The Kemah County Court convened on a Tuesday, the second week in December. The Judge coming with his court reporter to Velpen on Monday found the river still open. December had crept softly to its appointed place in the march of months with a gentle heralding of warm, southwest winds.  
“Weather breeder,” said Mrs. Higgins of the Bon Ami, with a mournful shake of her head. “You mark my words and remember I said it. It’s a sorry day for the cows when the river’s running in December.”
 
She was serving the judicial party herself, and capably, too. She dearly loved the time the courts met, on either side of the river. It brought many interesting people to the Bon Ami, although not often the Judge. His coming for supper was a most unusual honor, and it was due to Louise, who had playfully insisted. He had humored her much against his will, it must be confessed; for he had a deeply worn habit of making straight for the hotel from the station and there remaining until Hank Bruebacher, liveryman, who never permitted anything to interfere with or any one to usurp his prerogative of driving his honor to and from Kemah when court was in session, whistled with shameless familiarity the following morning to make his honor cognizant of the fact that he, Hank, was ready. But he had come to the Bon Ami because Louise wished it, and he reflected whimsically on the astonishment, amounting almost to horror, on the face of his good landlord at the Velpen House when it became an assured fact that he was not and had not been in the dining-room.
 
“You are right, Mrs. Higgins,” assented the Judge gravely to her weather predictions, “and the supper you have prepared for us is worthy the hand that serves it. Kings and potentates could ask no better. Louise, dear child, I am fond of you and I hope you will never go back East.”
 
“Thank you, Uncle Hammond,” said Louise, who knew that an amusing thought was seeping through this declaration of affection. “I am sorry to give you a heartache, but I am going back to God’s country some day, nevertheless.”
 
“Maybe so—maybe not,” said the Judge. “Mrs. Higgins, my good woman, how is our friend, the canker-worm, coming on these days?”
 
“Canker-worm?” repeated Mrs. Higgins. “Meanin’, your honor—”
 
“Just what I say—canker-worm. Isn’t he the worm gnawing in discontent at the very core of the fair fruit of established order and peace in the cow country?”
 
“I—I—don’t understand, your honor,” faltered the woman, in great trepidation. Would his honor consider her a hopeless stupid? But what was the man talking about? Louise looked up, a flush of color staining her cheeks.
 
“Maybe fire-brand would suit you better, madame? My young friend, the fire-brand,” resumed the Judge, rising. “That is good—fire-brand. Is he not inciting the populace to ‘open rebellion, false doctrine, and schism’? Is it not because of him that roofs are burned over the very heads of the helpless homesteader?”
 
“For shame, Uncle Hammond,” exclaimed Louise, still flushed and with a mutinous little sparkle in her eyes. “You are poking fun at me. You haven’t any right to, you know; but that’s your way. I don’t care, but Mrs. Higgins doesn’t understand.”
 
“Don’t you, Mrs. Higgins?” asked the Judge.
 
“No, I don’t,” snapped Mrs. Higgins, and she didn’t, but she thought she did. “Only if you mean Mr. Richard Gordon, I’ll tell you now there ain’t no one in this here God-forsaken country who can hold a tallow candle to him. Just put that in your pipe and smoke it, will you?”
 
She piled up dishes viciously. She did not wait for her guests to depart before she began demolishing the table. It was a tremendous breach of etiquette, but she didn’t care. To have an ideal shattered ruthlessly is ever a heart-breaking thing.
 
“But my dear Mrs. Higgins,” expostulated the Judge.
 
“You needn’t,” said that lady, shortly. “I don’t care,” she went on, “if the president himself or an archangel from heaven came down here and plastered Dick Gordon with bad-smellin’ names from the crown of his little toe to the tip of his head, I’d tell ’em to their very faces that they didn’t know what they was a talkin’ about, and what’s more they’d better go back to where they belong and not come nosin’ round in other people’s business when they don’t understand one single mite about it. We don’t want ’m puttin’ their fingers in our pie when they don’t know a thing about us or our ways. That’s my say,” she closed, with appalling significance, flattering herself that no one could dream but that she was dealing in the most off-hand generalities. She was far too politic to antagonize, and withal too good a woman not to strike for a friend. She congratulated herself she had been true to all her gods—and she had been.
 
Louise smiled in complete sympathy, challenging the Judge meanwhile with laughing eyes. But the Judge—he was still much of a boy in spite of his grave calling and mature years—just threw back his blonde head and shouted in rapturous glee. He laughed till the very ceiling rang in loud response; laughed till the tears shone in his big blue eyes. Mrs. Higgins looked on in undisguised amazement, hands on hips.
 
“Dear me, suz!” she sputtered, “is the man gone clean daffy?”
 
“Won’t you shake hands with me, Mrs. Higgins?” he asked, gravely. “I ask your pardon for my levity, and I assure you there isn’t a man in the whole world I esteem more or hold greater faith in than Dick Gordon—or love so much. I thank you for your championship of him. I would that he had more friends like you. Louise, are you ready?”
 
Their walk to the hotel was a silent one. Later, as she was leaving him to go to her own room, Louise laid her head caressingly on her uncle’s sleeve.
 
“Uncle Hammond,” she said, impulsively, “you are—incorrigible, but you are the best man in all the world.”
 
“The very best?” he asked, smilingly.
 
“The very best,” she repeated, firmly.
 
There was a full calendar that term, and the close of the first week found the court still wrestling with criminal cases, with that of Jesse Black yet uncalled. Gordon reckoned that Black’s trial could not possibly be taken up until Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week. Long before that, the town began filling up for the big rustling case. There were other rustling cases on the criminal docket, but they paled before this one where the suspected leader of a gang was on trial. The interested and the curious did not mean to miss any part of it. They began coming in early in the week. They kept coming the remainder of that week and Sunday as well. Even as late as Monday, delayed range riders came scurrying in, leaving the cattle mostly to shift for themselves. The Velpen aggregation, better informed, kept to its own side of the river pretty generally until the Sunday, at least, should be past.
 
The flats southeast of town became the camping grounds for those unable to find quarters at the hotel, and who lived too far out to make the nightly ride home and back in the morning. They were tempted by the unusually mild weather. These were mostly Indians and half-breeds, but with a goodly sprinkling of cowboys of the rougher order. Camp-fires spotted the plain, burning redly at night. There was plenty of drift-wood to be had for the hauling. Blanketed Indians squ............