"I would approve of most any method of stopping them--within reason!" she declared vindictively, nettled by his tone. "We mostly hang them, ma'am," he said. "That's a sure way of stoppin' them." She shuddered. "Do you mean that you hang them without a court verdict--on your own responsibility?" "That's the way, ma'am." "But doesn't the sheriff punish men who hang others in that manner?" she went on in tones of horror. His voice was quietly humorous. "Them sort of hangin's ain't advertised a heap. It's hard to find anybody that will admit he had a hand in it. Nobody knows anything about it. But it's done, an' can't be undone. An' the rustlin' stops mighty sudden." "Oh," she exclaimed, "what a barbarous custom!" "I reckon it ain't exactly barbarous, ma'am," he contended mildly. "Would you have the rustlers go on stealin' forever, an' not try to stop them?" "There are the courts," she insisted. "Turnin' rustlers off scot-free, ma'am. They can't hold them. An' if a rustler is hung, he don't get any more than is comin' to him. Do you reckon there's a lot of difference between a half dozen men hangin' a man for a crime he's done, than for one man, a judge for instance, orderin' him to be hung? If, we'll say, a hundred men elect a judge to do certain things, is it any more wrong for the hundred men to do them things than for the man they've elected to do them? I reckon not, ma'am. Of course, if the hundred men did somethin' that the judge hadn't been elected to do, why then, it might make some difference." "But you say there is no law that provides hanging for rustling." She thought she had him. "The men that elected the judge made the laws," he said. "They have a right to make others, whenever they're needed." "That's mob law," she said with a shiver. "What would become of the world if that custom were followed everywhere?" "I wouldn't say that it would be a good thing everywhere. Where there's courts that can be got at easy, there'd be no sense to it. But out here there's no other way for a man to protect his property. He's got to take the law into his own hands." "It is a crude and cold-blooded way." She heard him laugh, and turned to see him looking at her in amusement. "There ain't no refinement in punishment, ma'am. Either it's got to shock some one or not get done at all. I reckon that back East you don't get to see anyone punished, or hung. You hear about it, or you read about it, an' it don't seem so near you, an' that kind of takes the edge off it. Out here it comes closer, an' it seems a lot cruel. But whether a man's punished by the law or by the men who make the law wouldn't make a lot of difference to the man--he'd be punished anyway."