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Ellhorn sat up and looked with indignant surprise at his friend. “Tom Tuttle–” he began.

“Shut up!” Tuttle interrupted. “Come and soak your head.”

Ellhorn submitted to the head-soaking without protest, but drank his coffee with grumblings that it was not coffee, but cocktails, that he wanted.

“Nick, ain’t you-all ashamed of yourself?” Tuttle asked severely. But it was anxiety rather than reproof that was evident in his large, round face and blue eyes. His fair skin was tanned and burned to a bright red, and against its blazing color glowed softly a short, tawny mustache.

“No, Tommy, not yet,” Nick replied cheerfully. “It’s too soon. It’s likely I will be to-morrow, or mebbe even this afternoon. But not now. You-all ought to be more reasonable.”

“To think you ‘d pile in here like this, when I ‘m in a hole and need you bad,” Tuttle went on in a grieved tone.

The fogs had begun to clear out of Ellhorn’s head, and he looked up with quick concern. “What’s up, Tom?”

“The Dysert gang ‘s broke loose again, and Marshal Black ‘s in San Francisco, and Sheriff Williamson ‘s gone to Chicago. I ‘ve got to ride herd on ’em all by myself.”

“What have they done?”

“Old man Paxton was found dead by his front gate yesterday morning. He ‘d been killed by a knife-thrower, and a boss one at that–cut right across his jugular. I went straight for Felipe Vigil, and last night I got a clue from him, and he promised to tell me more to-day. But this morning he was found dead under the long bridge with his tongue cut out. That’s enough for ’em; not another Greaser will dare open his mouth now. I wired you yesterday at Plumas to come as quick as you could.”

“Then what you gruntin’ about, Tom? I left Plumas before your wire got there, and how could I be any quicker ‘n that?”

“I wish Emerson was here. I ‘d like to have his judgment about this business. Emerson ‘s always got sure good judgment.”

“Send for him, then,” was Nick’s prompt rejoinder.

Tuttle looked at him with surprise and disapproval. “Nick, are you drunker than you look? You-all know he ‘s just got back from his wedding trip.”

“But he ‘s back, all right, ain’t he! Neither one of us has ever got into a hole yet that Emerson did n’t come a-runnin’, and fixed for whatever might happen. And he’s never needed us that we did n’t get there as quick as we could. You-all don’t reckon, Tom, that Emerson Mead’s liver ‘s turned white just because he ‘s got a wife!”

Tom Tuttle fidgeted his big bulk and cleared his throat. Words did not come so easily to him as deeds, but Ellhorn’s way of putting it made explanation necessary. “I don’t mean it that way, Tom. Once, last year, down in Plumas, when Emerson would n’t let us shoot into that crowd that wanted to hang him, I wondered for just a second if he was afraid, and it made me plumb sick. But I saw right away that it was just Emerson’s judgment that there ought n’t to be any shootin’ right then, and he was plumb right about it. No, Tom, I sure reckon there ain’t a drop of blood in Emerson’s veins that would n’t be ready for a fight any minute, if ‘t was his judgment that there ought to be a fight, even if he has got married. But we-all must remember that he ‘s got a wife now, and can’t cut out from his family and go rushin’ round the country like a steer on the prod every time you get drunk and raise hell, or every time I need help. We ‘ll have to pull together after this, Tom, and leave Emerson out. It would be too much like stackin’ the cards against Mrs. Emerson if we didn’t.”