"This is some of Bud Walton's work," he said. It did not appear probable to me. Walton could have shot Tom with much less bother and unpleasantness. "Bud might not have done it himself. No, he wouldn't. But some of his friends done it for him." Lafe slapped his thigh in passionate determination. "I tell you, Dan, I'm a-going to put a stop to this trouble. Fellers like them are keeping this country back. Either Bud or Jeff have got to come to a showdown, or get out of Badger." "Go to it. That's what they put you in for." "I know," he said, with a return to gloom, "but you can't do everything in six months. I've got to move according to law, being how I am situated. And they've been awful careful, them two have." He fell to communing with himself, and we went steadily forward, the ponies shuffling the dust in a dejected chop-trot. It was almost noon, and the heat waves were lifting from the ground like the smoke of an oil flame. We passed a dead tree, and the sheriff roused from reverie. "They done hung Dave Pearsall from there six years back," he said, with a jerk of his head. I glanced around for the grave, it being the custom to inter close to the scene of the taking-off. "It's over beyond. No, you can't see it, 'count of that rise. But you get your eye on that tree. Notice? And now the Mother of Cottonwoods'll die, too." "Pshaw!" said I, laughing. "You don't believe that old woman's tale, do you?" "Of course, now," he said patiently, "you know better." Many cowmen had voiced the superstition, but the sheriff had not struck me as of a credulous type. "I've knowed eight men to be strung up on eight big, sound trees," he went on, "and I've seen eight trees that looked as if the devil had smashed 'em. Blasted. Yes, sir; dead as a rat and deader. You wait and see." Presently he began to speak of the feud which had been the bane of his office during four of the six months of his tenure. When I proffered the suggestion, in a spirit of hope, that there must have been a beautiful fight before the Walton faction secured Rooker, he dismissed that possibility with an impatient snort. It was like that Jeff Thomas had been away, he said; probably south of the Border, on some meanness or other. As for Tom, he had not mixed much in the trouble in town. Perhaps they had picked on him because he was Jeff's closest friend. "We'll know right soon now. Gee, ain't the heat a fright? Say, Dan, if you take my advice, you'll hit the grit out of Badger just as hard as you can make it."