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cattlemen who had carried the warning across the river to Hughes were still sitting on their dripping horses when Dunham rode into the ford. Others had been waiting to hear how the Texans took the news, evidently, for there was a group of men, on foot and mounted, numbering about twenty, collected around Moore and the other delegates, one of whom Dunham recognized as Garland, the man who had hired him for Moore to discharge so contemptuously.

Moore was lolling slouchily with one thigh across his saddle, pretty well pleased with something, it seemed, for his loud laugh came clacking like the voice of a crow as Dunham struck the shallows of the ford and headed across. Somebody called attention to his approach. Moore threw a startled look around and slid into his saddle like a turtle going across a log, the ripple of Dunham's identity running through the crowd.

John Moore was neither a coward nor a gunman. He was a fellow who would bull up against any kind of bare-handed encounter with a roar, and claw, hammer and bite his way through. He had the fist-fighter's contempt for weapons, never carrying a gun except on extraordinary occasions such as this. From the way he turned white around the gills now it was plain he