Donovan, her hands on her hips, stood just inside the dining room door as her guests filed in for supper that evening and seated themselves at the long deal table covered with its clean red and white cloth. She had a good-natured word for each of them, until her eyes alighted upon Wildcat Bob, attempting to sneak in unnoticed behind the broad figure of Jim Weller.

"So-o!" she exclaimed scornfully. "Ye ould fool -yer drunk again. Ta-ake off thim guns an' give thim to me."

"I haven't had a drink, Mary," expostulated the old man.

"Don't 'Mary' me, ye ould reprobate, an' be after givin' me thim guns, quick!"

Meekly he unbuckled his belt and passed it over to her. "I was just bringin' 'em in to you, Ma-Mrs. Donovan," he assured her.

"Y'ed better be. Now go an' sit down. I'll feed you this night, but don't you iver step foot into Mary Donovan's dining room again in liquor."

"I tell you I ain't had a drink," he insisted.

"Pha-at?" The word reeked with disbelief.

"Only just a drop to settle the dust after we pulled in," he qualified his original statement.

"Ye must uv been that dusty then!" she exclaimed scornfully.

"I was."

"Don't talk back. And did ye find yer horses, Jim Weller?" she inquired of the big man behind whom Wildcat Bob had made his unimpressive entrance.

Weller shook his head, negatively, his mouth being full of baked beans.

"Patches probably run 'em off," suggested Bill Gatlin, the stage driver.

"What with renegades and holdups this country ain't safe to live in no more," remarked Mrs. Donovan. "If some of these here would-be bad-men would git out an' shoot up the bandits and the Injuns instid of shootin' up saloons," she stated meaningly, casting a baneful look at Wildcat Bob.

"Hadn't orter be hard to find 'em, least wise one of 'em," stated Weller, "when every son-of-a-gun in the county knows who he is."

"Meanin'?" inquired the stage driver.

'-'Gregorio, in course," said Weller. "I seen him comin' out o' Cottonwood not three hours before the stage was stuck up, an' he was headin' towards Hell's Bend-him an' that Bar Y Bull feller."

"You mean them two was together?" asked Gatlin.

"Well, they warn't exactly together. Gregorio comes out fust an' about five minutes later I meets Bull acomin' down the canyon; but they couldn't have both been up there without t'other knowin' it."

"I don't believe Bull would be doin' it," said Mary Donovan.

"You can't never tell nothin' about them quiet fellers," remarked Gatlin, sententiously.

There was a pounding of hoofs without, the creaking of leather as men dismounted and a moment later the sheriff and some of his posse entered the dining room.

"I suppose ye got 'em, Gum Smith," said Mrs. Donovan, with sarcasm, "or ye wouldn't be back this soon."

"Ah ain't no cat, Mrs. Donovan," said the sheriff, on the defensive, "to see in the dark."

"Yese ain't no sheriff nayther," she shot back.

Wildcat Bob succeeded in calling attention to derisive laughter by pretending to hide it. Gum Smith looked at his rival angrily, immediately discovering that he was unarmed.

"What's the matter with the old woman with the artillery-is she chokin'?" he inquired sweetly.

Wildcat Bob went. red to the verge of apoplexy, seized a heavy cup half-filled with coffee and started to rise.

"Sit down wid ye!" roared the stentorian voice of Mary Donovan.

"I-" started Wildcat Bob.

"Shut up an' sit down!"

The Wildcat did both, simultaneously.

' It's a sha-ame, that it is, that a respictable widdy lady should be redjuced to fadin' the likes o' yese fer a livin'," wailed Mrs. Donovan, sniffing, as she dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her apron, "all alone and unproticted as I am. Sure an' if poor Tim was here he'd wipe the ground wid the both ov yese."

Wildcat Bob, very red and uncomfortable, ate diligently, his eyes glued to the plate. Well did Mary Donovan know how to handle this terror of an earlier day, whose short temper and quick guns still held the respect and admiration of the roughest characters of the great empire of the Southwest, but whose heart could be dissolved by a single tear.

As for Gum Smith, he was only too glad to be relieved of the embarrassment of the Wildcat's further attentions and he too gave himself willingly over to peace and supper. For the balance of the meal, however, conversation languished.

At the Bar Y Ranch the men sat smoking after the evening meal. Bull was silently puffing upon a cigarette. Hal Colby, always good-natured and laughing, told stories. During the silences Texas Pete strove diligently to recall the half-forgotten verses of The Bad Hombre.

But over all there hovered an atmosphere of restraint. No one could have put his finger upon the cause, yet all sensed it. Things were not as they had been yesterday, or for many days before. Perhaps there was a feeling that an older man should have been chosen to replace Bull, for Colby was one of the newer hands. Without volition and unconsciously the men were taking sides. Some, mostly the men who had worked longest for Henders, drew imperceptibly nearer Bull. Texas Pete was one of them.