arallels of the affair to be judged impartially--and the impartial
judgment was, unanimously, that while there had undoubtedly been good
fights before Perry's Bend had disturbed the local quiet, they were not
quite up to the new standard of strenuous hospitality. Finally the heat
blistered everything back into the old state, and the shadows continued
to be in demand.

One afternoon, a month after the reception of the honorable delegation
from Perry's Bend, the town of Buckskin seemed desolated, and the earth
and the buildings thereon were as huge furnaces radiating a visible
heat, but when the blazing sun had begun to settle in the west it awoke
with a clamor which might have been laid to the efforts of a zealous
Satan. At this time it became the Mecca of two score or more joyous
cowboys from the neighboring ranches, who livened things as those
knights of the saddle could.

In the scant but heavy shadow of Cowan's saloon sat a picturesque figure
from whom came guttural, resonant rumblings which mingled in a spirit of
loneliness with the fretful sighs of a flea-tormented dog. Both dog and
master were vagrants, and they were tolerated because it was a matter of
supreme indifference as to who came or how long they stayed as long as
the ethics and the unwritten law of the cow country were inviolate. And
the breaking of these caused no unnecessary anxiety, for justice was
both speedy and sure.

When the outcast Sioux and his yellow dog had drifted into town some few
months before they had caused neither expostulation nor inquiry, as the
cardinal virtue of that whole broad land was to ask a man no questions
which might prove embarrassing to all concerned; judgment was of
observation, not of history, and a man's past would reveal itself
through actions. It mattered little whether he was an embezzler or the
wild chip from some prosperous eastern block, as men came to the range
to forget and to lose touch with the pampered East; and the range
absorbed them as its own.

A man was only a man as his skin contained the qualities necessary; and
the illiterate who could ride and shoot and live to himself was far more
esteemed than the educated who could not do those things. The more a man
depends upon himself and the closer is his contact to a quick judgment
the more laconic and even-poised he becomes. And the knowledge that he
is himself a judge tends to create caution and judgment. He has no court
to uphold his honor and to