ht. That man never can get Laramie. And don't
depend on Stone and Van Horn to play you fair, for if they had to save
their hides, Barb, they'd sell you. My advice is this: Put back
Laramie's wire. Let the cattlemen, you and Pettigrew to lead 'em, do
it to clear their own names. Say you know nothing about it, but it was
a dirty trick, and tell this town that cattlemen fight but they fight
fair. It'll do more to set you right and to set everything else right
on the range than anything else you could possibly do. And don't make
a mistake. Laramie'll follow that wire pulling for years but what
he'll get the man that did it. I know him. He's got a memory like an
Indian."

Like all well-meaning and candid friends, the doctor found himself at
once in for a deal of angry abuse, but, as he explained, he had taken
so much abuse from patients at various periods of his career--and abuse
fully justified--that nothing Barb could add, deserved or undeserved,
to the volume would move him: "As our old governor back in Wisconsin
said, Barb, 'I seen my duty and I done it,'" was the doctor's only
retort to Doubleday's wrath. "Now if you're in a hurry, Barb, don't
let me keep you, not a minute. I had my say and if there's anything
pressing you down street go to it."

But angry as Doubleday appeared, Carpy had given him something to think
about. Consultations were held--by precisely whom, no one could say,
but in them there was dissension. Van Horn vehemently opposed any
further overtures to Laramie and he was vastly put out at being
overruled. While the discussions were going on, he talked in a veiled
but emphatic way to Kate about the queer way her father was acting.
Van Horn would shake his head with violent emphasis at the way things
were going. But when Kate poured oil on the waters of his discontent,
Van Horn was always responsive and stayed to supper or for the evening,
if he were asked--and Kate was alone. On the gentler side, however, he
could make no headway. When he tried headaches for sympathy, Kate was
stony hearted. When he asked her one day at the spring to take down
her hair, she told him she wore a wig. He looked at her amazed.

And in spite of his objections to placating Laramie a decision very
unpalatable to him was reached. Pettigrew, as spokesman, approached
Laramie and insisted, in order to allay bad feeling, on replacing the
barb wire. When Laramie declared the wire must be put back by the men