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 run into another fight, until he was good and able to hold his own, she said. He must get over that notion of going to town and cleaning up on that gang. Bill protested he wasn't thinking of it, but she knew he was. Wait a little while, she counseled. The day was coming when they'd get theirs, and get it good and plenty.

Zora always was hot and strong when she came to that assurance, which was more like a threat, indeed. She shut him off with that, invariably, and left him wondering what she meant. He wondered if he had blabbed in his delirium of the vengeance he had laid up against that gang? Or had she read his intention in his sober face, underlying, as it was, every thought of his future activities?

For the thought of a mighty cleaning-up in Pawnee Bend had been with him from his first conscious gleam. It was a deep and solemn determination, as somber over his young soul as the shadow of a rising storm.