ted him to.

"That's all right, then. Start 'em south, and don't quit till somebody
tells you to." Weary carefully let down the hammer of his six-shooter
and shoved it thankfully into his scabbard.

"Now, you don't want to pile it on quite so thick, next time," Irish
admonished Big Medicine, when they turned away from watching the
bug-killer set his dogs to work by gestures and a shouted word or two.
"You like to have sent this one plumb nutty."

"I betche Bud gets us all pinched for that," grumbled Happy Jack.
"Torturing folks is purty darned serious business. You might as well
shoot 'em up decent and be done with it."

"Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" Big Medicine ogled the group mirthfully. "Nobody
can't swear I done a thing, or said a thing. All I said definite was
that I'd take off his shoes. Any jury in the country'd know that
would be hull lot worse fer us than it would fer him, by cripes.
Haw-haw-haw-w-w!"

"Say, that's right; yuh didn't say nothin', ner do nothin'. By golly,
that was purty slick work, all right!" Slim forgot his sore leg until he
clapped his hand enthusiastically down upon the place as comprehension
of Bud's finesse dawned upon him. He yelped, and the Happy Family
laughed unfeelingly.

"You want to be careful and don't try to see through any jokes, Slim,
till that leg uh yours gets well," Irish bantered, and they laughed the
louder.

All this was mere byplay; a momentary swinging of their mood to
pleasantry, because they were a temperamentally cheerful lot, and
laughter came to them easily, as it always does to youth and perfect
mental and physical health. Their brief hilarity over Slim's misfortune
did not swerve them from their purpose, nor soften the mood of them
toward their adversaries. They were unsmiling and unfriendly when they
reached the man from Wyoming; and, if they ever behaved like boys let
out of school, they did not show it then.

The Wyoming man was wiser than his fellow. He had been given several
minutes grace in which to meditate upon the unwisdom of defiance; and he
had seen the bug-killer change abruptly from sullenness to terror, and
afterward to abject obedience. He did not know what they had said to
him, or what they had done; but he knew the bug-killer was a hard man to
stampede. And he was one man, and they were many; also he judged that,
being human, and this being the third offense of the Dot sheep under his
care, it would be extremely unsafe to trust that their indignat