"Well--so far, so good--the wild bunch comes home and Malcolm he takes the big think. He's a lawyer, like I says, and them are the boys that know how to pull the right string. He sends for the Scarboroughs and offers 'em a hundred head more, if they'll turn state's evidence and railroad the Bassetts. Well, the Bassetts are Injuns--and they'd made a little trouble when the Scarboroughs tried to run off some cows--so Isham and Red seen their chance to git shut of them and they took the hundred cows. They went down to Tonto and turned in their testimony, enough to send the Bassetts plumb to hell; but they talked so much they incriminated themselves and the judge throwed the case out of court. But by now the Bassetts had got blood in their eyes and they come back a charging, spent all their money on a lawyer, and had the Scarboroughs up for perjury. That sent Tonto County broke and court adjourned, but before they left town the judge or somebody gave the Maverick Basin crowd a quiet tip: the county was bankrupt, it was three days' hard hiring for an officer to come up from Tonto, and the idee was they'd better keep out of court and settle their little differences with a Winchester." "Oh, no!" exclaimed Hall, "surely they didn't say that!" "Mebbe not," shrugged Meshackatee, "but they's one thing I know--there hasn't been an officer up here since." Hall shook his head sadly and they rode on in silence, Meshackatee with his eyes on the Rock House far below them and Hall with his head bowed in thought. In his mind he was picturing the two contending factions and the battle that seemed certain to come, and when he looked up there was a strange light in his eyes and he gazed far away across the plain. "But the other people," he suggested, "there are other settlers, too--could nothing be done with them?" "What d'ye mean?" inquired Meshackatee, and Hall threw out his hands in a gesture of sudden appeal. "Can't you see?" he cried. "This quarrel must be stopped before it has gone too far!" "Oh--them!" responded Meshackatee, tossing his head contemptuously, "they're afraid to call their souls their own. All that lives to the west, mostly, are friends of Isham's; and to the east and up Turkey Crick they're for the Bassetts; but they ain't ary one of 'em would stand up for his own rights, let alone throw a skeer into Isham. Because Isham is the man that's behind all this devilment--he's got ten hired gunmen, right now--and unless he's connected up with the United States mint he'll have to start something pretty soon." "Yes, but what about the Bassetts? How can they expect to resist him unless they, too, hire more men?"