"Shore thing it's bad. Do you know what made us bad? All of our tribe was cowboys and stockmen once; not saints, but trying to act honest, and only stealing cows quite moderate, like ole Chalkeye. Then rich men came stealing our water-holes, fencing in our grass, driving our cattle away."
"Why didn't you get a lawyer—wasn't there any law?"
"There shorely was. My father's farm was way back in Kansas. His neighbour was a big cattle company, which hadn't any use for farms or settlers. They turned their cattle into his crops, they shot my brother Bill, they wounded father. Then father went to law, and the lawyers skinned him alive, and the judge was a shareholder in the Thomas Cattle Company—he done gave judgment that we-all was in the wrong. Then father appealed to the big Court at Washington, which says he had the right to his land and home. So the cattle company set the grass on fire and burned our home. Mother was burned to death, and father he went bad. I was the only thing he saved from the fire."
"Poor beggar! No wonder he turned robber. I'd have done the same, by Jove!"
"He shot Judge Thomson first, then he killed Mose Thomson, and the sheriff put out to get him. He got the sheriff. Then he went all through Kansas and Colorado, gathering pore stockmen what had been robbed and ruined by the rich men's law. They held up pay-escorts, stage coaches, banks, the trains on the railroad. That was the beginning of the Robbers' Roost."
Jim sat heaps thoughtful looking away across the desert. "Our breeding cattle," says he, tallying on his fingers, "then Holy Cross, then mother, then father, and now I'm being hunted for a murder I didn't commit."
"Now you know," says Curly, "why we robbers played a hand in yo' game."
"I understand. Say, Curly, I take back all I said about it being bad—this robbery-under-arms. It's the only thing to do."
"Don't you get dreaming," says Curly, "we-all ain't blind; our eyes is open a whole lot wide to truth, and we make no bluff that robbery and murder is forms of holiness."
"It's all right for me. I'm a man, and I'm not a coward, either. But, Curly, you're not fit for a game like this. I'm going to take you away—where you'll be safe."