"Gentlemen," he asked, in a soft, drawly voice that had a mighty
familiar note that puzzled me, "have you a permit to have whisky in your
possession?"

Nobody said a word. There was really nothing they could say. He had them
dead to rights, for it was smuggled whisky, and they knew that policeman
was simply asking as a matter of form, and that his next move would be
to empty the refreshments on the ground; if they got rusty about it he
_might_ haze the whole bunch of us into Fort Walsh--and that meant each
of us contributing a big, fat fine to the Queen's exchequer.

"You know the law," he continued, in that same mild tone. "Where is your
authority to have this stuff?"

Then the clash almost came. If old Piegan Smith hadn't been sampling the
contents of that keg so industriously he would never have made a break.
For a hot-tempered, lawless sort of an old reprobate, he had good
judgment, which a man surely needed if he wanted to live out his
allotted span in the vicinity of the forty-ninth parallel those troubled
days. But he'd put enough of the fiery stuff under his belt to make him
touchy as a parlor-match, and when the trooper, getting no answer,
flipped the keg over on its side and the whisky trickled out among the
grass-roots, Piegan forgot that he was in an alien land where the law is
upheld to the last, least letter and the arm of it is long and
unrelenting.

"Here's my authority, yuh blasted runt," he yelled, and jerked his
six-shooter to a level with the policeman's breast. "Back off from that
keg, or I'll hang your hide to dry on my wagon-wheel in a holy minute!"