The cholos turned towards me. (Say! You talk about mean faces!) "Diablo!" they says, shakin' them track tools. Wal, it shore looked like the Ole Harry 'd done it! 'Cause right where the pig-pen used to was, I could see the top of a grea-a-at, whoppin' rock, half in and half outen the ground, and _smokin' hot_. Pretty nigh as big as a box-car, it was. Wal, as big as a wagon, _any_how. But neither hide 'r hair of them pigs! I walked 'round that stone. "My friend," I says to the section-boss, "the maw-pig made just thirteen. It's a proposition you cain't beat." Them cholos was all quiet now, and actin' as keerful as if that rock was dynamite. Queer and shivery, they was, about it, and it kinda give me the creeps. Next, they begun pointin' up to the top of the Butte! I seen what was comin'. So I used my haid--quick, so's to stave off trouble. "Mebbe, boys," I says, lookin' the ground over some more, "--mebbe they was a cyclone last night to the north of here, and this blowed in from Kansas." The section-boss walked 'round, studyin'. "I'm from Missoura," he says, "and it strikes _me_ that this rock looks kinda familiar, like it was part iron. Now, mebbe they's been a thunderin' big _ex_plosion in the Ozark Mountains. But, Mrs. Bridger, as a native son of the ole State, I don't want to _ad_vise you to sue fer da----" I heerd them cholos smackin' they lips. I looked where they was lookin', and here, a-comin' lickety-split, was the sheriff! That section-boss was as good-natured a feller as ever lived, and never liked t' think bad of _no_ man. But the minute he seen Bergin racin' down offen that Butte, he believed like the peons did. He turned t' me. "By George!" he says--just like that. Wal, sir, that "By George" done it. Soon as the Mexicans heerd him speak out what _they_ thought, they set up a Comanche yell, and, with the whites of they eyes showin' like a nigger's, they made towards the sheriff on the dead run. He kept a-comin'. Most men, seein' a passel of locoed greasers makin' towards 'em with pickaxes, would 'a' turned and run, figgerin' that leg-bail was good enough fer _them_. But the sheriff, he wasn't scairt. A second, and the Mexicans 'd made a surround. He pulled his gun. They jerked it outen his hand. He throwed 'em off. I drawed _my_ weapon. Just then--"Sheriff! sheriff!" (It was the widda, one hand helt out towards him.) A great idear come to me then. I put my best friend back into my pocket. "I won't interfere fer a while yet," I says to myself. "Mebbe this is where they'll be a show-down." "Cupid," says Bergin, "what's the matter?" I fit my way to him. "They think you throwed this rock, here," I answers. "The low-down, ornery, lay-in-the-sun-and-snooze good-fer-nothin's is likely t' think 'most _any_ ole thing," he says. "Pedro, let go my arm." Just then, one of the cholos come runnin' up with a rope!