Alviro. He talked loudly, as befits one who is a leader of public
opinion.

Some wandering of attention in his audience brought him to a pause. He
turned, to see the Ranger leaning indolently against the door-jamb. Jack
was smiling in the manner of one quietly amused.

"Who invited you here?" demanded Gurley, taken aback, but unwilling to
show it.

"Me, I just dropped in to hear yore big talk. Reminds me of old
Geronimo. Like you, he gets all filled up with words about every so
often and has to steam off. Go ahead, Gurley. Don't let me interrupt
you. Make heap oration."

But Gurley's fluency was gone. His cross-eyed glance slid round the room
to take stock of his backers. Was this fellow Roberts alone, or had he a
dozen Rangers in town with him? He decided to bluff, though with no very
great confidence. For into the picture had walked a man, a personality,
dynamic and forceful. The outlaw had seen him in action once, and he had
been on that occasion as easy to handle as a cageful of panthers.

"Come to see the hangin', have you, Mr. Ranger?"

"Is there goin' to be a hangin'?"

"You betcha--to-night! Git around early, an' you can have a front seat."
Gurley added a word of explanation. "No greaser can git biggity an'
shoot up our friends without hangin' from the end of a wagon-tongue
_pronto_."

"We'll see what a judge an' jury say about it," suggested the Ranger
mildly.

"That so? No brindle-thatched guy in buckskin can interfere without
sleepin' in smoke. Understand?" The long, sallow man nervously stroked
his hair, which was flattened down on his forehead in a semicircle in
the absurd fashion of the day.

"Don't pull on yore picket-pin, Gurley," observed Roberts. "What I say
goes. There's goin' to be no hangin' till the courts say so."

A man had come into the saloon by the back door. He was a heavy-set,
slouchy man in jeans, broad-shouldered and bowlegged. He laughed grimly.
"I don't reckon you can put that over on folks of the short-grass
country, young fellow, me lad. We grow man-size, an' I don't expect
we'll ask yore say-so when we're ready for business."

Pete Dinsmore had the advantage of his colleague. He knew that Roberts
was the only Ranger in town. Also he was of tougher stuff. The leader of
the Dinsmore gang would go through.

Into the gray-blue eye of the young man came a look that chilled.
"Dinsmore, I'm not here to get into a rookus with you. But I'll serve
notice on you right now to ke