips and quirks with the bobtail as they ate. At last he jumped up, dropped his dishes clattering in the dishpan, and drew a long breath.

“I don’t feel a bit hungry,” he announced plaintively. “Gee! I’m glad I don’t have to stand guard. I do hate to work between meals.” He shouldered his roll of bedding. “Good-bye, old world—I’m going home!” he said, and melted into the darkness. Leo following, they unrolled their bed. But as Leo began pulling off his boots Jeff stopped him.

“Close that aperture in your face and keep it that way,” he admonished guardedly. “You and me has got to do a ghost dance. Project around and help me find them Three Rivers men.”

The Three Rivers men, Crosby and Os Hyde, were sound asleep. Awakened, they were disposed to peevish remonstrance.

“Keep quiet!” said Jeff. “Al, you slip on your boots and go tell Pete you and Os is goin’ to Carrizo and that you’ll be back in time to stand your guard. Tell him out loud. Then you come back here and you and Os crawl into our bed. I’ll show him where it is while you’re gone. You use our night horses. Me and Leo want to take yours.”

“If there’s anything else don’t stand on ceremony,” said Crosby. “Don’t you want my toothbrush?”

“You hurry up,” responded Jeff. “D’ye think I’m doin’ this for fun? We’re It. We got to prove an alibi.”

A few minutes later, the Three Rivers men disappeared under the tarp of the Rainbow bed, while the Rainbow men, on Three Rivers horses, rode silently out of camp, avoiding the firelit circle.

Once over the ridge, well out of sight and hearing from camp, Jeff turned up the draw to the right and circled back toward the Nogal road on a long trot.

“Beautiful night,” observed Leo after an interval. “I just love to ride. How far is it to the asylum?”

“Leo,” said Jeff, “you’re a good boy—a mighty good boy. But I don’t believe you’d notice it if the sun didn’t go down till after dark.” He explained the situation. “Now, I’m going to leave you to hold the horses just this side of the Nogal road, while I go on afoot and eavesdrop. Them fellows’ll be makin’ big medicine when they come along here. I’ll lay down by the road and get a line on their play. Don’t you let them horses nicker.”

Leo waited an interminable time before he heard the eastside men coming from camp. They passed by, talking, as Jeff had prophesied. After another small eternity Jeff joined him.

“I didn’t get all the details,” he reported. “But it seems that the Parsons City People has got it framed up to hang a sheepman some. Wes’ is dead set against it—I didn’t make out why. So there’s a deadlock and we’ve got the casting vote. Call up your reserves, old man. We’re due to ride around Nogal and beat that bunch to the divide.”

It was midnight by the clock in the sky when they stood on Nogal divide. The air was chill. Clouds gathered blackly around Capitan, Nogal Peak, and White Mountain. There was steady, low muttering of thunder; the far lightnings flashed pale and green and rose.

“Hustle along to Lincoln, Leo,” commanded Jeff, “and tell the sheriff they state, positive, that the hangin’ takes place prompt after breakfast. Tell him to bring a big posse—and a couple of battleships if he’s got ’em handy. Meantime, I’ll go over and try what the gentle art of persuasion can do. So long! If I don’t come back the mule’s yours.”

“Light up!” said Uncle Peter. “Nobody’s goin’ to shoot at ye from the dark. We don’t do business that way. When we come we’ll come in daylight, down the big middle of the road. Light up. I ain’t got no gun. I come over for one last try to make you see reason. I knowed thar weren’t use talking’ to you when you was fightin’ mad. That’s why I got the boys to put it off till mawnin’. And I wanted to send to Angus and Salado and the Bar W for Jimmy’s friends. He ain’t got no kinnery here. They’ve come. They all see it the same way. Chavez killed Jimmy, and they’re goin’ to hang him. And, since they’ve come, there’s too many of us for you to fight.”

Wes’ lit the candle. “Set down. Talk all you want, but talk low and don’t wake Billy,” he said as the flame flared up.

