But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out
of the state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do
nothing but make laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being
brought into the state. I reckon they was afraid some man would go
home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go
to work and make laws to repeal aforesaid laws. Me, I'm for the old
days when law and order meant what they said. A law was a law, and a
order was a order."

"But--" I began.

"I was going on," continued Bud, "while this coffee is boiling, to
describe to you a case of genuine law and order that I knew of once
in the times when cases was decided in the chambers of a six-shooter
instead of a supreme court.

"You've heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattle king? His ranch run
from the Nueces to the Rio Grande. In them days, as you know, there
was cattle barons and cattle kings. The difference was this: when
a cattleman went to San Antone and bought beer for the newspaper
reporters and only give them the number of cattle he actually owned,
they wrote him up for a baron. When he bought 'em champagne wine and
added in the amount of cattle he had stole, they called him a king.

"Luke Summers was one of his range bosses. And down to the king's
ranch comes one day a bunch of these Oriental people from New York
or Kansas City or thereabouts. Luke was detailed with a squad to
ride about with 'em, and see that the rattlesnakes got fair warning
when they was coming, and drive the deer out of their way. Among the
bunch was a black-eyed girl that wore a number two shoe. That's all I
noticed about her. But Luke must have seen more, for he married her
one day before the _caballard_ started back, and went over on Canada
Verde and set up a ranch of his own. I'm skipping over the sentimental
stuff on purpose, because I never saw or wanted to see any of it. And
Luke takes me along with him because we was old friends and I handled
cattle to suit him.

"I'm skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or wanted
to see any of it--but three years afterward there was a boy kid
stumbling and blubbering around the galleries and floors of Luke's
ranch. I never had no use for kids; but it seems they did. And I'm
skipping over much what followed until one day out to the ranch drives
in hacks and buckboards a lot of Mrs. Summers's friends from the
East--a sister or so and two or three men. One looked like an uncle
t