Jack Serves Notice

But Gurley's fluency was gone. His cross-eyed glance slid round the room to take stock of his backers. Was this fellow Roberts alone, or had he a dozen Rangers in town with him? He decided to bluff, though with no very great confidence. For into the picture had walked a man, a personality, dynamic and forceful. The outlaw had seen him in action once, and he had been on that occasion as easy to handle as a cageful of panthers.

"Come to see the hangin', have you, Mr. Ranger?"

"Is there goin' to be a hangin'?"

"You betcha--to-night! Git around early, an' you can have a front seat." Gurley added a word of explanation. "No greaser can git biggity an' shoot up our friends without hangin' from the end of a wagon-tongue pronto."

"We'll see what a judge an' jury say about it," suggested the Ranger mildly.

"That so? No brindle-thatched guy in buckskin can interfere without sleepin' in smoke. Understand?" The long, sallow man nervously stroked his hair, which was flattened down on his forehead in a semicircle in the absurd fashion of the day.

"Don't pull on yore picket-pin, Gurley," observed Roberts. "What I say goes. There's goin' to be no hangin' till the courts say so."

A man had come into the saloon by the back door. He was a heavy-set, slouchy man in jeans, broad-shouldered and bowlegged. He laughed grimly. "I don't reckon you can put that over on folks of the short-grass country, young fellow, me lad. We grow man-size, an' I don't expect we'll ask yore say-so when we're ready for business."