That he did not want Billy waked up, that there was not even a passing glance to verify Uncle Pete’s statement as to being unarmed, was, considering Uncle Pete’s errand and his own position, a complete and voluminous commentary on the men and ethics of that time and place.

On his cot Billy tossed and moaned. His fevered sleep was tortured by a phantasmagoria of broken and hurried dreams, repeating with monsterous exaggeration the crowded hours of the past day. The brain-stunning shock and horror of sudden, bloody death, the rude litter, the night-long journey with their awful burden, the doubtful aisles of pine with star galaxies wheeling beyond, the gaunt, bare hill above, the steep zigzag to the sleeping town, the flaming wrath of violent men—in his dream they came and went. Again, hasty messengers flashed across the haggard dawn; again, he shared the pursuit and capture of the sheepherder. Sudden clash of unyielding wills; black anger; wild voices for swift death, quickly backed by wild, strong hands; Pringle’s cool and steady defiance; his own hot, resolute protest; the prisoner’s unflinching fatalism; the hard-won respite—all these and more—the lights, the swaying crowd, fierce faces black and bitter with inarticulate wrath—jumbled confusedly in shifting, unsequenced combinations leading ever to some incredible, unguessed catastrophe.

Beside him, peacefully asleep, lay the manslayer, so lately snatched from death, unconscious of the chain that bound him, oblivious of the menace of the coming day.

“Yes. He’s never seen any sorrow. But he don’t weaken one mite. I tried every way I could think of to get him out of here. Told him to sidle off down to Lincoln after the sheriff. But he was dead on to me.”

“Yes? Well, he wouldn’t ’a’ got far, anyway,” said Uncle Pete dryly. “We’re watching every move. Still, it’s a pity he didn’t try. We’d ’a’ got him without hurtin’ him, and he’d ’a’ been out o’ this.”

Wes’ made no answer. Uncle Pete stroked his grizzled beard reflectively. He filled his pipe with cut plug and puffed deliberately.

“Now, look here,” he said slowly. “Mr. Procopio Chavez killed Jimmy, and Mr. Procopio Chavez is going to hang. It wa’n’t no weakenin’ or doubt on my part that made me call the boys off yisterday evenin’. He’s got to hang. I just wanted to keep you fellers from gettin’ killed. There might ’a’ been some sense in your fighting then, but there ain’t now. There’s too many of us.”

“Me and Billy see the whole thing,” said Wes’, unmoved. “It was too bad Jimmy got killed, but he was certainly mighty brash. The sheepherder was goin’ peaceable, but Jimmy kept shootin’, and shootin’ close. When that splinter of rock hit the Mexican man he thought he was shot, and he turned loose. Reckon it hurt like sin. There’s a black-and-blue spot on his leg big as the palm of your hand. You’d ’a’ done just the same as he did.

“I ain’t much enthusiastic about sheepherders. In fact, I jerked my gun at the time; but I was way down the trail and he was out o’ sight before I could shoot. Thinkin’ it over careful, I don’t see where this Mexican’s got any hangin’ comin’. You know, just as well as I do, no court’s goin’ to hang him on the testimony me and Billy’s got to give in.”

“I do,” said Uncle Pete. “That’s exactly why we’re goin’ to hang him ourselves. If we let him go it’s just encouragin’ the pastores to kill up some more of the boys. So we’ll just stretch his neck. This is the last friendly warnin’, my son. If you stick your fingers between the anvil and the hammer you’ll get ’em pinched. ’Tain’t any of your business, anyway. This ain’t Rainbow. This is the White Mountain and we’re strictly home rulers. And, moresoever, that war talk you made yisterday made the boys plumb sore.”

“That war talk goes as she lays,” said Pringle steadily. “No hangin’ till after the shootin’. That goes.”

“Now, now—what’s the use?” remonstrated Uncle Pete. “Ye’ll just get yourself hurted and ’twon’t do the greaser any good. You might mebbe so stand us off in a good, thick ’dobe house, but not in this old shanty. If you want to swell up and be stubborn about it, it just means a grave apiece for you all and likely for some few of us.”

