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“ Roberts swung to his horse but reined in for a parting word of careless advice.
“Better not take yourself too seriously, my friend. Don’t let yourself forget that you’re a joke.”
As he rode down the street, easy, flat backed, a perfect horseman, the worshiping eyes of the little sheriff followed him. In Lute’s heart there was a warm glow, a hope and confidence that had been a stranger to him for many years.
“He called me his friend. He said I was the best man he could find. You bet I’ll stand by him and Granite County,” Purdy promised himself, tears of gratitude in his watery eyes. ”

“ He had never been a fearless man physically, and the years of dissipation had played havoc with such pluck as he once possessed. He was in terror, afraid to his marrow, yet there was something in him stronger than this blanching palsy, something that told him he must go on to the end in spite of all. ”

“ Webb aint got no call to say he’s law on Lost Creek. In this here country one man’s as good as another. Rich and poor alike, we all got to come to it. When Webb says he’s an exception, he gits off wrong foot first. I got to stand by the law, aint I, honey?” the little sheriff besought of his small comforter.
She was perched on the arm of his rocker rumpling his thin hair and twisting it into long spirals that stood out like the quills of a porcupine.
“’Course you got to, Daddie,” she nodded energetically. “You just tell Mr. Roberts you’re the sheriff. ”

“ In front of the postoffice he ordered them to stop and then he sent for Lute Purdy.
“Where’s your jail, sheriff?” he asked, in his eyes the gleam of unquenchable humor that he reserved only for his closest friends.
The ex-cobbler looked his embarrassment. “Why, we aint got a jail just now, Mr. Roberts.”
“Then where do you want them to put me? I’m your prisoner. Any man that wants me bad enough to drag me out of a snow-slide and is fool enough to tackle a blizzard just to keep me alive has sure enough established a claim. It’s your say-so, Lute.”
Pando understood, gazed, and approved. ”

“ And the argument began again, ending always in Purdy’s immovable resolution to go on as duty pointed, to the end.
It will be remembered long in Granite County as the winter of heavy snows. Pando was cut off from communication with the outside world for nearly three months while the mantle piled higher and higher on the mountains and deeper and deeper in the gulches. The vast wastes stretched mile on mile, isolating the town more effectually than a quarantine. Day after day passed with snow still falling from a sky of sodden gray. ”

“ She could resent this without understanding it.
“You're the best man that ever was, and Mr. Roberts ought to be ashamed of his self,” she protested.
That night a body of masked men rode into Pando, battered down the door of the wooden jail, and released its only prisoner, Lem Cotton. The building was fired, and the rescuers rode out of town toward Lost Creek shooting revolvers into the air defiantly.
Before morning everybody in Pando knew that little Lute Purdy had declared war against the lawbreakers of Lost Creek and that Webb Roberts had won the first skirmish. ”

“ Occasionally men drifted down from the hills on skis for tobacco or coffee. They told of snow and ever more snow. Slides were beginning in the vicinity of various camps and work in the mines was generally abandoned.
It chanced that Lute was home with Nellie, who had been having a touch of sickness, on the day that Webb Roberts reached town after a fierce battle with vast white fields nearly two miles above the sea level. The cattleman slept in town that night and shortly after ten on the following morning started off on the return trip. ”