You know that a cowboy remains a “boy” until he is old enough to die.  This one was sixty, he wasn’t a typical puncher at all.  He had a thin, hawk-like face, steady gray eyes, rather long hair which also was gray like his moustache and goatee.  He had been a soldier and an Indian fighter, and he looked it.  As Dorgan lurched toward the boys, who stood tense, with flashing eyes, and prepared for resistance, this cowboy stepped between, and spoke to Dorgan.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” he said, and he spoke in a sort of drawl, but there didn’t seem to be any drawl in his cool, gray eyes.  In spite of his condition Dorgan appeared to realize this, for he paused uncertainly.  “I don’t hold myself up as no defender o’ Injuns,” the old puncher went on calmly, “but I’ve had a bit o’ truck with ’em, fer an’ ag’inst, I’m some judge of ’em, an’ I reck’n this one c’n stay right here.”

Dorgan began to stiffen a little and his fingers clutched, as one’s will when one thinks of reaching for a gun.  The other man had a gun, too, but he made not the slightest movement toward it, and he spoke even more quietly than before.

“If I was you,” he repeated, “bein’ in th’ c’ndition you’re in, I’d beat it.  You may have objections for t’ state, thinkin’ this ain’t none o’ my business, an’ you c’n state ’em now—­or f’rever hold your peace.”

Dorgan looked around the tent, as if for moral support, but didn’t find any.  A singular quiet had fallen on the place; a sort of disconcerting quiet.  A warning ray of sense must have come into Dorgan’s fuddled brain as he looked again at the old puncher, for without a word he stumbled out into the darkness.

“That was mighty fine of you,” Whitey said warmly, but the old man didn’t seem to hear him.

He sat down and built a cigarette, and when it was lighted began to drawl between puffs.  “There’s a lot o’ folks that don’t know nothin’ ‘bout Injuns, that has a lot o’ ‘pinions concernin’ ’em,” he said.  “They say you’ve got t’ live with a feller t’ know him, but that ain’t so.  You c’n find out a lot by fightin’ him.  That’s how I got my feelin’ for Injuns, an’ it’s th’ kind you have for a good fighter.”

The incident with Dorgan seemed to have passed from his mind, though Whitey had lived long enough in the West to know that tragedy had lurked near.  The old puncher leaned back, his hands behind his head, and puffed clouds of smoke into the air.  He looked at the smoke as though he saw pictures in it.  Then he carefully threw the cigarette down and ground his heel into it.  As the other men had remained silent while he was talking to Dorgan, they remained silent now.

He was a product of an epic time in the West, a time when the others had been boys.  Naturally a quiet man, he had had little to say.  He also was known as a dangerous man, and when a quiet and dangerous man seems inclined to talk, it is sometimes worth while to wait.  Instead of speaking, he rolled another cigarette, and again looked into the smoke.