swaggered about with considerable ado. My bill of supplies
amounted to one hundred and twenty-six dollars, and when, without
a word, I drew a draft for the amount, the proprietor of the
outfitting store, as a pelon, made me a present of two fine silk
handkerchiefs.

Forrest was treated likewise, and having invested ourselves in
white shirts, with flaming red ties, we used the new
handkerchiefs to otherwise decorate our persons. We had both
chosen the brightest colors, and with these knotted about our
necks, dangling from pistol-pockets, or protruding from ruffled
shirt fronts, our own mothers would scarcely have known us. Jim
Flood, whom we met casually on a back street, stopped, and after
circling us once, said, "Now if you fellows just keep perfectly
sober, your disguise will be complete."

Meanwhile Don Lovell had reported at an early hour to the
sheriff's office. The legal profession was represented in
Ogalalla by several firms, criminal practice being their
specialty; but fortunately Mike Sutton, an attorney of Dodge, had
arrived in town the day before on a legal errand for another
trail drover. Sutton was a frontier advocate, alike popular with
the Texas element and the gambling fraternity, having achieved
laurels in his home town as a criminal lawyer. Mike was born on
the little green isle beyond the sea, and, gifted with the Celtic
wit, was also in logic clear as the tones of a bell, while his
insight into human motives was almost superhuman. Lovell had had
occasion in other years to rely on Sutton's counsel, and now
would listen to no refusal of his services. As it turned out, the
lawyer's mission in Ogalalla was so closely in sympathy with