that murder,
horse-stealing, and branding another man's calves were subjects for the
unwritten law. But in his code this law meant death only after a fair
trial, with neighbors for a jury. He was not scrupulous that a judge
should be present. His duties were ended when he brought in his
prisoner.

Hoover's rule had been marked by the taming of bad men in Florence, and
a truce declared in the guerrilla warfare between the cattlemen and the
sheepmen on the range.

Slim's seemingly superfluous flesh was really of great advantage to
him: it served as a mask for his remarkable athletic abilities, and so
lulled the outlaws with whom he had to deal into a false sense of
superiority and security.

Slow and lethargic in his ordinary movements, in an emergency he was
quick as a panther, never failing to get the drop on his man.

Furthermore, his fat exerted a beneficial influence on his character in
keeping him humble-minded. Being the most popular man in the county,
he would probably have been swollen with vanity had there been any
space left vacant for it in his huge frame. He was especially admired
by the women, but was at ease only in the company of those who were
married. It was his fate to see the few girls of the region, with
every one of whom, by turns, he was in love, grow up to marry each some
less diffident wooer.

"Dangnation take it!" he used to say, "I don't git up enough spunk to
cut a heifer out o' the herd until somebody else has roped her and
slapped his brand onto her. Talk about too many irons in the fire,
why, I've only got one, and it's het up red all the time waitin' fer
the right chanct to use it; but some how I never git it out o' the
coals. Hell! what's the use, anyhow? Nobody loves a fat man."

Slim was inordinately puffed up by Polly's preference of him, which she
showed by all sorts of feminine tyrannies, and he was forced
continually to slap his huge paunch to remind himself of what he
considered his disabling deformity. "Miss Polly," he would
apostrophize the absent lady, "you don't know what a volcano of
seethin' fiery love this here mountain of flesh is that your walkin'
over. Some day I'll erupt, and jest eternally calcify you, if you
don't look out!"

The sheriff took no stock in Buck McKee's professed reformation, and
was greatly worried over the influence he had acquired over Bud Lane,
who had before this been Slim's protege. Accordingly, he readily
conspired with her to