in our end of the pass, and camped down to stay. Your dad wasn't joyful.
The Bay State had used that pass to trail herds through and as the easiest
and shortest trail to the railroad; and then old King takes it up, strings
a five-wired fence across at both ends of his place, and warns us off.
I've heard Potter tell what warm times there were. Your father stayed
right here and had it out with him. The Bay State was all he had, then,
and he ran it himself. Perry Potter worked for him, and knows all about
it. Neither old King nor your dad was married, and it's a wonder they
didn't kill each other off--Potter says they sure tried. The time King got
it in the leg your father and his punchers were coming home from a breed
dance, and they were feeling pretty nifty, I guess; Potter told me they
started out with six bottles, and when they got to White Divide there
wasn't enough left to talk about. They cut King's fence at the north end,
and went right through, hell-bent-for-election. King and his men boiled
out, and they mixed good and plenty. Your father went home with a hole in
his shoulder, and old King had one in his leg to match, and since then
it's been war. They tried to fight it out in court, and King got the best
of it there. Then they got married and kind o' cooled off, and pretty soon
they both got so much stuff to look after that they didn't have much time
to take pot-shots at each other, and now we're enjoying what yuh might
call armed peace. We go round about sixty miles, and King's Highway is bad
medicine.

"King owns the stage-line from Osage to Laurel, where the Bay State gets
its mail, and he owns Kenmore, a mining-camp in the west half uh White
Divide. We can go around by Kenmore, if we want to--but King's Highway?
Nit!"

I chuckled to myself to think of all the things I could twit dad about if
ever he went after me again. It struck me that I hadn't been a