“It’s Bill’s own fault,” he commented lucidly the while.  “I don’t visit you very often; but when I do I’ve got the dough to make it square, and this town’s my sausage, skin, curl, and all.  D’ye understand?” and from Manning, the greybearded storekeeper, to Rank Judge, the one-legged saddler, there was no one to say him nay, none to contest his right of authority.

By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre.  Under ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even aggressively, upheld by its representative, Marshal Jim Burton.  Likewise there was no lack of pilgrims, who by devious and circuitous routes sought his residence on this occasion, with tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one and all departed with their mission unfulfilled.  The doughty James was not to be found.  Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an even more indefinite destination, had called him hence.  No one regretted the mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who imparted the information, no one deplored the lost opportunity for distinction so much as she; but nevertheless the fact remained.  For the time being, Coyote Centre was thrown upon its own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as best it might.

Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the beginning of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned, and that more than intermittently, all but continuously, the red liquor had flowed; to the alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins and his straw-haired Norwegian rival across the street—­Gus Ericson.  Unsophisticated ones there were who fancied that ere this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney’s capacity for absorption had a limit.  Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable intention of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town, all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in peaceful oblivion.  Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master, had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the hawk eye and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of solid sustenance, was, to all visible indications, as fresh and aggressive as at the beginning.

Now for the second time night was coming on.  Neither up nor down the single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its face.  One and all had succumbed long before to the god of gunpowder.  Not a stray dog, and Coyote Centre was plethoric of canines, raised its voice nor showed even a retreating tail near the area of disturbance.  Wisdom and a desire for deepest obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden annihilation to the few.  Temporarily, yet effectively as though a cyclone were imminent,