“I tell you he hasn’t a chance in a thousand, Jim.  You did the job thorough.  He’s got his,”

Prince had been intending to say more, but he changed his mind.  Half a dozen men were coming toward them from the front door.  Buck Sanders was one of them, Quantrell’s trooper another.  Their manner looked like business.

Sanders was the spokesman.  “You boys ride for the Flying V Y, don’t you?” he asked curtly.

“We do,” answered Billie, and his voice was just as cold.  It had in it the snap of a whiplash.

“You came in here to pick trouble with us.  Your pardner—­Clanton, whatever his name is—­gave it out straight that he was goin’ to kill Roush.”

“He didn’t mention you, did he?”

“The Roush brothers were in our party.  We ride for the Lazy S M. We don’t make distinctions.”

“Don’t you?  Listen,” advised Prince.  In five sentences he sketched the cause of the trouble between Jim Clanton and the Roush brothers.  “My bunkie didn’t kill any of the Roush clan because they worked for Snaith and McRobert.  He shot them for the reason I’ve just given you.  That’s his business.  It was a private feud of his own.  You heard what was said before the shootin’ began,” he concluded.

“Tha’s what you say.  You’ll tell us, too, that he got Ranse Roush in a fair fight.  But you’ve got to show us proof,” Sanders said with a sneer.

“I expect just now you’ll have to take my word and his.  I’ll tell you this.  Ranse Roush was a renegade.  He was ridin’ with a bunch of bronco bucks.  They attacked the Roubideau place an’ we rode—­Jim an’ I did—­to help Pierre an’ his family.  We drove the ’Paches off, but they picked up Miss Pauline while she was out ridin’ alone.  We took after ’em.  I got wounded an’ Jim here went up a gulch lickety-split to catch the red devils.  He got four ‘Paches an’ one hell-hound of a renegade.  Is there a white man here that blames him for it?”

When all is said, the prince of deadly weapons at close range is the human eye.  Billie was standing beside his friend, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder.  The cowpuncher was as lithe and clean of build as a mastiff, but it was the steady candor of his honest eye that spoke most potently.

“Naturally you tell a good story,” retorted the foreman with dry incredulity.  “It’s up to you to come through with an explanation of why Webb’s men have just gunned three of our friends.  Your story doesn’t make any hit with me.  I don’t believe a word of it.”

“You can take it or let it alone.  It goes as I’ve told it,” Prince cut back shortly.

Another man spoke up.  He was a tinhorn gambler of Los Portales and for reasons of his own foregathered with the Snaith-McRobert faction.  “Look here, young fellow.  You may or may not be in this thing deep.  I’m willin’ to give you the benefit of the doubt if my friends are.  I’d hate to see you bumped off when you didn’t do any of the killin’.  All we want is justice.  This is a square town.  When bad men go too far we plant ’em on Boot Hill.  Understand?  Now you slide out of the back door, slap a saddle on your bronc, an’ hit the high spots out of here,”