Them road
agents don't pretend to be your friend--but take yer money and run their
risks. For ez to the law--that can't help yer."

"It's a skin game, and you might ez well expect to recover a gambling
debt from a short-card sharp," explained Clinch; "Falkner oughter shot
him on sight."

"Or the boys lynched him," suggested Rawlins.

"I think," said Hale, more reflectively, "that in the absence of legal
remedy a man of that kind should have been forced under strong physical
menace to give up his ill-gotten gains. The money was the primary
object, and if that could be got without bloodshed--which seems to me a
useless crime--it would be quite as effective. Of course, if there was
resistance or retaliation, it might be necessary to kill him."

He had unconsciously fallen into his old didactic and dogmatic habit of
speech, and perhaps, under the spur of Zenobia's eyes, he had given
it some natural emphasis. A dead silence followed, in which the others
regarded him with amused and gratified surprise, and it was broken only
by Zenobia rising and holding out her hand. "Shake!"

Hale raised it gallantly, and pressed his lips on the one spotless
finger.

"That's gospel truth. And you ain't the first white man to say it."

"Indeed," laughed Hale. "Who was the other?"

"George Lee!"

CHAPTER VI

The laughter that followed was interrupted by a sudden barking of
the dogs in the outer clearing. Zenobia rose lazily and strode to the
window. It relieved Hale of certain embarrassing reflections suggested
by her comment.

"Ef it ain't that God-forsaken fool Dick bringing up passengers from
the snow-bound up stage in the road! I reckon I'VE got suthin' to say
to that!" But the later appearance of the apologetic Dick, with the
assurance that the party carried a permission from her father, granted
at the lower station in view of such an emergency, checked her active
opposition. "That's like Paw," she soliloquized aggrievedly; "shuttin'
us up and settin' dogs on everybody for a week, and then lettin' the
whole stage service pass through one door and out at another. Well, it's
HIS house and HIS whiskey, and they kin take it, but they don't get me
to help 'em."

They certainly were not a prepossessing or good-natured acquisition to
the party. Apart from the natural antagonism which, on such occasions,
those in possession always feel towards the new-comer, they were
strongly inclined to resist the dissatisfied querulous