unsel, he would have seen in the jury box no more thoughtful, set, and
determined faces than those assembled in that ranch-house room.

The decision this court reached was: to catch the culprits and hang
them; to drive their sheep over the hills into the deepest canyons to
die by thousands; to hunt out the hiding owners, and let Colt guns be
both judge and jury. Merciless and hard it seems, doesn't it? But those
were merciless and hard days, when "only the strong survived."

"There's just one man I ever knowed who could do this work right," Walt
Lampson said. "The greatest two-handed man with a gun that ever was
born, an' a fool jury sent him to the pen, five years ago, for brandin'
a few calves."

"You mean Mart Cooley," said another ranchman. "There was only one of
him. But he done two years at Deer Lodge, an' nobody's ever seen him
since."

"Guess again," Walt replied. "I heard o' him. He's been down in the
Chinook Country. An' what's more I've got word o' Mart, an' he's comin'
here t'night."

Walt's words caused a sensation, and while it is subsiding I may as well
explain that in those frontier days there was a vast stretch of mesa or
prairie known as the Chinook Country, because of the unseasonable, warm,
and soothing winds that blew there. You may have read Bill Jordan's tale
about these winds, in the first Injun and Whitey story. They would melt
the snow, and cause the cowmen to start out their feeding herds, only to
be caught by the northers, that brought the bitter, perishing cold, and
killed the stock by thousands. On account of this uncertain condition
the Chinook Country was avoided in the early days, save by those who
located there for _reasons_--which no one was ever known to question.
And in this desolate place Walt Lampson had heard of Mart Cooley, and
from there he had lured him to the Star Circle Ranch.

Whitey waited, almost breathless, for the thrill that was to come at
his first sight of the "bad man" of the West; the "two-gun man" who has
long since passed into history, but was then a factor of the troublous
times.

And you might like to hear a word or two about the ways he handled his
gun, for he had more than one way. But first, the way he didn't handle
it. Ordinarily, when you are shooting at a mark with a pistol, you cock
the weapon, close one eye, and gaze along the barrel with the other
until the sight is in line with the mark, and, holding the pistol
steady, pull the trigger. That wa