of this game--say, three
dollars a day and a couple of hundred bones when everything is quiet."

To this the judge agreed. "You go in and clean up. Run these gunmen down
the valley. Cut out this amatoor wild West business--it's hurting us.
Property is depreciating right along. We certainly can't stand any more
of this brimstone business. Go to it! We'll see that you're properly
reimbursed."

"All right, Judge. But you understand if I go into this peacemaking war
I draw no political lines. I am chief for the time being, and treat
everybody alike--greasers, 'Paches, your friends, my friends,
everybody."

"That's all right. It's your deal," said the judge and the aldermen.

II

Tall Ed had drifted into Sulphur from the Southwest some six months
before, and although fairly well known among the ranchers on the Wire
Grass, was not a familiar figure in town. The news of his appointment
was received with laughter by the loafers and with wonder by the quiet
citizens, who coldly said:

"He appears like a full-sized man, but size don't count. There's Clayt
Mink, for instance, the worst little moth-eaten scrap in the state, and
yet he'll kill at the drop of a hat. Sooner or later he's going to try
out this new marshal same as he did the others."

This seemed likely, for Mink owned and operated the biggest
gambling-house in Sulphur, and was considered to be (as he was) a
dangerous man. He already hated Kelley, who had once protected a drunken
cattleman from being almost openly robbed in his saloon. Furthermore, he
was a relentless political foe to Hornaby.

He was indeed a mere scrap of a man, with nothing about him full-sized
except his mustache. And yet, despite his unheroic physique, he was
quick and remorseless in action. In Italy he would have carried a
dagger. In England he would have been a light-weight rough-and-tumble
fighter. In the violent West he was a gunman, menacing every citizen who
crossed his inclination, and he took Kelley's appointment as a direct
affront on the part of Hornaby and Pulfoot.

"He'd better keep out of my way," he remarked to his friends, with a
malignant sneer.

Kelley was not deceived in his adversary. "He's a coward at heart, like
all these hair-hung triggers," he said to Pulfoot. "I'm not hunting any
trouble with him, but--" It was not necessary to finish his sentence;
his voice and smile indicated his meaning.

The town was comparatively quiet for the first month or two after Ke