Silent Smith looked at Lee with helpless admiration.
"Gee whiz," said Orson in complete sympathy. "Ain't that a bird? And Mike gets 'em out without the aid of a net or any mechanical contrivance—just spontaneous like."
And the two men looked around to see if any one was rash enough to question the superiority of their leader.
Ladd's brow had begun to darken with anxiety when in walked Calthorpe.
"And, oh, by the way, McShay, I've asked Calthorpe, my chief of police, to be present, as he is thoroughly familiar with the country in dispute."
McShay took Hal by the hand and held it while he said, looking straight into the boy's eyes:
"Glad to meet somebody who is goin' to be interested in the proceedin's. Mr. Ladd is gittin' so shy and retirin' it makes us fellers feel kind of selfish and lonesome."
McShay's sharp gaze was a hard one to meet, but Hal looked into it with eyes so steady and serene that the big man was puzzled.
The two had met but seldom, and then in a way not calculated to make them friends. Hal had on one occasion ordered McShay and his men and cattle off the Reservation, had in fact put them off. The young man's attitude had been so quiet but so determined and convincing that, much to the cattlemen's surprise, they had gone without more than an angry protest. McShay had been a police officer himself and knew that the fellow with the law behind him had all the best of it, and so he'd taken his medicine, but he hadn't enjoyed it. On another occasion these same men, but without their leader, had come to one of the Indian dances with the avowed purpose of "having fun with the police." They had been drinking and were quarrelsome, but Calthorpe arrested them, disarmed them, and put them in the "lock-up" so quickly that they had no time to get going, though they were a formidable and dangerous lot. He had earned their good-will on the following morning, when they were sober, by inducing the agent to let them go without further trouble. So McShay and his crowd had at all events learned to respect him as a man who could take care of himself.
"Well, Doctor, it's up to you. The meeting is in your hands," and Ladd offered him a chair which had been placed on the edge of the veranda. The agent sat on the steps to the right of the clergyman, Captain Baker on the steps to his left, the others were grouped in a semicircle, McShay and Calthorpe opposite the chairman.