“By heck!” he exclaimed, slapping his hand on his knee. “That old cuss was plumb full of fight! A catamount hadn’t nothing at all on him. I tell you, boys, Uncle Bill’s gone mad. I rode up to his clearing and toward his cabin, and then the door opened and there he stood with that gun of his in his hand, and he yells, ‘No need ter come any farther, sheriff. I been expectin’ you. Me and you’s been good friends--up ter now, and I’d hate like sin ter have to draw a bead on you. But I ain’t goin’ ter let you come no closer. This land is mine. I’m goin’ ter keep it. I’m goin’ ter fight fer it. Maybe in the end you’ll git the best of it, but it won’t be so long as I can twist the fust finger of my right hand over a trigger. You go back and tell the fellers that sent you that all I ask is to be left alone ter gyard what’s my own. It’s mine, and they ain’t nobody at all can take it away from me without a fight.’ “Well, I didn’t quite know what to do. I was so surprised like. I didn’t even have a shootin’ iron on me, and I saw he meant business. I tried to argue with him. No good! Uncle Bill is gone loco! And the hell of it is that I ain’t got no use for that old scoundrel Newport, and that I wouldn’t hurt Old Harmless for all California, because I like him, and--yet--I’m sheriff. Wish I wasn’t!” With an air of dejection he bent forward and twisted his hands together between outspread knees, thought for an instant, and then looked up at the partners. “So,” he said, “I come away--right fussed up. Then I happened to recollect that Uncle Bill’s awfully fond of you two fellers. He’s always shootin’ off his mouth about how good you been to him, and how you give him a phonograf, and--one time he told Mike Kelly, who runs the saloon, that he didn’t care so much about discoverin’ that ledge he’s always hoping for on his own account, but that he’d be willing to croak if he could find it and make you two a present of it!” He straightened up and became seriously intent on his business again. “I’m the sheriff,” he said. “I swore I’d enforce the law. Uncle Bill’s got to get out of there, if I have to take a posse and shoot him out. I won’t do that until everything else has been tried, and found no good. You two have just naturally got to go up there and tell him so, and show him how he’s got to go, because he can’t fight the law. He’ll listen to you two men, and he won’t listen to nobody else. You got to show him that he ain’t got a leg to stand on, and that I’ve got to do my duty what I swore to do, and that I’m goin’ to do it no matter how much it hurts. Get me?” The sheriff stared inquiringly at the two partners, who shook doubtful heads, consulted each other with their eyes, and appeared distressed. It was David, who, as usual, did the talking for both, who spoke first.