at least eighty, Dunham roughly computed, were watching the approaching herd with hostile front, and others appeared to be arguing vociferously, with emphasis of flourishing arms, but nobody came out in the road to challenge Dunham when he went on at the lead of the big herd which came rolling over the low hilltop, urged on by the anxious, silent cowboys, some of whom would have welcomed a little row as a fitting climax to their long drive.
They were all looking ahead at Bill Dunham, riding thirty yards in advance of the leaders, full of admiration for his single-handed challenge to seventy-five or eighty men. What powerful argument had this unknown young man used to change the attitude of the Kansas cowmen so completely and suddenly? Was his reputation as a gunman so great and fearful in his own country that his announced intention of doing something was sufficient to throw the bars down to his uncontested passage?
It appeared so, for a fact, and the marvel of it increased as they rode after him, urging the cattle across the ford and up the sloping bank. They were quivering with the daring of the enterprise, and swelling with the exultation that would be theirs as they rode by that bunch of Kansas men who had stood ready only a little while ago to enforce their rule of ruinous tyranny.
Hughes was no less struck with the marvel of this easy passage of what he lately had thought an insuperable barrier, for Dunham had not gone to the trouble of making any explanation when he returned from laying down the law at the ford. He simply had
