"you've got it exactly. We might hang a dozen
men for stealing cattle and we could go on hanging them. We've got no
right to hang anyone--we've got a law for that purpose. Then let us make
the law act!"

The prisoner had stood in his place, watching the men around him, his
face betraying varying emotions. When it had been finally agreed to take
him to Dry Bottom and deliver him over to the sheriff he grinned
broadly. But he said nothing as they took the rope from around his neck,
forced him to mount a horse and surrounding him, rode out of the
cottonwood toward the Circle Bar ranchhouse.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE TENTH DAY

Dusk had fallen by the time Greasy had been brought to the bunkhouse,
and Mrs. Norton had lighted the kerosene lamps when Norton and Hollis,
assured of the safety of the prisoner, left the bunkhouse and went into
the house for supper. Potter had washed the dust of travel from him and
when Norton and Hollis arrived he was seated on the porch, awaiting
them. Mrs. Norton greeted them with a smile. Her eyes expressed
gratitude as they met Hollis's.

"I am so glad you were in time," she said. "I told Neil not to do it,
but he was determined and wouldn't listen to me."

"You might have tried 'bossing' him," suggested Hollis, remembering his
range boss's words on the occasion of his first meeting with Norton's
wife. He looked straight at Norton, his eyes narrowing quizzically. "You
know you told me once that----"

"Mebbe I was stretchin' things a little when I told you that,"
interrupted Norton, grinning shamelessly. "If a man told the truth all
the time he'd have a hard time keepin' ahead of a woman."

"'Woman--she don't need no tooter,'" quoted Hollis. "It has taken you a
long time to discover what Ace has apparently known for years. And Ace
is only a bachelor."

Norton's eyes lighted. "You're gettin' back at me for what I said to you
the day before yesterday--when you stopped off at Hazelton's," he
declared. "All the same you'll know more about women when you've had
more experience with them. When I told you that I'd been 'bossed,' I
didn't mean that I'd been bossed regular. No woman that knows just how
much she can run a man ever lets him know that she's bossin' him. Mebbe
she'll act like she's lettin' him have his own way. But she's bossin'
him just the same. He sort of likes it, I reckon. At least it's only
when a man gets real mad that he does a little bossin' on his own
account. And th