“Well, yore men did!” snapped Scotty.
Bonnette laughed at the sheriff’s red face.
“I’ll prob’ly fire ’em for not havin’ more respect for the law.”
“Aw, c’mon,” urged Porter. “T’ —— with ’em; we’ve got work to do.”
They rode away from the AK, heading back toward Blue Wells, no better off for their long ride to the AK.
“I’ve jist been thinkin’ that folks around here don’t show a —— of a lot of respect for the law,” said Scotty Olson.
“Well,” growled Porter, “it’s up to us to make ’em. By ——, I’m all through lettin’ folks make remarks to me. From now on I’m goin’ to make these smart pelicans set up and salute when the law shows up.”
VI—THE MAKING OF A COWBOY
Jim Legg awoke to a different world from what he had ever seen. Blue Wells was so typically southwestern, being one long street of one and two story adobe houses, some of them half-adobe, half-frame. There were no sidewalks, no lawns, no shrubbery. The fronts of the buildings were unpainted, and the signs were so scoured from wind and sand that the letters were barely legible.
No one seemed to pay any attention to Jim Legg. The town was full of cattlemen, and the topic of conversation was the train robbery. Jim Legg listened to the different ideas on the subject, no two of which were alike. He realized that if he and the express messenger had not fought and fell out of the car, they would have been in the center of things.