CHAPTER 25QUE LAYTON was given to boasting. All his life he had dominated those around him. He was a bully, with all the instincts of a bully, all the desire for power which men of his type have. He was very pleased with himself as he sat on a rock beside the fire and watched the faces of the men around him.
“We’ve stopped them.” His bull-like voice rose through the quiet night. “I promised you that not a Texas steer would cross these hills. They won’t. Powell and Sandson have pulled back. They know better than to try to ride through the pass against fifty guns.”
The farmers watched him, drawing from his strength in their uncertainty. Most of them were not fighting men. They had come west, seeking new homes, and they had ridden south only because they firmly believed that those homes wer
