“Hurt something?  N’ danger on this wad of fat an’ laziness an’ lies.”  (Thud . . . thump . . . and a double tattoo.) He threw the instrument of castigation aside and spinning the hulk of flesh and sprawling legs erect, began applying the sole of his boot.  “A’ll no take m’ fist t’ y’ as A wud t’ a Man!  A’ll treat y’ as A wud a dirty broth of a brat of a boy with the flat o’ my hand an’ sole leather; y’ scum, y’ runt, y’ hoggish swinish whiskey soak o’ bacon an’ fat!  ‘Tis th’ likes o’ you are the curse o’ this country, y’ horse-thief sheriff, y’ bribe-takin’ blackguard guardian o’ justice an’ right! y’ coward not doin’ th’ crime y’ self, but shieldin’ them that do.”

The sheriff had uttered a splutter of filthy expletives at the first blow, then a yell; now he was bellowing aloud, chattering with terror, screaming to be, “let go, let go!  I never done you no harm.  I’ll have y’r life for this.”

“Y’ will, will y’?  Did y’ ask for a drink?  Wayland, wait for m’ here!”

The Ranger saw the white-haired frontiersman seize one sprawling leg and the shirt front of the struggling limp thing in his hands.  He heard him plunging down through the tangle of windfall and brush.  There was a bellowing howl and a splash; and Wayland being altogether human flesh and blood doubled up on the ground with laughter.

“That’ll cool him,” remarked Matthews coming back very red of face and sober, “an’ it’s not deep enough to drown.”

He tore open the tent flap and rolled out a small keg.  There was a sound of dregs still rinsing round inside.  They could hear the bellows from the brook.  The majesty of the law had evidently crawled out on the far side.

“He’s the kind o’ brave man will slap children, an’ call a boy a calf, an’ bully timid women, an’ knock down little Chinks and dagoes!  Oh, A know his kind o’ thunder-barrel bravery, that makes the more noise the emptier and bigger it is—­they’re thick as louse ticks under the slimy side of a dirty board in this world, Wayland; an’ they’re thick in the girth an’ thicker in the skull.”  Matthews had taken one of the Forest axes from the saddle.  He left the whiskey keg in kindling wood.

“He’s camped dead beat on the State line, all right, Wayland,” said the irate old frontiersman as they mounted their ponies.  “He’ll have at least some scars to prove his story, but A’m no thinkin’ he’ll boast round showin’ them marks o’ glory!  ’Tis some satisfaction for my thirst back in the Desert.”

“I thought it was about here, on our way out, that a law-loving Briton, I know, gave me a sermon about exceeding law, taking the law in our own hands?”

“Hoh!” said the old man.

And the Sheriff’s tent was not the only one seen on the way back to the Ridge.  Where the Pass widened to the Valley above the Sheriff’s homestead, they came on a huge miner’s tent boarded half way up as for winter residence, with eight tow-headed half-clad urchins thumb in mouth staring out from the open mosquito wire door.  There was a smell of onions and frying pork.