CHAPTER 9IN THE GRANGE HALL Que Layton had already been ranting for half an hour. He was a giant, his shoulders huge, his thrashing arms too long, his hands enormous.
But he made a striking figure, his heavy face almost hidden by the bushy black beard which concealed the red, veined cheeks, and his voice matched the rest of him, rolling out to reverberate against the thin boards of the unpainted walls. He had learned his lessons early under John Brown, and the frenzy of his words carried the emotional impact of a camp-meeting evangelist.
“You don’t want to fight,” he bellowed, “but who is going to keep those trail herds out? If they bring their ticks into the Springs we will lose every head of cattle we own. Now is the time to protect our property, our homes. We’ve got to fight if we mea
