of cattle land they, set to hold against the enemy in the Great Retreat, to contest every inch of ground, to harry and bulldoze and scourge the enemy of their kind at every opportunity.
Big men, strong men of the Big Country; once riders of an unfenced prairie from Brazos to the Line; fighters of Indians and of blizzards; hard in life and hard to kill; builders of empire. Their clan has long passed. Their code of a fair shot and survival of the quickest trigger is known no more. Only the Big Country they made out of the prairie remains,—and memories which flash sometimes grotesquely, sometimes in exaggerated caricature on the cinema screen or from the typewriters of steam-heated novelists.
The scout from Main Street reported what he had seen. There was brief council, men crowding close to catch the signal for action.
"We can give 'em a run. If a bunch of us holds 'em off in front maybe somebody can bust into the jail from behind an' cut that Zang Whistler bird outa the herd. Leave the Killer be; nobody wants to dirty his hands with no carrion hound like him."
A plan was formulated. Out over the low-
