ng for this and for that local appropriation. Happily in some
instances these Senators had been higher than their State, but in other
cases they represented only too loyally the violent and conscienceless
cow-man or lumber king, and now, as Redfield had said, the land-boomer was
to have his term. The man who valued residents, not Wild West performers,
was about to govern and despoil; this promoter, almost as selfish as the
cattle king, was about to advance the State along the lines of _his_
conception of civilization; and so, perhaps, this monstrous deed, this
final inexcusable inhuman offence against law and humanity, was to stand
as a monument dividing the old from the new. Such, at least, was the
ranger's hope.

At last, far in the night, he heard the snort of a horse and the sound of
voices. The law (such as it was) was creeping up the mountain-side in the
person of the sheriff of Chauvenet County, and was about to relieve the
ranger from his painful responsibility as guardian of the dead.

At last he came, this officer of the law, attended (like a Cheyenne chief)
by a dozen lesser warriors of various conditions and kinds, but among
them--indeed, second only to the sheriff--was Hugh Redfield, the Forest
Supervisor, hot and eager with haste.

As they rode up to the fire, the officer called out: "Howdy, ranger! How
about it?"

Ross stated briefly, succinctly, what he had discovered; and as he talked
other riders came up the hill and gathered closely around to listen in
wordless silence--in guilty silence, the ranger could not help believing.

The sheriff, himself a cattle-man, heard Cavanagh without comment till he
had ended with a gesture. "And there they are; I turn them over to you
with vast relief. I am anxious to go back to my own peaceful world, where
such things do not happen."

The sheriff removed his hat and wiped his brow, then swore with a mutter
of awe. "Well, by God, this is the limit! You say there were three
bodies?"

"I lacked the courage to sort them out. I've been in battle, Mr. Sheriff,
and I've seen dead men tumbled in all shapes, but someway this took the
stiffening out of my knees. I rode away and left them. I don't care to see
them again. My part of this work is done."

Redfield spoke. "Sheriff Van Horne, you and I have been running cattle in
this country for nearly thirty years, and we've witnessed all kinds of
shooting and several kinds of hanging, but when it comes to chopping and
bu