stant to admiration for the other's
cold-blooded courage. "Yuh spilled all the whisky, darn yuh--but then I
guess yuh don't know any better'n t' spoil good stuff that away. No hard
feelin's, anyhow. Stop an' eat dinner with us, an' we'll call it
square."

The policeman withdrew his foot from the stirrup and smiled at Piegan
Smith, and Piegan, to show that his intentions were good, impulsively
unbuckled his cartridge-belt and threw belt and six-shooters on the
ground.

"I don't hanker for trouble with a _hombre_ like you," he grunted. "I
guess I was a little bit hasty, anyhow."

"I call you," the policeman said, and stripping the saddle and bridle
from his sweaty horse, turned him loose to graze.

"Hello, Mac!" I hailed, as he walked up to the fire. He turned at the
sound of my voice with vastly more concern than he'd betrayed under the
muzzle of Piegan's gun.

"Sarge himself!" he exclaimed. "Beats the devil how old trails cross,
eh?"

"It sure does," I retorted, and our hands met.

He sat down beside me and began to roll a cigarette. You wouldn't call
that a very demonstrative greeting between two old _amigos_ who'd bucked
mesquite and hair-lifting Comanches together, all over the Southwest. It
had been many a moon since we took different roads, but MacRae hadn't
changed that I could see. That was his way--he never slopped over, no
matter how he felt. If ever a mortal had a firm grip on his emotions,
MacRae had, and yet there was a sleeping devil within him that was never
hard to wake. But his looks gave no hint of the real man under the
surface placidity; you'd never have guessed what possibilities lay
behind that immobile face, with its heavy-lashed hazel eyes and plain,
thin-lipped mouth that tilted up just a bit at the corners. We had
parted in the Texas Panhandle five years before--an unexpected,
involuntary separation that grew out of a poker game with a tough crowd.
The tumultuous events of that night sent me North in undignified haste,
for I am not warlike by nature, and Texas was no longer healthy for me
unless I cared to follow up a bloody feud. But I'd left Mac a
trail-boss for the whitest man in the South, likewise engaged to the
finest girl in any man's country; and it's a far cry from punching cows
in Texas to wearing the Queen's colors and keeping peace along the
border-line. I knew, though, that he'd tell me the how and why of it in
his own good time, if he meant that I should know.

One or tw