eed them was the better way, if human
life had any value.

"Well, Mr. Gray," said the sheriff, "put down your gun and take your
horses. This has been a bad piece of business for us--take your horses
and go, sir. My bondsmen can pay that judgment, if they have to."

Gray's son rode around during the conversation, opened the gate, and
turned out the horses. One or two men helped him, and the herd was
soon on its way to the pasture.

As the men of his party turned to follow Gray, who had remounted, he
presented a pitiful sight. His still determined features, relaxed from
the high tension to which he had been nerved, were blanched to the
color of his hair and beard. It was like a drowning man--with the
strength of two--when rescued and brought safely to land, fainting
through sheer weakness. A reprieve from death itself or the blood of
his fellow man upon his hands had been met and passed. It was some
little time before he spoke, then he said: "I reckon it was best, the
way things turned out, for I would hate to kill any man, but I would
gladly die rather than suffer an injustice or quietly submit to what I
felt was a wrong against me."

It was some moments before the party became communicative, as they
all had a respect for the old man's feelings. Ninde was on the uneasy
seat, for he would not return to the State, though his posse returned
somewhat crestfallen. It may be added that the sheriff's bondsmen,
upon an examination into the facts in the case, concluded to stand
a suit on the developments of some facts which their examination had
uncovered in the original proceedings, and the matter was dropped,
rather than fight it through in open court.

XIV

THE STORY OF A POKER STEER

He was born in a chaparral thicket, south of the Nueces River in
Texas. It was a warm night in April, with a waning moon hanging like a
hunter's horn high overhead, when the subject of this sketch drew
his first breath. Ushered into a strange world in the fulfillment of
natural laws, he lay trembling on a bed of young grass, listening to
the low mooings of his mother as she stood over him in the joy and
pride of the first born. But other voices of the night reached his
ears; a whippoorwill and his mate were making much ado over the
selection of their nesting-place on the border of the thicket. The
tantalizing cry of a coyote on the nearest hill caused his mother to
turn from him, lifting her head in alarm, and uneasily scenting t