Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/102

 He might have done, at any rate. And if he did"

"But if this Colonel has a bad character?"

"Doesn't your correspondent say he's popular? You can't touch him legally. It's too late. In Texas this is ancient history by now. And if you go out and let folks know who you are, he'll lay for you and blow a hole through you."

"I want him hanged."

"You'll have to hang him yourself, then."

He picked up his law-bag.

"Have you given it up? Or when do you sail?"

He sailed a week later, and two months afterwards I got a letter from Painted Rock, and reading underneath the words I seemed to see something that the lawyer did not know he wrote. He was set in his mind and curiously cheerful. He looked upon his enterprise as a legal job, and meant to carry it through as if some client had given him the task. I had looked for some discontent at Texas and its conditions. He showed none; he never even growled at the sand