They had hanged a man in the Willows. He was swinging from a lower limb of a tree sixteen feet in diameter—the natives call it the Mother of Cottonwoods. The sheriff of Badger and I cut him down, and because the time was summer and the flies were bad, we buried him with all haste in the sand, beside a chiming stream. Then, that no prowler might despoil, we piled rocks above, and got to horse without delay.
"He don't look like nothing now," said Lafe, "but it's Tom Rooker. You remember ol' Rooker? He always bummed his drinks, Tom did."
We rode through a pleasant grove, where it was eternally twilight by day. A squirrel chattered above us and the stream whispered here in a sandy bed. At a bend, we came upon three cows wading belly-deep in the current and eating of watercress. Some birds cheeped in a leafy thicket beside the trail. The Willows was a paradise. Then a black shadow flitted in front, as we emerged into a glade where the light was stronger, and a bleary buzzard settled leisurely on the topmost branch of a tree. He gazed at us with calm insolence. I looked hastily away, remembering what we had laid out.
After a while, the sheriff said: "I shouldn't have left town, Dan. I shouldn't have gone."
"You had to go."
"They wouldn't have got away with it, if I'd been home. Poor ol' Tom—he was awful good-natured when he was sober."
We left the Willows behind and traversed open country, heading up the San Pedro Valley. As we went, the sheriff talked of the hanging. He spoke in a hushed tone, as though there were ears to hear; or, it may be, he could not get the dead man out of his thoughts.
"This is some of Bud Walton's work," he said.
It did not appear probable to me. Walton could have shot Tom with much less bother and unpleasantness.
"Bud might not have done it himself. No, he wouldn't. But some of his friends done it for him." Lafe slapped his thigh in passionate determination. "I tell you, Dan, I'm a-going to put a stop to this trouble. Fellers like them are keeping this country back. Either Bud or Jeff have got to come to a showdown, or get out of Badger."