"You go back to town and get fixed up," ordered the sheriff. "I'll take your team out of this and turn them around, and then come back for you. Charley can make the trip if you can't. I would do it myself, only I've got to tell Sneed that he's shy four more men." "I'll turn 'em around myself--I ain't hurt," asserted Bill with decision. "And when I get patched up I'll make the trip, Pop Westley or no Pop Westley. And I'll lick the whole blamed town, too, if they get fresh about my face! I'm a fighter from Fightersville, I am! I'm a man-eating bad-man, I am! I can lick anything that ever walked on hind legs, I can!" and he glared as if anxious to prove his words. After the cowboys regained consciousness and got so they could stand, the sheriff lined them up with their backs to the wall and gave them the guns which The Orphan had obtained for him. The outlaw held them covered while the sheriff told them what they were, and he wound up his lecture with instructions and a warning. "Get out of this country and don't never come back!" he told them. "I don't care where you go, so long as you go right now. If you even show your faces in these parts again I'll shoot first and talk after." "Same here!" endorsed The Orphan, frowning down his desire to laugh at the wrecks in front of him. "I'll kill you next time!" shouted Bill, prancing uneasily. "The cayuses are yours," continued the sheriff. "I'll settle with Sneed if he has the gall to ask about them. Now git!" Tex stared first at the sheriff and then at The Orphan and Bill as if doubting his ears. He was ten years nearer the grave than he had been before The Orphan had interrupted his counting. In less than half an hour he had gone through hell, and now he suddenly burst into tears from the reaction and staggered to his horse, which he finally managed to mount, a nervous wreck. "Oh, God!" he moaned, "Oh, God!" The others stared at him in amazement until he had turned the bend, and then his companions slowly followed him and were lost to sight. "D----n near dead from fright!" ejaculated the sheriff. "I never saw anybody go to pieces so bad!" "He shore lost his nerve all right, all right," responded The Orphan. Then he turned to where Bill stood looking after them: "Bill, you're all right--you can fight like h--l!" Bill slowly turned and grinned through the blood: "Oh, that wasn't nothing--you should oughter see me when I get real mad!" . . . . . Two men rode side by side after a lurching coach on their way toward the Limping Water, both buried in thought at what the driver had told them. As they emerged from the defile and left the Backbone behind, the elder looked keenly, almost affectionately, at his companion and placed a kindly hand on the shoulder of the man who had turned the balance, breaking the long silence. "Son, why don't you get a job punching cows, or something, and quit your d----d foolishness?" he bluntly asked.