with a start. "Sure it is;
brand new. Yep, stuff ain't been in more'n five days. Smooth, ain't it?
Medicine, that's what I call it; a gentleman's drink--goes down like
water."

Observing a rather quizzical light in the eyes of Bard, he felt that he
had probably been making a few missteps, and being warmed greatly at the
heart by the whisky, he launched forth in a new phase of the
conversation.

CHAPTER XXVI

"THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON"

"Speakin' of hard cattlemen," he said, "I could maybe tell you a few
things, son."

"No doubt of it," smiled Anthony. "I presume it would take a _very_ hard
man to handle this crowd."

"Fairly hard," nodded the redoubtable Lawlor, "but they ain't nothin' to
the men that used to ride the range in the old days."

"No?"

"Nope. One of them men--why, he'd eat a dozen like Kilrain and think
nothin' of it. Them was the sort I learned to ride the range with."

"I've heard something about a fight which you and John Bard had against
the Piotto gang. Care to tell me anything of it?"

Lawlor lolled easily back in his chair and balanced a second large drink
between thumb and forefinger.

"There ain't no harm in talk, son; sure I'll tell you about it. What
d'you want to know?"

"The way Bard fought--the way you both fought."

"Lemme see."

He closed his eyes like one who strives to recollect; he was, in fact,
carefully recalling the skeleton of facts which Drew had told him
earlier in the day.

"Six months, me and Bard had been trailin' Piotto, damn his old soul!
Bard--he'd of quit cold a couple of times, but I kept him at it."

"John Bard would have quit?" asked Anthony softly.

"Sure. He was a big man, was Bard, but he didn't have none too much
endurance."

"Go on," nodded Anthony.

"Six months, I say, we was ridin' day and night and wearin' out a hoss
about every week of that time. Then we got jest a hint from a bartender
that maybe the Piottos was nearby in that section.

"It didn't need no more than a hint for us to get busy on the trail. We
hit a circle through the mountains--it was over near Twin Rivers where
the ground ain't got a level stretch of a hundred yards in a whole day's
ridin'. And along about evenin' of the second day we come to the house
of Tom Shaw, a squatter.

"Bard would of passed the house up, because he knew Shaw and said there
wasn't nothin' crooked about him, but I didn't trust nobody in them
days--and I ain't changed a pile since."