"That goes," laughed the handy man, "There's no sacred cow about that."
The telegraph man wrote headings for the dispatches and stuck them on the hook for the printer's boy.
"Speaking of sacred cows, it isn't exactly cows, but it's in the stock line all right—what do you know about that business last night up on Rim Rocks? Stage driver has been blazing it all round town—"
"Stage driver's a liar," emphatically declared Brydges.
"Been trying to get the news for an hour; the wires are cut. Can't get 'em by phone. Think I'll send a man up to-night with a photographer."
"Oh, I wouldn't," drawled Bat sleepily. "It isn't worth it. I've just come down. Whole row's over. You can't get a dub in the Valley to open his mouth. Same old gag we've used for the last ten years, 'heavily armed band of masked men,' 'scene like a butcher's shambles,' and that guy of a sheriff 'scouring the hills for the miscreants.' I'll bet he's under his bed scared blue."
"Who did it?"
"Same old gang of outside grazers, drovers who skipped the State line.
I succeeded in getting their names after a good deal of trouble."
"You did, did you? Then give us a stick about it, will you? Date it special at the Rim Rocks! Trouble is, if I do send a man up, business office will kick at the expense account; for there's nothing in it; and that kind of news hurts the Valley."
So Mr. Bat Brydges wrote forty lines of two paragraphs in which he warned the public that this sort of thing had to stop; the West would not stand for interference from outside cattlemen who were trying to wrest the range away from local grazers. There followed the names of six men concerned in the Rim Rock fray. Whose names they were, neither Bat nor anyone else knew. Also Mr. Sheriff Flood was not described as "a guy" nor pictured as reposing under his bed. He might have been a walking arsenal of defence for the Valley. According to Mr. Bat Brydges, Sheriff Flood was busy on the case and had wired the authorities of the adjoining States to be on the look out for the guilty parties. There followed a description of the guilty parties photographed accurately from Mr. Bat Brydges's retina.