ing which he was to be handled with
extreme care--or, better still, left entirely alone until the spell was
over. He looked almost exactly like Weary, and yet he was almost his
opposite in disposition. Weary was optimistic, peace-loving, steady as
the sun above him except for a little surface-bubbling of fun that
kept him sunny through storm and calm. You could walk all over
Weary--figuratively speaking--before he would show resentment. You could
not step very close to Irish without running the risk of consequences.
That he should, under all that, have a streak of calculating,
hard-headed business sense, did not occur to them.

They rode on, discussing the present situation and how best to meet it;
the contingencies of the future, and how best to circumvent the active
antagonism of Florence Grace Hallman and the colony for which she stood
sponsor. They did not dream that Irish was giving his whole mind to
solving the problem of raising money to build that fence, but that is
exactly what he was doing.

Some of you at least are going to object to his method. Some of
you--those of you who live west of the big river--are going to
understand his point of view, and you will recognize his method as
being perfectly logical, simple, and altogether natural to a man of his
temperament and manner of life. It is for you that I am going to relate
his experiences. Sheltered readers, readers who have never faced life in
the raw, readers who sit down on Sunday mornings with a mind purged of
worldly thoughts and commit to memory a "golden text" which they forget
before another Sunday morning, should skip the rest of this chapter for
the good of their morals. The rest is for you men who have kicked up
alkali dust and afterwards washed out the memory in town; who have gone
broke between starlight and sun; who know the ways of punchers the West
over, and can at least sympathize with Irish in what he meant to do that
night.

Irish had been easing down a corner of the last shack, with his back
turned toward three men who stood looking on with the detached interest
which proved they did not own this particular shack. One was H. J.
Owens--I don't think you have met the others. Irish had not. He had
overheard this scrap of conversation while he worked:

"Going to town tonight?"

"Guess so--I sure ain't going to hang out on this prairie any more than
I have to. You going?"

"Ye-es--I think I will. I hear there's been some pretty swift game