“I wonder,” said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, “if the cook has any cold beans left over!”

He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee.  Then we went into Sam’s private room, where he slept, and kept his armoury, dogs, and the saddles of his favourite mounts.  He took three or four six-shooters out of a bookcase and began to look them over, whistling “The Cowboy’s Lament” abstractedly.  Afterward he ordered the two best horses on the ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post.

Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country, I have observed that in one particular there is a delicate but strict etiquette belonging.  You must not mention the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist.  It would be more reprehensible than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt.  I found, later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that belongs solely to the West.

It yet lacked two hours to supper-time; but in twenty minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.

“Nothing like a good meal before a long ride,” said Sam.  “Eat hearty.”

I had a sudden suspicion.

“Why did you have two horses saddled?” I asked.

“One, two—­one, two,” said Sam.  “You can count, can’t you?”

His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson.  The thought had not occurred to him that the thought could possibly occur to me not to ride at his side on that red road to revenge and justice.  It was the higher calculus.  I was booked for the trail.  I began to eat more beans.

In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward.  Our horses were Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west.  Ben Tatum’s steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags.

I knew that Ben Tatum’s card to play was flight—­flight until he came within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters.  He knew that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it might lead.

During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of beef, and of the musical glasses.  You would have thought he had never had a brother or a sweetheart or an enemy on earth.  There are some subjects too big even for the words in the “Unabridged.”  Knowing this phase of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes.  Sam laughed at exactly the right place—­laughed with his mouth.  When I caught sight of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humour to have suppressed those anecdotes.