ing. Briefly, he had long had in mind a trip down to the Picardo
ranch, just to see the boys and the country and have a talk over the
stirring events of the past month; and, he added, he wanted to bring
Jack his pistols himself, because it was not reasonable to expect any
greaser to withstand the temptation of keeping them, once he got them in
his hands.

Therefore, having plenty of excuses for venturing so far from his place,
and having "tied the dove of peace to the ridge-pole" of town by means
of some thorough work on the part of the new Committee, he had boldly
set forth that morning, soon after sunrise, upon a horse which somebody
had sworn that a lady could ride.

Bill confessed frankly that he wasn't any lady, however; and so, when
the horse ducked unexpectedly to one side of the trail, because of
something he saw in the long grass, Bill surprised himself very much by
getting his next clear impression of the situation from the ground.

"I dunno how I got there, but I was there, all right, and it didn't feel
good, either. But I'd been making up my mind to get off and try walking
though, so I done it. Say, I don't see nothing so damned attractive
about riding horseback, anyway!"

He yelled at the horse to stop, but it appeared that his whoas were so
terrifying that the horse ran for its life. So Bill started to walk,
beguiling the time, by soliloquizing upon--well, Bill put it this way:
"I walked and I cussed, and I cussed and I walked, for about four hours
and a half. Say! How do you make out it's only twenty miles?"

"Nearer thirty" corrected Dade, and Bill grunted and went on with the
story of his misfortunes. Walking became monotonous, and he wearied of
soliloquy before the cattle discovered him.

"Met quite a band, all of a sudden," said Bill. "They throned up their
heads and looked at me like I was wild Injuns, and I shooed 'em off--or
tried to. They did run a little piece, and then they all turned and
looked a minute, and commenced coming again, heads up and tails
a-rising. And," he added naively, "I commenced going!" He said he
thought that he could go faster than they could come; but the faster he
departed, the more eager was their arrival. "Till we was all of us on
the gallop and tongues a-hanging."

Bill was big, and he was inclined to flesh because of no exercise more
strenuous than quelling incipient riots in his place, or weighing the
dust that passed into his hands and ownership. He must have