“Well, I’m glad to hear the worst. Adios, brothers.”
We watches him jog out of sight and then we pilgrims on. Some time in the dim and distant past a colony of men and women and dogs and mules and kids pilgrimed from the South and settled in the Willer Crick hills. Seems that they was kinda anti-everything, and wanted to form a little empire of their own.
Map for “Law Rustlers”
They picks out this spot, took up their farms and drew sort of a dead-line against the rest of creation. They didn’t want schools—not believing in education, and they made their own queer laws. They intermarried until it took ’em a month to figure out a legal heir in case one of the land owners shuffled off. A few of ’em, called the Council of Three, assisted by Sol Vane, who does the lawin’ for the Crick, had enough education to see that the rest of the colony didn’t get anything that the council and one didn’t want ’em to get. Glory explained the system to us.
“My ——!” snorts Hashknife. “I could shoot once and kill your uncle, a cousin, a half-brother, a brother-in-law and a nephew.”
Which wasn’t true in Glory’s case, being as her dad had busted the law by marrying outside the colony.
This close relationship has bred a fine bunch of chinless horse-thieves, gun-men and hard drinkers. Seems like the men with the least chins always carries the most guns. There had never been a Willer Cricker arrested for anything else. Willer Crick dealt with ’em in their own way, and kept its mouth shut, except when it came to lying about their own innocence.
Me and Hashknife rides along for a while and then Hashknife pulls up his horse and looks back. I looks back too, but there ain’t nothing to see except the hills.
“Sleepy,” says Hashknife, kinda like he was thinking, “what do yuh reckon they’ll do to the Reverend Cobb up there?”