ith my glittering hew-gag, without no
special wonder. For," he declaimed, "I am endowed by nature with certain
inalienable rights, among which are the high justice, the middle, and
the low!"

"And who's to be the judge of whether it's a good law or not? You?"

"Me. Me, every time. Some one must. If I let some other man make up my
mind I've got to use my judgment--picking the man I follow. By
organizing myself into a Permanent Committee of One to do my own
thinking I take my one chance of mistakes instead of two."

"So you believe in doing evil that good may come, do you?"

"Well," said Jeff judicially, "it seems to be at least as good a
proposition as doing good that evil may come of it. Why, Capricorn,
there isn't one thing we call wrong, when other men do it, that hasn't
been lawful, some time or other. When to break a law is to do a wrong,
it's evil. When it's doing right to break a law, it's not evil. Got
that? It's not wrong to keep a just law--and if it's wrong to break an
unjust law I want a new dictionary with pictures of it in the back."

"But laws is useful and excitin' diversions to break up the monogamy,"
said Aforesaid. "And it's a dead easy way to build up a rep. Look at
the edge I've got on you fellows. You're just supposed to be
honest--but I've been proved honest, frequent!"

"Hark!" said Pringle.

A weird sound reached them--the night wrangler, beguiling his lonely
vigil with song.

"Oh, the cuckoo is a pretty bird; she comes in the spring----"

"What do you s'pose that night-hawk thinks about the majesty of the
law?" he said. There was a ringing note in his voice. Smith and
Headlight nodded gravely; their lean, brown faces hardened.

"You haven't heard of it? Old John Taylor, daddy to yonder warbler,
drifted here from the East. Wife and little girl both puny. Taylor takes
up a homestead on the Feliz. He wasn't affluent none. I let him have my
old paint pony, Freckles--him being knee-sprung and not up to cow-work.
To make out an unparalleled team, he got Ed Poe's Billy Bowlegs, nee
Gambler, him havin' won a new name by a misunderstanding with a
prairie-dog hole. Taylor paid Poe for him in work. He was a willin' old
rooster, Taylor, but futile and left-handed all over.

"John, Junior, he was only thirteen. Him and the old man moseyed around
like two drunk ants, fixin' up a little log house with rock chimbleys,
a horse-pen and shelter, rail-fencin' of the little _vegas_ to put to
crops,