"We'll take care of him," said another stranger, easing up to Lance. "He won't hurt yuh; he was only foolin', anyway. Bill Kennedy, he always gits kinda happy when he's had one or two." There was laughter in the crowd. Two or three voices were heard muttering together, and other laughs followed. Some one produced a bottle and offered the pugnacious one a drink. Lance let him go with a contemptuous laugh and went to where the Devil's Tooth men now stood bunched close together, their backs to the chuck-wagon. "We'll have to clean up this crowd, before it's over," Al was saying to his father. "Might as well start right in and git 'er over with." "And have it said the Lorrigans can't give a dance without having it end in rough-house!" Lance interrupted. "Cut out the idea of fighting that bunch. Keep them out of the house and away from the women, and let them have their booze down in the grove. That's where I've seen a lot of them heading. Come on, boys; it takes just as much nerve not to fight as it does to kill off a dozen men. Isn't that right, dad?" "More," said Tom laconically. "No, boys, we don't want no trouble here. Come on in and dance. That's yore job--to keep 'er moving peaceable. I'll fire any man I ketch drinking Jumpoff booze. We've got better at the ranch. Come on!" He led the way and his men followed him,--not as though they were particularly anxious to avoid trouble, but more like men who are trained to obey implicitly a leader who has some definite purpose and refuses to be turned from it. Lance, walking a few steps in the rear, wondered at the discipline his father seemed to maintain without any apparent effort. "And they say the Lorrigans are a tough outfit!" he laughed, when he had overtaken Tom. "Dad, you've got the bunch trained like soldiers. I was more afraid our boys would rough things up than I was worried over the stews." "Shucks! When we rough things up, it's when _we_ want it rough. Al, he was kinda excited. But at that, we may have to hogtie a few of them smart Alecks from town, before we can dance peaceable." Mary Hope, Lance discovered, was already in the schoolhouse. Also, several of the intoxicated were there, and the quadrille was being danced with so much zest that the whole building shook. That in itself was not unusual--Black Rim dances usually did become rather boisterous after supper--but just outside the door a bottle was being circulated freely, and two or three men had started toward the cottonwood grove for more. Duke, coming up to Lance where he stood in the doorway, pulled him to one side, where they could not be overheard.