"It's that dastard, Crit!" he cried, shaking his fists in the air. "He sold us his cussed whiskey—he sent us on our way! And now I'm goin' to git him!"
Angy gazed up at him questioningly and then raised a restraining hand.
"It's more than him, Cumrad," he said solemnly. "More than him! If Crit should die to-morrow the system would raise up another robber to take his place. It's the System, Pecos, the System—this here awful conspiracy of the capitalistic classes and the servile officers of the law—that keeps the poor man down. Worse, aye, worse than the Demon Rum, is the machinations which puts the power of government into the monopolistic hands of capital and bids the workingman earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. There is only one answer to the crime of government—the revolution!"
"Well, let 'er go then," cried Pecos, impulsively. "The revolution she is until the last card falls—but all the same I got my eye on Crit!"
The iron hand of the law after hovering long above the Verde at last descended suddenly and with crushing force upon the unsuspecting cowmen. For a year Boone Morgan had been dallying around, even as other sheriffs had done before him, and the first fears of the wary mountain men had speedily been lulled into a feeling of false security. Then the fall round-ups came on and in the general scramble of that predatory period Morgan managed to scatter a posse of newly appointed deputies, disguised as cowboys, throughout the upper range. They returned and reported the tally at every branding and the next week every cowman on the Verde received notice that his taxes on so many head of cattle, corral count, were due and more than due. They were due for several years back but Mr. Boone Morgan, as deputy assessor, deputy tax-collector, and so forth, would give them a receipt in full upon the payment of the fiscal demand. This would have sounded technical in the mouth of an ordinary tax-collector but coming from a large, iron-gray gentleman with a six-shooter that had been through the war, it went. Upton paid; Crittenden paid; they all paid—all except Pecos Dalhart.
It was at the store, shortly after he had put the thumb-screws on Ike Crittenden and extracted the last ultimate cent, that Boone Morgan tackled Pecos for his taxes. He had received a vivid word-picture of the lone resident of Lost Dog from his deputy, Bill Todhunter, and Pecos had been equally fortified against surprise by Angevine Thorne. They came face to face as Pecos was running over the scare-heads of the _Voice of Reason_, and the hardy citizens of Verde Crossing held their breaths and listened for thunder, for Pecos had stated publicly that he did not mean to pay.