"Thar's my friend, Mace Bowman. Mace is clean strain cl'ar through, an' yet I don't reckon he ever gets to a show-down with whiskey once which he ain't outheld. But for grim nerve as'll never shiver, this yere Bowman is at par every time.
"Bowman dies a prey to his ambition. He starts in once to drink all the whiskey in Wolfville. By his partic'lar request most of the white male people of the camp stands in on the deal, a-backin' his play for to make Wolfville a dry camp. At the close of them two lurid weeks Mace lasts, good jedges, like Enright an' Doc Peets, allows he's shorely made it scarce some.
"But Wolfville's too big for him. Any other gent but Mace would have roped at a smaller outfit, but that wouldn't be Mace nohow. If thar's a bigger camp than Wolfville anywhere about, that's where he'd been. He's mighty high-hearted an' ambitious that a-way, an' it's kill a bull or nothin' when he lines out for buffalo.
"But the thirteenth day, he strikes in on the big trail, where you never meets no outfits comin' back, an' that settles it. The boys, not havin' no leader, with Mace petered, gives up the game, an' the big raid on nose-paint in Wolfville is only hist'ry now.
"When I knows Bowman first he's sheriff over in northeast New Mexico. A good sheriff Mace
