when he had said the final word, a distinction he had not conferred on any of the others.
Then Garland took over the program again. He produced a gold badge of office, and another cowman, unknown to Dunham, came forward with a costly belt and pistol. Garland said he would call on one of the fair daughters of the fairest land that lay under the heavens to come forward and invest the new sheriff with his arms and badge of authority, like a knight of olden days, among whom, said Garland with a true Kansas oratorical bound, there was none more valiant than this knight of the Arkansas, the county's six-hundredth citizen, and its first.
That was cowmen's day, and Dunham was their choice. Zora Moore was the fair daughter who stepped in front of Bill and grinned provokingly as she pinned on the badge, and went on grinning still more provokingly, as if to say she had known all the time this was going to come off, while she buckled the new belt around him. Bill, red and tingling, stood lifting his hands as a man does when a tailor takes his girth, or when he surrenders, as Bill surrendered then and there, without a condition to his name.
The judge handed Bill his commission, already signed by the governor, for the cattlemen had left nothing undone to make their big day complete, down to the very end.
"Sheriff Dunham," Garland said, turning Bill to face the riders whose gathering had given rise to unpleasant speculations and apprehensive emotions in him, "here are your deputies if you need them. The cattlemen
