Son, you're sure a jim-dandy! Take off yore
hats, boys, to the man that ran a bluff on the Dinsmore outfit an' made
a pair of deuces stick against a royal flush."

He tossed the bits of wood across to Pete Dinsmore, who caught the
bundle and looked down at it with a sinister face of evil. This boy had
out-maneuvered, outgamed, and outshot him. Dinsmore was a terror in the
land, a bad-man known and feared widely. Mothers, when they wanted to
frighten their children, warned them to behave, or the Dinsmore gang
would get them. Law officers let these outlaws alone on one pretext or
another. But lately a company of the Texas Rangers had moved up into
the Panhandle. This young cub had not only thrown down the gauntlet to
him; he had wounded him, thwarted him, laughed at him, and made a fool
of him. The prestige he had built up so carefully was shaken.

The black eyes of the outlaw blazed in their deep sockets. "By God,
young fellow, it's you or me next time we meet. I'll learn you that no
scrub Ranger can cross Pete Dinsmore an' get away with it. This ain't
the first time you've run on the rope with me. I've had more 'n plenty
of you."

The riders were moving away, but Jack Roberts turned in the saddle, one
hand on the rump of the bronco.

"It won't be the last time either, Dinsmore. You look like any other
cheap cow-thief to me. The Rangers are going to bring law to this
country. Tell yore friends they'll live longer if they turn honest men."

The Ranger put spurs to his horse and galloped after his posse.

[Footnote 4: In the early days in Texas a revolver was sometimes called
a "cutter."]

CHAPTER XVI

WADLEY GOES HOME IN A BUCKBOARD

Clint Wadley took his daughter to the end of the street where his sister
lived, blowing her up like a Dutch uncle every foot of the way. The
thing she had done had violated his sense of the proprieties and he did
not hesitate to tell her so. He was the more unrestrained in his
scolding because for a few moments his heart had stood still at the
danger in which she had placed herself.

"If you was just a little younger I'd sure enough paddle you. Haven't
you been brought up a-tall? Did you grow up like Topsy, without any
folks? Don't you know better than to mix up in men's affairs an' git
yoreself talked about?" he spluttered.

Ramona hung her head and accepted his reproaches humbly. It was easy for
her to believe that she had been immodest and forward in her solicitude.