Flint Orr, sheriff of Mojave Wells, awoke slowly and painfully. A heavy weight seemed to bear down upon his brain, as his mouth was as dry as ashes. He tried to remember what he had drunk or ate, but his memory was blank as to details. Painfully he rolled over on his side, staring red-eyed at the battered alarm clock on the little table near the bed.

“Nine o’clock,” he muttered. He was in his own bedroom, sprawled in all his clothes. Not even his boots had been removed. He lifted a heavy head and looked at the boots. Not for years had he been so drunk that he forgot to undress.

But had he been drunk? He rubbed the stubble on his heavy chin. Of course he had not been drunk. Why, he hadn’t been drunk in three years, not since he became sheriff. He had sworn off drinking at that time. But what was wrong with everything? Why was he in bed, fully dressed, at nine o’clock in the morning?

He listened closely, but there was not a sound in the house except the ticking of that confounded clock. With a sweep of his big right hand, he knocked it off on the floor, where it ceased to tick. Funny that there should be no noise in the house. Ann should be doing her work.

Flint Orr licked his parched lips. Where was Ann? Damn it, he was tired of her whining. Couldn’t she understand that a sheriff must do his duty, even to hanging his own son for murder? Blood didn’t make any difference. Harry Orr had killed, just like any other man might kill, and he must pay the penalty. Women have strange ideas of duty.

He managed to swing his feet off the bed, where he sat, holding a throbbing head between his hands. Flint Orr was a huge man, thewed like a bull, with a huge mane of iron-gray hair on his large head, like the roach on a grizzly. His face was heavy, his eyes small and brown, under bushy brows, and he never seemed to laugh.

Men hated and respected him—hated him for his bull-headed, ruthless way of serving the law, but respected him for his honesty of purpose. Ann Orr, his wife, barely past thirty, was loved by everyone—except, possibly, Flint Orr. Harry Orr was not her son, but she had fought tooth and nail to save him from the gallows. Flint Orr did not admire her for this. In fact, he resented it. There was no question of Harry’s guilt.

Harry worked for the Circle Seven cattle outfit, ten miles north of Mojave Wells. Harry and Ed Belt, the foreman, had quarreled over a girl, and came to blows at the ranch. Harry had followed Belt to Mojave Wells, where they quarreled again over a poker game, but others intervened, stopping possible gunplay.