“Now, Nels, cut the gurl loose,” ordered Monty.

Nels ran forward, jerked the halter out of Sneed’s hand, and pulled Bonita’s horse in close to the porch.  As he slit the rope which bound her she fell into his arms.

“Hawe, git down!” went on Monty.  “Face front an’ stiff!”

The sheriff swung his leg, and, never moving his hands, with his face now a deathly, sickening white, he slid to the ground.

“Line up there beside your guerrilla pard.  There!  You two make a damn fine pictoor, a damn fine team of pizened coyote an’ a cross between a wild mule an’ a Greaser.  Now listen!”

Monty made a long pause, in which his breathing was plainly audible.

Madeline’s eyes were riveted upon Monty.  Her mind, swift as lightning, had gathered the subtleties in action and word succeeding his domination of the men.  Violence, terrible violence, the thing she had felt, the thing she had feared, the thing she had sought to eliminate from among her cowboys, was, after many months, about to be enacted before her eyes.  It had come at last.  She had softened Stillwell, she had influenced Nels, she had changed Stewart; but this little black-faced, terrible Monty Price now rose, as it were, out of his past wild years, and no power on earth or in heaven could stay his hand.  It was the hard life of wild men in a wild country that was about to strike this blow at her.  She did not shudder; she did not wish to blot out from sight this little man, terrible in his mood of wild justice.  She suffered a flash of horror that Monty, blind and dead to her authority, cold as steel toward her presence, understood the deeps of a woman’s soul.  For in this moment of strife, of insult to her, of torture to the man she had uplifted and then broken, the passion of her reached deep toward primitive hate.  With eyes slowly hazing red, she watched Monty Price; she listened with thrumming ears; she waited, slowly sagging against Stillwell.

“Hawe, if you an’ your dirty pard hev loved the sound of human voice, then listen an’ listen hard,” said Monty.  “Fer I’ve been goin’ contrary to my ole style jest to hev a talk with you.  You all but got away on your nerve, didn’t you?  ’Cause why?  You roll in here like a mad steer an’ flash yer badge an’ talk mean, then almost bluff away with it.  You heerd all about Miss Hammond’s cowboy outfit stoppin’ drinkin’ an’ cussin’ an’ packin’ guns.  They’ve took on religion an’ decent livin’, an’ sure they’ll be easy to hobble an’ drive to jail.  Hawe, listen.  There was a good an’ noble an be-ootiful woman come out of the East somewheres, an’ she brought a lot of sunshine an’ happiness an’ new idees into the tough lives of cowboys.  I reckon it’s beyond you to know what she come to mean to them.  Wal, I’ll tell you.  They-all went clean out of their heads.  They-all got soft an’ easy an’ sweet-tempered.  They got so they couldn’t kill a coyote, a crippled calf in a