Billie came, listened to the proposition of the grim old-timer, and declined quietly.

“Goin’ to stick by Webb, are you?” demanded the chief of the opposite faction.

“Anything wrong with that?  I’ve drawn a pay-check from him for three seasons.”

“Oh, if it’s a matter of sentiment.”

As a matter of fact, Billie did not intend to go on the trail any more, though Webb had offered him a place as foreman of one of his herds.  He had discovered in himself unsuspected business capacity and believed he could do better on his own.  Moreover, he was resolved not to let himself become involved in the lawless warfare that was engulfing the territory.

It must be remembered that Washington County was at this time as large as the average Atlantic Coast State.  It had become a sink for the riff-raff driven out of Texas by the Rangers, for all that wild and adventurous element which flocks to a new country before the law has established itself.  The coming of the big cattle herds had brought money into the country, and in its wake followed the gambler and the outlaw.  Gold and human life were the cheapest commodities at Los Portales.  The man who wore a gun on his hip had to be one hundred per cent efficient to survive.

Lawlessness was emphasized by the peculiar conditions of the country.  The intense rivalry to secure Government contracts for hay, wood, and especially cattle, stimulated unwholesome competition.  The temptation to “rustle” stock, to hold up outfits carrying pay to the soldiers, to live well merely as a gunman for one of the big interests on the river, made the honest business of every-day life a humdrum affair.

None the less, the real heroes among the pioneers were the quiet citizens who went about their business and refused to embroil themselves in the feuds that ran rife.  The men who made the West were the mule-skinners, the storekeepers, the farmers who came out in white-topped movers’ wagons.  For a time these were submerged by the more sensational gunman, but in the end they pushed to the top and wiped the “bad man” from the earth.  It was this prosaic class that Billie Prince had resolved to join.

To that resolve he stuck through all the blood-stained years of the notorious Washington County War.  He went about his private affairs with quiet energy that brought success.  He took hay and grain contracts, bought a freighting outfit, acquired a small but steadily increasing bunch of cattle.  Gradually he bulked larger in the public eye, became an anchor of safety to whom the people turned after the war had worn itself out and scattered bands of banditti infested the chaparral to prey upon the settlers.

This lean, brown-faced man walked the way of the strong.  Men recognized the dynamic force of his close-gripped jaw, the power of his quick, steady eye, the patience of his courage.  The eyes of women followed him down the street, for there was some arresting quality in the firm, crisp tread that carried the lithe, smooth-muscled body.  With the passage of years he had grown to a full measure of mental manhood.  It was inevitable that when Washington County set itself to the task of combing the outlaws from the mesquite it should delegate the job to Billie Prince.