ling a crowd
in there last night--" Bill tilted his head backward towards the room
behind them--"that this law-and-order talk is all a farce. What if it
is? It don't do any good for you to bawl it out in public and get the
worst men in the Committee down on you, does it?

"What you'd better do, Jack, is go on down to Palo Alto where your
pardner is. He's got some sense. I wouldn't stay in the darned town
overnight, the way they're running things now, if it wasn't for my
business. Ever since they made Tom Perkins captain there's been hell
to pay all round. I can hold my own; I'm up where they don't dare
tackle me; but you take a fool's advice and pull out before the
Captain gets his eagle eye on you. Talk like you was slinging around
last night is about as good a trouble-raiser as if you emptied both
them guns of yours into that crowd out there."

"You're asking me to run before there's anything to run away from."
Jack's lips began to show the line of stubbornness. "I haven't
quarreled with the Captain, except that little fuss a month ago, when
he was hammering that peon because he couldn't talk English; I'm
not going to. And if they did try any funny work with me, old-timer,
why--as you say, these guns--"

"Oh, all right, m'son! Have it your own way," Bill retorted grimly.
"I know you've got a brace of guns; and I know you can plant a bullet
where you want it to land, about as quick as the next one. I haven't
a doubt but what you're equal to the Vigilantes, with both hands tied!
Of course," he went on with heavy irony, "I have known of some mighty
able men swinging from the oak, lately. There'll likely be more,
before the town wakes up and weeds out some of the cutthroat element
that's running things now to suit themselves."

Jack looked at him quickly, struck by something in Bill's voice that
betrayed his real concern. "Don't take it to heart, Bill," he said,
dropping his bantering and his stubbornness together. "I won't air my
views quite so publicly, after this. I know I was a fool to talk quite
as straight as I did last night; but some one else brought up the
subject of Sandy; and Swift called him a name Sandy'd have smashed him
in the face for, if he'd been alive and heard it. I always liked the
fellow, and it made me hot to see them hustle him out of town and hang
him like they'd shoot a dog that had bitten some one, when I _knew_ he
didn't deserve it. You or I would have shot, just as quick as he did,
if a d