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 when Cattle Kate summoned the two waiting customers into the dining-room. This man sat across the room from the table to which the hostess escorted Barrett and Dan, the light of the swinging lamp strong over him. As they took their places Dan leaned over the table and whispered:

"That's Charley Thomson, the big lawyer."

Not much outward indication of greatness about the man, Barrett thought, viewing him with renewed interest. Thomson was arrayed as usual, his rusty black coat over an untidy woolen shirt, but his gray-streaked black hair was combed to a smoothness that scarcely would have given a fly a footing. He seemed to carry his attitude of sarcastic contempt to the table with him, eating as though he scorned the operation, and bent to it only as one of the contemptible conventions of the world which custom bound him to serve.

"Must have some big case he's up here lookin' after, gettin' witnesses or something," said Dan. "Fred'll miss him; he'll have to go to somebody else."

"It don't look to me like he'd missed much," Barrett said, offhand and unimpressed.

"They never hang a man that's got Charley Thomson for a lawyer," Dan whispered, cautious as if eulogy were a thing distasteful to the great lawyer's ears. Dan watched him with admiration as he forked large pieces of steak into his fish-like mouth. "What do you suppose he charges for gittin' a man off for a shootin', Ed?"

"Not much, I'd say."

"Three to five thousand!" said Dan, delivering it