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 eaten, the dishes licked, Tom Simpson, unarmed like any farmer, never having borne the weight of a gun since rising from the painful bed where his adventures with guns had stretched him. He had no fear that avenging riders would come up the Cherokee trails to seek him; the last vicious nest of them was empty, the straws of it blown to the winds. Waco had not given up his gun, although he confessed he had no more need of it than a cow had of wings. It was strapped around him now in due and ancient form, ready for the emergency which, much as he enjoyed a little fight now and then, he knew in his heart never would rise on that border again.

Waco was thinking of that as he sat looking across the fire at his friend. How would things have been around there if the quiet man, a stranger from a far-off land, had not come when he did and cleaned up Wade Harrison's gang? How would it have been with Drumwell, insolent and oppressive to everybody who did not come there to spend in a wastrel's way, if Tom Simpson had let them throw their bluff on him? Wide open and a hummin', very likely; a little more to his personal liking than its present respectable business state, but far worse for young fellows with their lives before them and mothers at home. Great changes had come in his brief time there; greater changes were coming, all owing to the boost Tom Simpson had given them to start them on their way.

"Hell!" said Waco, breaking out in wide irrelevance to what had been running in his mind; "I've got over six hundred dollars in the bank!"

"Rich old devil!" said Tom, the inflection of affectionate admiration in his voice.