can't be undone. An'
the rustlin' stops mighty sudden."

"Oh," she exclaimed, "what a barbarous custom!"

"I reckon it ain't exactly barbarous, ma'am," he contended mildly. "Would
you have the rustlers go on stealin' forever, an' not try to stop them?"

"There are the courts," she insisted.

"Turnin' rustlers off scot-free, ma'am. They can't hold them. An' if a
rustler is hung, he don't get any more than is comin' to him. Do you
reckon there's a lot of difference between a half dozen men hangin' a man
for a crime he's done, than for one man, a judge for instance, orderin'
him to be hung? If, we'll say, a hundred men elect a judge to do certain
things, is it any more wrong for the hundred men to do them things than
for the man they've elected to do them? I reckon not, ma'am. Of course,
if the hundred men did somethin' that the judge hadn't been elected to
do, why then, it might make some difference."

"But you say there is no law that provides hanging for rustling." She
thought she had him.

"The men that elected the judge made the laws," he said. "They have a
right to make others, whenever they're needed."

"That's mob law," she said with a shiver. "What would become of the world
if that custom were followed everywhere?"

"I wouldn't say that it would be a good thing everywhere. Where there's
courts that can be got at easy, there'd be no sense to it. But out here
there's no other way for a man to protect his property. He's got to take
the law into his own hands."

"It is a crude and cold-blooded way."

She heard him laugh, and turned to see him looking at her in amusement.

"There ain't no refinement in punishment, ma'am. Either it's got to shock
some one or not get done at all. I reckon that back East you don't get to
see anyone punished, or hung. You hear about it, or you read about it,
an' it don't seem so near you, an' that kind of takes the edge off it.
Out here it comes closer, an' it seems a lot cruel. But whether a man's
punished by the law or by the men who make the law wouldn't make a lot of
difference to the man--he'd be punished anyway."

"We won't talk about it any further," she said. "But understand, if there
are any cattle thieves caught on the Flying W they must not be hanged.
You must capture them, if possible, and take them to the proper
officials, that they may have a fair trial. And we shall abide by the
court's decision. I don't care to have any more murders committed here."

His fac