past was a great way behind him, indeed. He felt mature and seasoned, as a man confident of himself and his destiny should feel; he had accomplished what he had dreamed of doing back in the days when he read of those free-handed shooting men of Dodge. The world was not sitting on his chest any longer, pinning his arms to the ground with its knees. He had flopped the bully; the dust of the under dog was no longer on his back.
He stood before them tall and big-jointed, hat in his hand, the hot wind moving his shaggy brown hair, which had grown long in the weeks of his sequestration at Moore's ranch, the new belt around his gaunt middle, the new gun hanging down long on his thigh. The surprise of his new fortune was still over him, but above its confusion his pride rose high.
There was a creaking of saddle leather as the men on horseback adjusted themselves to hear the new sheriff's speech, a craning forward in intense expectation among the crowd on the benches and the vehicles gathered around. Bill stood a little while, which seemed a long time to him, head bent as if collecting his thoughts and marshaling his words, but they were the most elusive thoughts, the most unruly words, he ever had tried to corner in his life.
All his reading and accumulation of odds and ends of knowledge were of little use to Bill Dunham then. That was a gathering of practical people; they didn't want quotations from something said by other men. They wanted to hear something original, for that was a country where originality was respected. It had more of a chance in the short-grass country than in the
