Some were seated at the big round table. Buck Manners was in his chair, seesawing it on the back legs. Buck was the slim and smiling man Clint Charterhouse had seen crossing the plaza a few minutes earlier. He was seated and still showed a good-natured expression, even though the single flip of a phrase threatened to turn the town into a blaze of war. Sheriff Drop Wolfert was seated, too. His hands were lying flat on the table's surface, and his narrowed, sulky eyes were following around from man to man. Never amiable, his temper was further inflamed this afternoon from knowing that his authority was scornfully questioned and his motives doubted. Beef Graney sat next to the sheriff. Beef was a figure with a few dubious acres of range and a small scattering of stock. He was slyly keeping his eyes down. There was no mistaking the ruddy bull-dog of a man who dominated the meeting. John Nickum was of the Western type that produced the great cattle kings. Even now when the middle fifties had fleshed up his big bones and shot his hair with gray, there still remained the chill blue directness of his eyes that signaled relentless personal courage. Kindly, jovial, never forsaking a friend nor committing deliberate meanness, he possessed all the old baronial virtues.
His faults sprang from the same source. He had fought too hard in his life to forgive an enemy; to them he was ruthless. For him there was no middle ground, no mellowed tolerance. The qualities of the land itself were in him, and he could not change. He had seen good men fall and the lesson of their lives had stiffened his own rugged back. Piece by piece the great Box M had been wrung from his sweat and scheming; every step of the way he had been harried by the inevitable outlaws who snapped at his flanks. Blow for blow he had fought them without pity; now that his power was again being undermined he placed his back to the wall and roared his challenge.
"I am able to take care of my own quarrels," he said stiffly. "Nevertheless, I called you here to tell you and warn you that a pack of yellow hounds are building up their machine to wreck me. If they succeed, they will wreck you as well. I have cleaned up more than one magpie's nest in my time. I have the power still to do it."
"Fine talk," broke in Shander, another powerful rancher, pressing the words between his thin lips. "Since you are all wound up, suppose you mention some names? Who are these yellow dogs you mention?"
Old John Nickum's cold glance struck Shander. "I will take my own pleasure about that," said he.
"You take your own pleasure about a great many things," snapped Shander. "Too many things, if you ask me. Big as your damned outfit is, I am not afraid to stand up and speak my piece. Every man in this room understands who you are talking against. I'll just challenge you to state a few facts."
Both Sheriff Wolfert and Beef Graney lifted their heads in seeming assent, though Wolfert immediately covered his expression and tried to look neutral. Buck Manners laughed softly at him.
"So—facts?" muttered Nickum. "Here is one fact. Casabella's got a large floating population in the last few months that lifts no single hand in honest labor. You know what that means as well as I do. Take a count of Curly's outfit right now and you'd find it shot with the worst thieves and knife artists along the Border. I can go out to the street and point out six of his damned crew snoozing in the shade. I once was easy on him, and now he's the coldest leader of hired killers ever forked saddle in this country."
"Lay that to Casabella's salubrious climate," said Shan-der with evident sarcasm. "Can't deny any man's right to jump a county line for saftey, can you? Since when have you got so moral, anyhow? I'm prepared to say you've got riders in your own outfit whose pasts won't bear daylight. Who cares?"
"I will state another fact," went on old John Nickum, sweeping Shander's words aside. "On this very day we have a meeting, Angels is crowded with these last run of shad, armed to the teeth. What brings 'em here so suddenly?"
"Promise of excitement," retorted Shander. "What brought all your riders in?"
"Promise of excitement, eh? Promise of pay—promise of killings. Somebody is drumming up another mess of grief. I have cut my eye teeth, Shander. I know the signs as well as any man."
Shander's thin frame trembled. "By gosh, Nickum, I challenge you to name names. You are dragging a wide loop, and I'm warning it will snag you out of the saddle before long!"
"Oh, come," broke in Buck Manners easily. "This is getting rather stiff. Let's take another turn around the snubbing post and go slower. No need for you gentlemen to fight about it. Let's be reasonably calm."
But John Nickum ploughed doggedly ahead. He veered on Sheriff Wolfert. "Drop, you ain't blind, are you? You see Curly's riders floating through Angels, don't you. What in hell are you wearing a star for?"
Sheriff Wolfert grumbled morosely, "What of it? I got no bench warrants for any of Curly's men. I can't arrest nobody on plain suspicion. I got a warrant for Curly, but he's the only one of the gang I could legally arrest—if he showed his nose. Even so, what jury would hook Curly, or any of the rest? Man's got to use judgment in these things, Nickum. If I go throwing all suspicious folks in the calaboose, I'll be finding myself out in the mesquite some fine day."
"Great talk!" scouted Nickum. "You'd better put that star on your undershirt so folks won't see it. I'll tell you now, Wolfert, this is your last term in the office."
Wolfert flared up. "Oh, I don't know about that!" But both Graney and Shander looked at him so sharply that he stopped talking and sank back into the same morose silence. Everybody in the room caught that scene. Buck Manners' attention went up swiftly to the withdrawn Nero Studd and watched him momentarily. Nickum boomed on. "I have got something else to say to you, Wolfert. When my son was ambushed and killed in Red Draw, what did you do? You never moved out of your chair for two days. What have you done since? Nothing! Am I to believe you are making a tolerable effort to earn your money? I understand all about the petty graft you take and I am not kicking about it. But when you refuse to lift a hand to help Box M, I am forced to conclude that you got your fingers in a bigger kettle."
"Who said so?" yelled Wolfert, half rising. "Who give you license to call me thataway? Hell, I've worn my horses' shoes to paper in that damn country! If you want to know, I can't find a smell of a clue regarding who shot your son! I made an effort. Don't say I didn't. It's unfriendly for you to say I'm hooked up in any way with that affair. If I got to be blunt, Nickum, you talk to folks like they was school boys. It doesn't set straight. You hadn't ought to try to run other men's businesses for 'em. I'm able to handle my job."
"The great man," was Shander's cutting interjection, "doesn't forget he is the king-pin of Casabella. And the great man hasn't named any names yet."
But old John Nickum had straightened. He looked from the sheriff to Graney to Shander and on over to Nero Studd. "I am not crying about my loss," said he, even and cold. "I paid my just debts for fifty-eight years. I will continue to pay them—and to collect them. I was weaned on outlaws and crooked politics. I see what is going on here. I see another bright idea to hamstring Box M. It's been tried before by damned fools who think they got some original sure-thing racket. I say this, too. If those gentlemen who believe they can put me on the run want war, they shall have war!"
Buck Manners frowned. "Think it over. We ought to be able to settle this without recourse to shooting."
"Never mind, Buck," grunted Nickum. "I'm playing my hand."
"Not altogether," said Manners gently. "Remember the Manners family has strung along on your side for thirty good years and I expect to carry on my father's habits. I believe as you do, but I want to be sure we can't settle this peaceably."
"I haven't asked you to come in," was Nickum's short answer.
"No, but I'll be there with my outfit," Manners retorted.
Shander was grimly smiling. "After you, Alphonse. Virtue sure does drip over. I ain't heard any names mentioned yet."
"Were I you," said Manners coldly, "I'd take advantage of a pretty broad hint."
"Meaning what?" challenged Shander.
"Meaning this," said Nickum, taking up the thread. "The Box M draws a deadline today at its south limit, from Red