"You ask me if I intend to break the law? No, Sir, I do not; but _I do intend to carry the law out beyond the firing line. The thief strains the law to get away with the goods; I am going to strain the law to get them back. The murderer strains the law to protect his damned useless neck; I'm going to strain the law to break his neck_. Unless," he added, "I break my own neck doing it." The old man had drawn down his brows. "A don't just like the sound of it; what's your plan?" "To go out with a gun till I get them; the way your own Mounted Police do up in Canada! _I'm going to quit monkeying with technicalities in the twilight zone . . . and go out . . . after the man_." The old Britisher sat thinking: "Wayland, if A was managing this thing, first thing A'd do would be blow such a blast on your local press, the authorities would _have_ to sit up, then--A'd go after your sheriff if A had to tackle the coward by the scruff of his scurvy neck, A'd make him ashamed . . . _not_ . . . to act." "All right, Sir! Manage this thing . . . manage it just as you would behind your hide-bound British laws! We'll pass the Senator's ranch in ten minutes. You can telephone down to 'The Smelter City Herald.' I'll get something ready to eat while you telephone. Then, we'll go right along to the sheriff." They kicked their ponies lightly into a trot and came to the Senator's k'raal before the noon hour. Two or three of the ranch hands loitered casually out to the road. All were in blue over-alls and shirt sleeves but one; and he was in knickerbockers. "That's the foreman, ask him!" "'Twould oblige me t' have the use of your telephone?" The man in the knickerbockers tilted his hat at a rakish angle, stuck a tooth-pick in the corner of his mouth, put his thumbs in his jacket arm holes, shot Wayland a quick look of questioning, grinned at the old man and nodded towards a white pergola standing apart from the veranda of the ranch house. "Find it there," he indicated, "drop a nickel--then, ring!" "Did you see that look?" gritted the old Britisher between his teeth, as the fellow sauntered away with elaborate indifference. "Yes, but looks don't go with a jury." "Neck-tie was effective with the likes of him in my day!" For the third time, Wayland uttered the same sardonic laugh. What was happening to the old Britisher to change his point of view? "I'll go on down to the River and prepare grub." What Wayland was thinking, he did not say; but _what_ was passing in the brain of the law-loving old Britisher that the rakish tilt of the hat, the insolent angle of the tooth-pick, the spread of a man's thumbs and feet--could break through hide-bound respect for law and elicit reference to the court of the old-time neck-tie?