“It don’t make no difference to me,” said Pringle, “if it means diggin’ a grave in a hole in the cellar under the bottomless pit. I’m goin’ to make my word good and do what I think’s right.”

“So am I, by Jupiter! Mr. Also Ran Pringle, it is a privilege to have known you!” Billy, half awake, covered Uncle Pete with a gun held in a steady hand. “Let’s keep him here for a hostage and shoot him if they attempt to carry out their lynching,” he suggested.

“We can’t, Billy. Put it down,” said Pringle mildly. “He’s here under flag of truce.”

“I was tryin’ to save your derned fool hides,” said Uncle Pete benignantly.

“Well—’tain’t no use. We’re just talkin’ round and round in a circle, Uncle Pete. Turn your wolf loose when you get ready. As I said before, I don’t noways dote on sheepmen, but I seen this, and I’ve got to see that this poor devil gets a square deal. I got to!”

Uncle Pete sighed. “It’s a pity!” he said. “A great pity! Well, we’re comin’ quiet and peaceful. If there’s any shootin’ done you all have got to fire the first shot. We’ll have the last one.”

“Did you ever stop to think that the Rainbow men may not like this?” inquired Pringle. “If they’re anyways dissatisfied they’re liable to come up here and scratch your eyes out one by one.”

“Jesso. That’s why you’re goin’ to fire the first shot,” explained Uncle Pete patiently. “Only for that—and likewise because it would be a sorter mean trick to do—we could get up on the hill and smoke you out with rifles at long range, out o’ reach of your six-shooters. You all might get away, but the sheepherder’s chained fast and we could shoot him to kingdom come, shack and all, in five minutes. But you’ve had fair warnin’ and you’ll get an even break. If you want to begin trouble it’s your own lookout. That squares us with Rainbow.”

“Believe us? Sure! Why shouldn’t they?” said Uncle Pete simply. “Of course they’ll believe us. It’ll be so.” He stood up and regarded them wistfully. “There don’t seem to be any use o’ sayin’ any more, so I’ll go. I hope there ain’t no hard feelin’s?”

“Not a bit!” said Pringle, but Billy threw his head back and laughed angrily. “Come, I like that! By Jove, if that isn’t nerve for you! To wake a man up and announce that you’re coming presently to kill him, and then to expect to part the best of friends!”

“Ain’t I doin’ the friendly part?” demanded Uncle Pete stiffly. He was both nettled and hurt. “If I hadn’t thought well of you fellers and done all I could for you, you’d ’a’ been dead and done forgot about it by now. I give you all credit for doin’ what you think is right, and you might do as much for me.”

“Great Caesar’s ghost! Do you want us to wish you good luck?” said Billy, exasperated almost to tears. “Have it your own way, by all means—you gentle-hearted old assassin! For my part, I’m going to do my level best to shoot you right between the eyes, but there won’t be any hard feeling about it. I’ll just be doing what I think is right—a duty I owe to the world. Say! I should think a gentleman of your sportsmanlike instincts would send over a gun for our prisoner. Twenty to one is big odds.”

“Twenty to one is a purty good reason why you could surrender without no disgrace,” rejoined Uncle Pete earnestly “You can’t make nothin’ by fightin’, cause you lose your point, anyway. And then, a majority of twenty to one—ain’t that a good proof that you’re wrong?”

“Now, Billy, you can’t get around that. That’s your own argument,” cried Pringle, delighted. “You’ve stuck to it right along that you Republicans was dead right because you always get seven votes to our six. Nux vomica, you know.”

Uncle Pete rose with some haste. “Here’s where I go. I never could talk politics without gettin’ mad,” he said.

“Billy, you’re certainly making good. You’re a square peg. All the same, I wish,” said Wes’ Pringle plaintively, as Uncle Pete crunched heavily through the gravel, “that I could hear my favorite tune now.”

Billy stared at him. “Does your mind hurt your head?” he asked solicitiously.

“No, no—I’m not joking. It would do me good if I could only hear him sing it.”

“Why, hear Jeff Bransford sing ‘The Little Eohippus’—right now. Jeff’s got the knack of doing the wrong thing at the right time. Hark! What’s that?”

