The drover spent the next day cutting out the animals that did not belong to him.  Of these a good many had been collected in the round-up.  It was close to evening before the job was finished and the outfit returned to camp.

Billie rode up to the wagon with the old man.  Leaning against a saddle on the ground, a flank steak in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, lounged Jim Clanton.

Webb, hard-eyed and stiff, looked at the young man, “Had a pleasant vacation, Clanton?”

“I don’t know as I would call it a vacation, Mr. Webb.  I been attending to some business,” explained Jim.

“Yours or mine?”

“Yours an’ mine.”

“You’ve been gone forty-eight hours.  The rest of us have worked our heads off gettin’ together the herd.  I reckon you can explain why you weren’t with us.”

Yellow with dust, unshaven, mud caked in his hair, hands torn by the cat-claw, Homer Webb was red-eyed from lack of sleep and from the irritation of the alkali powder.  This young rider had broken the first law of the cowpuncher, to be on the job in time of trouble and to stay there as long as he could back a horse.  The owner of the Flying V Y was angry clear through at his desertion and he intended to let the boy know it.

“I went out to look for Peg-Leg Warren” said Clanton apologetically.

Webb stopped in his stride.  “You did?  Who told you to do that?”

“I didn’t need to be told.  I’ve got horse sense myself.”  Jim spoke a little sulkily.  He knew that he ought to have stayed with his employer.

“Well, what did you do when you found Peg-Leg—­make him a visit for a couple of days?” demanded the drover with sarcasm.

“No, I don’t know him well enough to visit—­only well enough to shoot at.”

“What’s that?” asked Webb sharply.

“Think I was goin’ to let ’em plug Tim McGrath an’ get away with it?” snapped Jim.

“That’s my business—­not yours.  What did you do?  Come clean.”

“Laid out in the chaparral till I got a chance to gun him,” the young fellow answered sullenly.

“And then?”

“Plugged a hole through him an’ made my get-away.”

“You mean you’ve killed Peg-Leg Warren?”

“He’ll never be any deader,” said Clanton coolly.

The dark blood flushed into Webb’s face.  He wasted no pity on Warren.  The man was a cold-hearted murderer and had reaped only what he had sowed.  But this was no excuse for Clanton, who had deliberately dragged the Flying V Y into trouble without giving its owner a chance to determine what form retribution should take.  The cowpuncher had gone back to primitive instincts and elected the blood feud as the necessary form of reprisal.  He had plunged Webb and the other drovers into war without even a by-your-leave.  His answer to murder had been murder.  To encourage this sort of thing would be subversive of all authority and would lead to anarchy.