Jim swung round in the saddle, looking back at Grave City, a bad sample surely among cities, but still entitled to wave Old Glory high, the flag of honest men, of civilisation.
He set his teeth and swung to his trail again.
"If honesty is that," says he determinedly, "I'll herd with thieves."
"I don't like the smell of this trail," says Curly, "none. The City Marshal is riding up from Bisley with his posse. Let's strike west, then circle the town, then north, to father's camp."
"Come on," says Jim, and swung his horse to the west along a small dead trail.
"We got to change ourselves," says McCalmont's son, and began to loose some parcels tied by the strings to his saddle. "I got some clothes for we-all. Here," he passed over an old leather jacket, a straw sombrero, and a bottle. "That's cawffee extract," says he, "mixed with a black drug. I boiled it strong. You rub it over yo' face and neck and paws, then rig yo'self."
Our people, at any gait in the saddle, are broke to eat dinner, drink from a bottle, roll a cigarette, or sing a song without being jarred up like a tenderfoot. So while they trotted slow Jim stained his hide all black like a greaser vaquero, then slung on the charro clothes of a poor Mexican cowboy.
"Now," says Curly, "you take this moustache and lick the gummy side, stick it on yo' lip, and remember yo're a Dago. Say, pull up, they'll know that buckskin mare of mine for sure. There ain't another in the United States I reckon with white points like her'n. You empty that bottle, and black her white stockings, quick."
Curly was changing too, for he pulled up the legs of his overalls, then wriggled them down over his long boots. Then he took Jim's cowboy hat, and slouched the brim down front like a hayseed boy. He put on a raggy old jacket, and bulged his lean cheeks out with pads of wool. He looked a farm boy, and when they rode on, sat like a sack of oats.
"It won't work," says Jim, "here's a big outfit of people sweeping right down from the north. Our horses are blown, and their snorting will give us away."