George chuckled vaingloriously.  “All over old ’Laddie’,” he said.  “’Member that white horse?  I forget his regimental number, but he was about twenty-five years old.  You remember how they’d taught him to chuck up his head and ‘laugh’?  I was grooming him at ‘midday stables.’  Old Harry Hawker was the sergeant taking ‘stables’ that day.  He was stalking up and down the gangway, blind as a bat, with his crop under his arm, and his glasses stuck on the end of his nose—­peering, peering.  Well, old Laddie happened to stretch himself, as a horse will, you know, stuck out his hind leg, and old Harry fell wallop over it and tore his riding-pants, and just then I said ‘Laugh, Laddie!’ and he chucked his old head up and wrinkled his lips back.  Of course the fellows fairly howled and Harry lost his temper and let in to poor old Laddie with his crop.  It made me mad when he started that and I guess I gave him some lip about it.  He ‘pegged’ me for Orderly-room right-away for insubordination.’

“I pleaded ‘not guilty’ and got away with it, too.  Got all kinds of witnesses—­most of ’em only too d——­d glad to be able to get back at Harry for little things.  Laddie was a proper pet of the Commissioner’s.  He used to go into No.  Four Stable and play with the old beggar and feed him sugar nearly every day.”

Yorke laughed mischievously, and was silent awhile.  “Gully’s knocked about a deuce of a lot,” he resumed presently.  “Now and again he’ll open up a bit and talk, but mostly he’s as close as an oyster—­and the way he can drop that drawl and come out ‘flat-footed’ with the straight turkey—­why, it’d surprise you!  You’d think he was an out and out Westerner, born and bred.  He’s a mighty good man on a horse, and around cattle—­and with a lariat.  I don’t know where the beggar’s picked it up.  He claims he’s only been in this country five years.  Talks mostly about the Gold Coast, and Shanghai, and the Congo.  A proper ‘Bully Hayes’ of a man he was there, too, I’ll bet!  He never says much about the States, though I did hear him talking to a Southerner once, and begad, it was funny!  You could hardly tell their accents apart.

“Oh, he’s not a bad chap to have for a J.P.  It’s mighty hard to get any local man to accept a J.P.’s commission, anyway.  They’re most of ’em scared of it getting them in bad with their neighbours.  Gully—­he doesn’t care a d——­n for any of ’em, though.  He’ll sit on any case.  It’s a good thing to have a man who’s absolutely independent, like that.  I sure have known some spineless rotters.  No, we might have a worse J.P. than Gully.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” rejoined Redmond thoughtfully, “may be he’s all right, but, somehow . . . the man’s a kind of ‘Doctor Fell’ to me—­has been—­right from the first time I ‘mugged’ him.  Chances are though, that it’s only one of those false impressions a fellow gets.  What’s up?”

Yorke, shading his eyes from the cutting wind was staring ahead down the long vista of trail.  “Talk of the Devil!” he muttered, “why! here the ——­ comes!” Aloud, he called out to Slavin.  “Oh, Burke! here comes Gully—­riding like hell, I know that Silver horse of his.”