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Boston, where there was a lot of Irish and some good fightin’ men amongst ’em. He learned fightin’ there, and when I was growing up he taught me a thing or two. Pa was no great fightin’ man, but he was a good teacher. He taught me something about fighting and something about Cornish-style wrestling. There were a lot of Cousin Jacks in the mines, then as ever, and Pa was quick to see and learn. But he was a teacher, not a fighter.
    Me, I started scrappin’ the minute they took off my diapers. Most of us did, them days.
    Here I was sixteen, with plenty of years already spent on an ax handle, a plow, and a pick and shovel. So when he come at me, low and hard like that, I just braced myself, dropped both hands to the back of his head, and shoved down hard with them.
    I was thoughtful to jerk my knee up hard at the same time.
    There’s something about them two motions together that’s right bad for the complexion and the shape of a nose.
    He staggered back, almost went down on his knees, and then come up. And when he did his nose was a bloody smear. He had grit, I’ll give him that. He come for me again and I fetched him a swing and my fist clobbered him right on the smashed-up nose.
    He come in, flailing away at me with both fists, and he could hit almighty hard. He slammed me first with one fist and then with the other, but I stood in there and taken ’em and clobbered him again, this time in the belly.
    He stood flatfooted then, fightin’ for wind, so I just sort of set myself and swung a couple from the hip. One of them missed as he pulled back, but the other taken him on his ear and his hands come up so I belted him again in the belly.
    He taken a step back and my next swing turned him halfway round and he went down to his knees.
    â€œThat’s enough, Doby,” Chantry said. “Let him go.”
    So I stepped back, but watchin’ him. Fact is, I was scared. I might have got my ears pinned back, tacklin’ him thataway…Only he made me mad, there by the road.
    â€œNow, gentlemen,” Chantry said, “I believe you understand the situation. We are not looking for trouble here. These good people only wish to live, to work the ranch, to live quietly.
    â€œAs for myself, I’ve told you what I expect. I know either you or someone you know killed my brother. I’ll leave it to you. Hang them, or I shall hang you.…One by one.
    â€œNow you may go. Quietly, if you please.”
    And they rode away, the stocky one lagging behind, dabbing at his nose and mouth with a sleeve. First one, then the other.
    Pa looked at me in astonishment. “Doby, I didn’t know you could fight like that!”
    I looked back at him, kind of embarrassed. “I didn’t either, Pa. He just gimme it to do.”
    Suppertime, watching the clouds hanging around the highup mountains, I thought of that girl and wondered what she was to them and would anything happen when they rode home.
    â€œYou don’t really b’lieve they’ll hang their own men, do you?” Pa asked.
    â€œNot right away,” Chantry said quietly. “Not right away.”
    We looked at him, but if he knew it he gave no sign, and I wondered just how much he believed what he said.
    â€œYou’d really hang ’em?” Pa asked him then.
    Owen Chantry didn’t reply for a minute, and when he did he spoke low. “This is new country, and there are few white men here. If there is to be civilization, if people are to live and make their homes here, there must be law.
    â€œPeople often think of the law as restrictions, but it needn’t be, unless it’s carried to extremes. Laws can give us freedom, because they offer security from the cruel, the brutal, and the thieves of property.
    â€œIn every community—even in the wildest gangs and bands of outlaws—there is some kind of law, if only the fear of the leader. There has to be law, or there can be no