“He won’t come alone,” put in Hurley, who had been listening at the bar to the argument. “Huh?” “I say he won’t come in here alone. I might as well serve notice here and now that this Parson Hunt is a friend of mine. I don’t never aim to throw a friend down or fail him when he gets into a jam. If he comes in here—for any purpose, Tolley—I’ll likely be with him.” “You keep him out o’ yere! You keep him out!” blustered the other. “We don’t want no sky pilots here in the Pass. Anyway, I won’t have ’em in the Grub Stake.” A burly fellow in overalls and riding boots broke in. He had already sampled Tolley’s red-eye more deeply than was wise. “You say the word, boss,” he growled, “and we’ll run the preacher out o’ town.” Joe Hurley looked at the ruffian coldly. “You won’t run anybody out of town, Hicks—not any,” the mine owner said. “But I’ll tell you something that may be worth your attention. If Canyon Pass ever gets up on its hind legs and reares and starts to run certain tramps and ne’er-do-wells out of town, I’m ready to lay a bet with any man that you’ll be right up in the forefront of them that are chased out. Get me?” Hicks, scowling, dropped his hand to the gunbutt peeping above the waistband of his overalls. Joe Hurley did not flicker an eyelash nor move a finger. Finally Hicks lurched away with an oath and went out through the swinging doors. “And that’s that,” said Rosabell briskly, cutting the tense chord of silence. “I always did say the more of a boozer a man is, the quicker he’ll take water. I hope your friend Mr. Hunt, Joe, has got backbone same as you have. Is he an old gentleman?” “Not so you’d notice it,” replied Hurley with a sudden grin. He remained awhile to bandy repartee with Rosabell and some of the other idlers. But Boss Tolley slipped out of the honkytonk, although he did not follow Hicks. Mulligan Lane ran at the rear of the stores, saloons, and other amusement places facing this side of Main Street. Colorado Brown’s cabaret was not far from Tolley’s rear door. It was dusk of rather a sultry day—a day that had forecast the heat of the approaching summer. Tolley lounged under the withered cottonwood behind Brown’s dance-pavilion. The sign of the flood’s highwater mark—that flood of twenty years before—had been cut by some idle knifeblade deep into the bole of the tree high over Tolley’s head, and he was a tall man. A sallow-faced, bony giant of a man was Tolley, hairy and brawny, without a redeeming feature in his cruel countenance. Had he not possessed, in the memorable words of Bill Judson, “a wishbone where his backbone should have been,” Boss Tolley would have been a very dangerous man. Lacking personal courage he depended upon the backing of men like Hicks and his bouncer, Macpherson.