as he hated everything else; it is impossible to state it more strongly.  It was not long before the men of the Three B’s discovered how Mac Strann felt about his brother.  After Jerry’s famous Hallowe’en party in Buckskin, for instance, Williamson, McKenna, and Rath started out to rid the country of the disturber.  They went out to hunt him as men go out to hunt a wild mustang.  And they caught him and bent him down—­those three stark men—­and he lay in bed for a month; but before the month was over Mac Strann came down from his mountain and went to Buckskin and gathered Williamson and McKenna and Rath in one public place.  And when the morning came Williamson and McKenna and Rath had left this vale of tears and Mac Strann was back on his mountain.  He was not even arrested.  For there was a devilish cunning about the fellow and he made his victims, without exception, attack him first; then he destroyed them, suddenly and surely, and retreated to his lair.  Things like this happened once or twice and then the men of the Three B’s understood that it was not wise to lay plots for Jerry Strann.  They accepted him, as I have said before, as men accept the wrath of God.

Let it not be thought that Jerry Strann was a solitary like his brother.  When he went out for a frolic the young men of the community gathered around him, for Jerry paid all scores and the red-eye flowed in his path like wine before the coming of Bacchus; where Jerry went there was never a dull moment, and young men love action.  So it happened that when he rode into Brownsville this day he was the leader of a cavalcade.  Rumour rode before them, and doors were locked and windows were darkened, and men sat in the darkness within with their guns across their knees.  For Brownsville lay at the extreme northern tip of the triangle and it was rarely visited by Jerry; and it is well established that men fear the unfamiliar more than the known.

As has been said, Jerry headed the train of revellers, partially because it was most unwise to cut in ahead of Jerry and partially because there was not a piece of horseflesh in the Three B’s which could outfoot his chestnut.  It was a gelding out of the loins of the north wind and sired by the devil himself, and its spirit was one with the spirit of Jerry Strann; perhaps because they both served one master.  The cavalcade came with a crash of racing hoofs in a cloud of dust.  But in the middle of the street Jerry raised his right arm stiffly overhead with a whoop and brought his chestnut to a sliding stop; the cloud of dust rolled lazily on ahead.  The young men gathered quickly around the leader, and there was silence as they waited for him to speak—­a silence broken only by the wheezing of the horses, and the stench of sweating horseflesh was in every man’s nostrils.

“Who own’s that hoss?” asked Jerry Strann, and pointed.