rfully announced that hereafter and henceforth he was the marshal,
self-appointed and self-sustained. Those who did not like it could
easily move to other localities.

With this touch of office-holding came ambition, and of stern stuff.
The marshal asked himself why he could not be more officers than one
and found no reason. Thereupon he announced that he was marshal, town
council, mayor, justice, and pound-keeper. He did not go to the trouble
of incorporating himself as the Town of Rawhide, because he knew nothing
of such immaterial things; but he was the town, and that sufficed.

He had been grievously troubled about finances in the past, and he
firmly believed that genius such as his should be above such petty
annoyances as being "broke." That was why he constituted himself the
keeper of the public pound, which contented him for a short time, but
later, feeling that he needed more money than the pound was giving him,
he decided that the spirit of the times demanded public improvements,
and therefore, as the executive head of the town, he levied taxes
and improved the town by improving his wardrobe and the manner of his
living. Each saloon must pay into the town treasury the sum of one
hundred dollars per year, which entitled it to police protection and
assured it that no new competitors would be allowed to do business in
Rawhide.

Needless to say he was not furiously popular, and the crowds congregated
where he was not. His tyranny was based upon his uncanny faculty of
anticipating the other man's draw. The citizens were not unaccustomed to
seeing swift death result to the slower man from misplaced confidence in
his speed of hand--that was in the game--an even break; but to oppose an
individual who _always_ knew what you were going to do before you knew
it yourself--this was very discouraging. Therefore, he flourished and
waxed fat.

Of late, however, he had been very low in finances and could expect
no taxes to be paid for three months. Even the pound had yielded him
nothing for over a week, the old patrons of Rawhide's stores and saloons
preferring to ride twenty miles farther in another direction than
to redeem impounded horses. Perhaps his prices had been too high, he
thought; so he assembled the town council, the mayor, the marshal, and
the keeper of the public pound to consult upon the matter. He decided
that the prices were too high and at once posted a new notice announcing
the cut. It was hard to fall fr