There was once a little animal

No bigger than a fox,

And on five toes he scampered—

Questionable Bransford stepped through the half-open door, closed it, and set his back to it.

“That’s my cue! Who was it said eavesdroppers never heard good of themselves?”

HE WAS SMILING, his step was light, his tones were cheerful, ringing. His eyes had looked on evil and terrible things. In this desperate pass they wrinkled to pleasant, sunny warmth. He was unhurried, collected, confident. Billy found himself wondering how he had found this man loud, arbitrary, distasteful.

Welcome, question, answer; daybreak paled the ineffectual candle. The Mexican still slept.

“I crawled around the opposition camp like a snake in the grass,” said Jeff. “There’s two things I observed there that’s mightily in our favor. The first thing is, there’s no whiskey goin’. And the reason for that is the second thing—and our one best big chance. Mister Burleson won’t let ’em. Fact! Pretty much the entire population of the Pecos and tributary streams had arrived. Them that I know are mostly bad actors, and the ones I don’t know looked real horrid to me; but your Uncle Pete is the bell mare. ‘No booze!’ he says, liftin’ one finger; and that settled it. I reckon that when Uncle Simon Peter says ‘Thumbs up!’ those digits’ll be elevated accordingly. If I can get him to see the gate the rest will only need a little gentle persuasion.”

“I see you persuading them now,” said Billy. “This is a plain case of the irresistible force and the immovable body.”

“You will,” said Jeff confidently. “You don’t know what a jollier I am when I get down to it. Watch me! I’ll show you a regular triumph of mind over matter.”

“They’re coming now,” announced Wes’ placidly. “Two by two, like the animals out o’ the ark. I’m glad of it. I never was good at waitin’. Mr. Bransford will now oblige with his monologue entitled ‘Givin’ a bull the stop signal with a red flag.’ Ladies will kindly remove their hats.”

It was a grim and silent cavalcade. Uncle Pete rode at the head. As they turned the corner Jeff walked briskly down the path, hopped lightly on the fence, seated himself on the gatepost, and waved an amiable hand.

The procession stopped. A murmur, originating from the Bar W contingent, ran down the ranks. Uncle Pete reined up and demanded of him with marked disfavor: “Who in merry hell are you?”

Jeff’s teeth flashed white under his brown mustache. “I’m Ali Baba,” he said, and paused expectantly. But the allusion was wasted on Uncle Pete. Seeing that no introduction was forthcoming, Jeff went on: “I’ve been laboring with my friends inside, and I’ve got a proposition to make. As I told Pringle just now, I don’t see any sense of us getting’ killed, and killin’ a lot of you won’t bring us alive again. We’d put up a pretty fight—a very pretty fight. But you’d lay us out sooner or later. So what’s the use?”

“I’m mighty glad to see someone with a leetle old horse sense,” said Uncle Pete. “Your friends is dead game sports all right, but they got mighty little judgment. If they’d only been a few of us I wouldn’t ’a’ blamed ’em a might for not givin’ up. But we got too much odds of ’em.”

“This conversation is taking an unexpected turn,” said Jeff, making his eyes round. “I ain’t named giving up that I remember of. What I want to do is to rig up a compromise.”

“If there’s any halfway place between a hung Mexican and a live one,” said Uncle Pete, “mebbe we can. And if not, not. This ain’t no time for triflin’, young fellow.”

“Oh, shucks! I can think of half a dozen compromises,” said Jeff blandly. “We might play seven-up and not count any turned-up jacks. But I was thinking of something different. I realize that you outnumber us, so I’ll meet you a good deal more than halfway. First, I want to show you something about my gun. Don’t anybody shoot, ’cause I ain’t going to. Hope I may die if I do!”

“You will if you do. Don’t worry about that,” said Uncle Pete. “And mebbe so, anyhow. You’re delayin’ the game.”

Jeff took this for permission. “Everybody please watch and see there is no deception.”

Holding the gun, muzzle up, so all could see, he deliberately extracted all the cartridges but one. The audience exchanged puzzled looks.

