“Now,” said Semple, “we got a couple of Greasers yere caught stealin’. Buck Barry and Missouri Jones caught them at it, so there ain’t much use hearin’ witnesses as to the fact. Question is: what do we want to do with them?”
“What did they steal?” demanded a voice.
“They just nat’rally didn’t steal nothin’,” said a heavy built, square-jawed, clean-shaven man whom I guessed to be Buck Barry. “Not while I was around.”
“Yes,” persisted the other, “but what was they after.”
“Oh, an extry pair of boots, and a shirt, and some tobacco, et cetery,” replied Buck Barry contemptuously.
“Let’s see them,” shouted several voices.
After a moment’s delay two ragged and furtive Mexicans were dragged before the assembly. A contemplative silence ensued. Then an elderly man with a square gray beard spoke up.
“Well,” said he deliberately, “airy man so low down and shif’less and miserable as to go to stealin’ boots and shirts and tobacco in this camp is shore outside my corral. He sure must be a miserable person. Why’n hell didn’t Buck and Missou give him a few lifts with the toes of their boots, and not come botherin’ us with them?”
Both Barry and Jones started to reply, but Semple cut them short.
“They was going to do just that,” he announced, “but I persuaded them to bring this matter up before this meetin’ 183 because we got to begin to take some measures to stop this kind of a nuisance. There’s a lot of undesirables driftin’ into this camp lately. You boys all recall how last fall we kep’ our dust under our bunks or most anywhere, and felt perfectly safe about it; but that ain’t now. A man has to carry his dust right with him. Now, if we can’t leave our tents feeling our goods is safe, what do you expect to do about it? We got to throw the fear of God into the black hearts of these hounds.”