I'll do it."

"Am I the only man that ever rustled? Ain't there others in the park?
I reckon you've done some night-riding yore own self."

"Some," drawled Rutherford, with a grim little smile. "By and large,
I've raised a considerable crop of hell. But I'm reforming in my old
age. New Mexico has had a change of heart. Guns are going out,
Meldrum, and little red schoolhouses are coming in. We've got to keep
up with the fashions."

"Hmp! Schoolhouses! I know what's ailin' you. Since Anse
Rutherford's girl--"

"You're off the reservation, Dan," warned the rancher, and again his
low voice had the sting of cactus thorns in it.

Meldrum dropped that subject promptly. "Is Buck going to join this
Sunday-School of yours?" he jeered. "And all the boys?"

"That's the programme. Won't you come in, too?"

"And Jess Tighe. He'll likely be one of the teachers."

"You'd better ask him. He hasn't notified me."

"Hell! You and yore kin have given the name to deviltry in this
country. Mothers scare their kids by telling them the Rutherfords will
git them."

"Fact. But that's played out. My boys are grown up and are at the
turn of the trail. It hit me plumb in the face when you fools pulled
off that express robbery. It's a piece of big luck you're not all
headed for the penitentiary. I know when I've had enough. So now I
quit."

"All right. Quit. But we haven't all got to go to the mourner's bench
with you, have we? You can travel yore trail and we can go ours, can't
we?"

"Not when we're on the same range, Dan. What I say goes." The eyes of
Rutherford bored into the cruel little shifty ones of the bad man.
"Take yore choice, Dan. It's quit yore deviltry or leave this part of
the country."

"Who elected you czar of Huerfano Park?" demanded Meldrum, furious with
anger.

He glared at the ranchman impotently, turned away with a mumbled oath,
and went back with jingling spurs to his horse.

Chapter XIX

Beaudry Blows a Smoke Wreath

Royal Beaudry carried about with him in his work on the Lazy Double D
persistent memories of the sloe-eyed gypsy who had recently played so
large a part in his life. Men of imagination fall in love, not with a
woman, but with the mystery they make of her. The young cattleman was
not yet a lover, but a rumor of the future began to murmur in his ears.
Beulah Rutherford was on the surface very simple and direct, but his
thoughts were occupied with the soul o