Jeff twirled the cylinder and returned the gun to its scabbard. “Now!” he said, sparkling with enthusiasm. “You all see that I’ve only got one cartridge. I’m in no position to fight. If there’s any fighting I’m already dead. What happens to me has no bearing on the discussion. I’m out of it.

“I realize that there’s no use trying to intimidate you fellows. Any of you would take a bit chance with odds against you, and here the odds is for you. So, as far as I’m concerned, I substitute a certainty for chance. I don’t want to kill up a lot of rank strangers—or friends, either. There’s nothing in it.

“Neither can I go back on old Wes’ and Billy. So I take a halfway course. Just to manifest my entire disapproval, if anyone makes a move to go through that gate I’ll use my one shot—and it won’t be on the man goin’ through the gate, either. Nor yet on you, Uncle Pete. You’re the leader. So if you want to give the word, go it! I’m not goin’ to shoot you. Nor I ain’t goin’ to shoot any of the Bar W push. They’re free to start the ball rolling.”

Uncle Pete, thus deprived of the initiatory power, looked helplessly around the Bar W push for confirmation. They nodded in concert. “He’ll do whatever he says,” said Clay Cooper.

“Thanks,” said Jeff pleasantly, “for this unsolicited testimonial. Now, boys, there’s no dare about this. Just cause and effect. All of you are plumb safe to make a break—but one. To show you that there’s nothing personal about it, no dislike or anything like that, I’ll tell you how I picked that one. I started at some place near both ends or the middle and counted backward, or forward, sayin’ to myself, ‘Intra, mintra, cutra, corn, apple seed and briar thorn,’ and when I got to ‘thorn’ that man was stuck. That’s all. Them’s the rules.”

That part of Uncle Pete’s face visible between beard and hat was purple through the brown. He glared at Jeff, opened his mouth, shut it tightly, and breathed heavily through his nose. He looked at his horse’s ears, he looked at the low sun, he looked at the distant hills; his gaze wandered disconsolately back to the twinkling indomitable eyes of the man on the gatepost. Uncle Pete sighed deeply.

“That’s good! I’ll just about make the wagon by noon,” he remarked gently. He took his quirt from his saddle horn. “Young man,” he said gravely, flicking his horse’s flank, “any time you’re out of a job come over and see me.” He waved his hand, nodded, and was gone.

Clay Cooper spurred up and took his place, his black eyes snapping. “I like a damned fool,” he hissed, “but you suit me too well!”

The forty followed; some pausing for quip or jest, some in frowning silence. But each, as he passed that bright, audacious figure, touched his hat in salute to a gallant foe.

Squatty Robinson was the last. He rode close up and whispered confidentially, “I want you should do me a favor, Jeff. Just throw down on me and take my gun away. I don’t want to go back to camp with any such tale as this.”

“You see, Billy,” explained Jeff, “you mustn’t dare the denizens—never! They dare. They’re uncultured; their lives ain’t noways valuable to society and they know it. If you notice, I took pains not to dare anybody. Quite otherhow. I merely stated annnoyin’ consequences to some other fellow, attractive as I could, but impersonal. Just like I’d tell you: ‘Billy, I wouldn’t set the oil can on the fire—it might boil over.’

“Now, if I’d said: ‘Uncle Pete, if anybody makes a break I’ll shoot your eye out, anyhow,’ there’d ’a’ been only one dignified course open to him. Him and me would now be dear Alphonsing each other about payin’ the ferryman.

“S’pose I’d made oration to shoot the first man through the gate. Every man Jack would have come a-snuffin’—each one tryin’ to be first. The way I put it up to ’em, to be first wasn’t no graceful act—playin’ safe at some one else’s expense—and then they seen that someone else wouldn’t be gettin’ an equitable vibration. That’s all there was to it. If there wasn’t any first there couldn’t conveniently be any second, so they went home. B-r-r! I’m sleepy. Let’s go bye-bye. Wake that dern lazy Mexican up and make him keep watch till the sheriff comes!”