erosity. "You might better be making that bunk over,
m'son, than trying to take the whole blamed town apart and put it
together again, like you was doing last night." In this way Bill
tactfully swung to the subject that lay heavy on his mind.

Jack borrowed a match, cupped his fingers around his lips that wanted
to part in a smile, and lighted his before-breakfast cigarette--though
the sun hung almost straight overhead.

"So that's it," he observed, when the smoke took on the sweet aroma
of a very mild tobacco. "I saw by the back of your neck that you had
something on your mind. What's the matter, Bill? Don't you think the
old town needs taking apart?"

"Oh, it needs it, all right. But it's too big a job for one man to
tackle. You leave that to Daddy Time; he's the only reformer--"

"Say, Bill, I never attempted to reform anybody or anything in my
life; I'd hate to begin with a job the size of this." He waved his
cigarette toward the shifting crowd. "But I do think--"

"And right there's where you make a big mistake. You don't want to
think! Or if you do, don't think out loud; not where such men as Swift
and Rawhide and the Captain can hear you. That's what I mean, Jack."

Jack eyed him with a smile in his eyes. "Some men might think you were
afraid of that bunch," he observed with characteristic bluntness. "I
know you aren't, and so I don't see why you want me to be. You know,
and I know, that the Vigilance Committee has turned rotten to the
core; every decent man in San Francisco knows it. You know that Sandy
killed that Spaniard in self-defense--or if you didn't see the fracas,
I tell you now that he did; I saw the whole thing. You know, at any
rate, that the Vigilantes took him out and hung him because they
wanted to get rid of him, and that came the nearest to an excuse they
could find. You know--"

"Oh, I know!" Bill's voice was sardonic. "I know they'll be going
around with a spy-glass looking for an excuse to hang you, too, if you
don't quit talking about 'em."

Jack smiled and so let a thin ribbon of smoke float up and away from
his lips.

Bill saw the smile and flushed a little; but he was not to be laughed
down, once he was fairly started. He laid two well-kept fingers upon
the other's arm and spoke soberly, refusing to treat the thing as
lightly as the other was minded to do.

"Oh, you'll laugh, but it's a fact, and you know it. Why, ain't
Sandy's case proof enough that I'm right? I heard you tel