"Don't beat about the bush—who's done this thing?"
"George Ryan."
CHAPTER IX
WAR SIGNS
On Tuesday morning, after I headed Jim for Holy Cross, I had to stay over in Lordsburgh, finish my horse deal with the Lawson Cattle Company, then get my men back to Grave City by the evening train. I had only three cowboys, Monte, Custer, and Ute; nice children, too, when they were all asleep, but fresh that morning, full of dumb yearnings for trouble, and showing plentiful symptoms of being young. At breakfast-time I pointed out some items in the local scenery, a doctor's shambles, a hospital, a mortuary, and an adjacent graveyard.
"Now, you kids," says I, "you may be heap big tigers; but don't you get wild-catting around too numerous, because I ain't aiming to waste good money on yo' funerals."
They said they'd be fearful good, and might they have ten dollars apiece for the church offertory? They set off with three pure hearts, and thirty dollars.
Now I reckon there were twenty-five Flying W. riders owning the town that day, and they began politely by asking my boys if Chalkeye's squint was contagious, and whether that accounted for symptoms of mange in his ponies.
My boys were dead gentle, and softly answered that Lawson was the worst horse-thief in Arizona; that Lawson's foreman was three-parts negro and the rest polecat, and that Lawson's riders had red streaks around their poor throats because the hang-rope had failed to do them justice.