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 it, even if you are the mare," Kellogg replied, drawing another laugh.

Bill Dunham thought it was questionable humor in the presence of a lady, that rustic play on the chief officer of an incorporated town, a position mainly without dignity and with precious little power. Here was an exception; here spoke a mayor who had force behind his orders. It was lucky for him, Bill thought gloomily, they had picked the front of the hardware store to play their joke.

"This is the second break you've made with a gun today," the marshal said, snarling around at Dunham. "One more will be your last. You've got one hour to show your heels to this town. If you're here after that, you and I'll mix."

"He'll clear out," the mayor said, giving it as a positive guaranty, as if to remove the impression that he was perversely opposing the marshal's authority. "We've got gun-slingers enough around here without callin' in any outsiders."

"He ort to swing!" the complaining cowboy insisted. "Shootin' up a feller's pardner over a innercent little joke that a-way."

"They ain't doin' that any more in this man's town, kid," the marshal corrected him, a sneer in his nosey voice that was plainly a challenge to all assembled to try to revive that once popular Kansas outdoor sport and see how far they'd get along with it.

There was no undertaker in Pawnee Bend in those early days, the clearing off of human wreckage falling to the hands of the furniture dealer, a German named