than the critical present, “and we prospected together for gold and silver over Arizona, New Mexico, and a good part of California. We were both in the war of ’sixty-one, but in different commands. We’ve fought Indians and horse thieves side by side; we’ve starved for weeks in a cabin in the Arizona mountains, buried twenty feet deep in snow; we’ve ridden herd together when the wind blew so hard the lightning could n’t strike———well, Bob and I have been through some rough spells since the first time we met in the branding camp of the old Anchor-Bar Ranch. And during that time we’ve found it necessary more than once to help each other out of tight places. In those days it was expected of a man to stick to his friend, and he did n’t ask any credit for it. Probably next day you’d need him to get at your back and help stand off a band of Apaches, or put a tourniquet on your leg above a rattlesnake bite and ride for whisky. So, after all, it was give and take, and if you did n’t stand square with your pardner, why, you might be shy one when you needed him. But Bob was a man who was willing to go further than that. He never played a limit.
“Twenty years ago I was sheriff of this county, and I made Bob my chief deputy. That was before the boom in cattle when we both made our stake. I was sheriff and collector, and it was a big thing for me then. I was married, and we had a boy and a girl—a four and a six year old. There was a comfortable house next to the courthouse, furnished by the county, rent free, and I was saving some money. Bob did most of the office work.
