He broke Tommy's gun and motioned him outside. Then Johnson examined the injured man on the floor. He was badly hurt. "You'll have to come along with me," he told the landlord. "Go along with you? Go along--why, Lafe, I just had to hit him." The landlord could hardly believe his ears. Had he not repeated three times for Lafe in the election? "You can explain that to the judge. Come on, now. Get moving." The landlord gaped a moment and then announced that he hoped to be damned if he went. If Lafe thought he could double-cross him in that manner, he had a few things to learn. The sheriff made a step forward and the landlord reached under the bar for his .45. Before he could raise it, Johnson gripped his wrist and with his free hand struck him over the head with the butt of Tommy's gun. The landlord gave a grunt and dropped into the sheriff's arms like a sack of meal. Five minutes later he went before the justice of the peace very quietly, along with Tommy. "Understand me"--the new sheriff faced the crowd that followed, some of them murmuring--"I'd arrest my best friend if he broke the law. Remember that." "Hell, Lafe," they protested, "this is running it over us." "We're going to have order here in Badger. Come on, you two," said Johnson. Then he went bail for his prisoners. CHAPTER VIII A FEUD AND WHAT CAME OF IT They had hanged a man in the Willows. He was swinging from a lower limb of a tree sixteen feet in diameter--the natives call it the Mother of Cottonwoods. The sheriff of Badger and I cut him down, and because the time was summer and the flies were bad, we buried him with all haste in the sand, beside a chiming stream. Then, that no prowler might despoil, we piled rocks above, and got to horse without delay. "He don't look like nothing now," said Lafe, "but it's Tom Rooker. You remember ol' Rooker? He always bummed his drinks, Tom did." We rode through a pleasant grove, where it was eternally twilight by day. A squirrel chattered above us and the stream whispered here in a sandy bed. At a bend, we came upon three cows wading belly-deep in the current and eating of watercress. Some birds cheeped in a leafy thicket beside the trail. The Willows was a paradise. Then a black shadow flitted in front, as we emerged into a glade where the light was stronger, and a bleary buzzard settled leisurely on the topmost branch of a tree. He gazed at us with calm insolence. I looked hastily away, remembering what we had laid out. After a while, the sheriff said: "I shouldn't have left town, Dan. I shouldn't have gone." "You had to go." "They wouldn't have got away with it, if I'd been home. Poor ol' Tom--he was awful good-natured when he was sober." We left the Willows behind and traversed open country, heading up the San Pedro Valley. As we went, the sheriff talked of the hanging. He spoke in a hushed tone, as though there were ears to hear; or, it may be, he could not get the dead man out of his thoughts.