s he pleased. Those who criticised said that
Norton was losing his nerve, or else that he was merely incompetent
when measured by the yardstick of swift, incisive action wedded to
capability.

"If he can't get Jim Galloway, let him step out of the way and give the
chance to a man who can," was said many times and in many ways. Even
John Engle, Julius Struve, Tom Cutter, and Brocky Lane came to Norton
at one time or another, telling him what they had heard, urging him to
give some heed to popular clamor, and to begin legal action.

"Put the skids under him, Roddy," pleaded Brocky Lane. "We can't slide
him far the first trip, maybe. But a year or so in jail will break his
grip here."

But Norton shook his head. He was playing the game his way.

"The rifles are still in the cache," he told Brocky. "He is getting
ready, as we know; further, just as my friends are beginning to find
fault with me, so are his hangers-on beginning to wonder if they
haven't tied to the wrong man. Just to save his own face he'll have to
start something pretty pronto. And we know about where he is going to
strike. It's up to us to hold our horses, Brocky."

Brocky growled a bit, but went away more than half-persuaded. He
called at the hotel, paid his respects to Virginia, and affording her a
satisfaction which it was hard for her to conceal, also paid her for
her services rendered him in the cliff-dweller's cave.

Often enough the man who tilts with the law is in most things not
unlike his fellows, different alone perhaps in the one essential that
he is born a few hundreds of years late in the advance of civilization.
Going about that part of his business which has its claims to
legitimacy, mingling freely with his fellows, he fails to stand out
distinctly from them as a monster. Given the slow passing of
uneventful time, and it becomes hard and harder to consider him as a
social menace. When the man is of the Jim Galloway type, his plans
large, his patience long, he may even pass out from the shadow of a
gallows-tree and return to occupy his former place in the quiet
community life, while his neighbors are prone to forget or condone.

As other days came and slipped by and the weeks grew out of them,
Galloway's was a pleasant, untroubled face to be seen on the street, at
the post-office, behind his own bar, on the country roads. He ignored
any animosity which San Juan might feel for him. If a man looked at
him stonily, Gallow