"Then I'll be a wreck," responded Shields, still smiling. "For I'll stop it, even if I have to shoot you first, which are also plain facts." Sneed's men had been coming up while they talked and were freely voicing their opinions of sheriffs. Sneed stepped close to the peace officer and laughed, his face flushed with foolish elation at his strength. "Do you see 'em?" he asked, ironically, indicating his men by a sweep of his arm. "Do you think you could shoot me?" The reply was instantaneous. The last word had hardly left his lips before he peered blankly into the cold, unreasoning muzzle of a Colt, and the sheriff's voice softly laughed up above him. The cowboys stood as if turned to stone, not daring to risk their foreman's life by a move, for they did not understand the sheriff's methods of arguments, never having become thoroughly acquainted with him. "You know me better now, Sneed," Shields remarked quietly as he slipped his Colt into its holster. "I'm running the law end of the game and I'll keep right on running it as I d----d please while I'm called sheriff, understand?" Sneed was a brave man, and he thoroughly appreciated the clean-cut courage which had directed the sheriff's act, and he knew, then, that Shields would keep his word. He involuntarily stepped back and intently regarded the face above him, seeing a not unpleasant countenance, although it was tanned by the suns and beaten by the weather of fifty years. The hazel eyes twinkled and the thin lips twitched in that quiet humor for which the man was famed; yet underlying the humor was stern, unyielding determination. "You're shore nervy, Sheriff," at length remarked the foreman. "The boys are loco, but I'll try to hold them." "You'll hold them, or bury them," responded the sheriff, and turning to his companion he said: "Now I'm with you, Charley. So long, Sneed," he pleasantly called over his shoulder as if there had been no unpleasant disagreement. "So long, Sheriff," replied the foreman, looking after the departing pair and hardly free from his astonishment. Then he turned to his men: "You heard what he said, and you saw what he did. You keep out of this, or I'll make you d----d sorry, if he don't. If The Orphan comes your way, all right and good. But you let his trail religiously alone, do you hear?" CHAPTER V BILL JUSTIFIES HIS CREATION