"You heard what he said about cutting the fence this morning. That's the attitude of the country all around. You couldn't convict a man for cutting a fence in this country. So all a person can do is shoot them if you catch them at it. I don't know what Hargus will do to get even with this morning's humiliation."
"I think he'll leave that fence alone like it was charged with lightnin'," Taterleg said.
"He'll try to turn something; he's wily and vindictive."
"He needs a chunk of lead about the middle of his appetite," Taterleg declared.
"Who comes next?" Lambert inquired.
"There's a man they call Walleye Bostian—his regular name is Jesse—on the farther end of this place that's troubled with a case of incurable resentment against a barbed-wire fence. He's a sheepman, one of the last that would do a lawless deed, you'd think, from the look of him, but he's mean to the roots of his hair."
"All sheepmen's onery, ma'am, they tell me," said Taterleg, a cowman now from core to rind, and loyal to his calling accordingly.
"I don't know about the rest of them, but Walleye Bostian is a mighty mean sheepman. Well, I know I got a shot at him once that he'll remember."
"You did?" Taterleg's face was as bright as a dishpan with admiration. He chuckled in his throat, eying the Duke slantingly to see how he took that piece of news.
The Duke sat up a little stiffer, his face grew a shade more serious, and that was all the change in him that Taterleg could see.