It was a land of men, big, grave, sufficient men, each with a gun upon his hip, and sometimes two, guaranty of peace and calm and content.

And any man who has ever lived in a Land Before the Law knows that this is the only fit way of life.

Alas! that this scheme, this great, happy simple, perfect scheme of society should be subverted.

And, be it remembered, this was by reason of nothing more than a pig, an artless, lissom pig, it is true; an infrequent, somewhat prized, a little petted and perhaps spoiled pig, it is true; yet, after all, no fit cause of elemental strife.
But now came this man from Leavenworth, fresh from litigious soil, bearing with him in his faded blue army overcoat germs of civilization, seeds of discontent.

He wailed aloud that the pride of the community, meaning this pig, which he had brought solitary in a box at the tail of the wagon when he moved in, was now departed; that there was naught left to distinguish this community from any other camp in the mountains; that the pig had been the light of his home, the apple of his eye, the pride of the community; that he had entertained large designs in connection with this pig the following fall; that its taking off was a shame, an outrage, a disgrace, an act utterly illegal, and one for which any man in Kansas would promptly have had the law of his neighbor.
Hitherto the "double roll," even in connection with a curly-tailed black pig, had not been considered actionable in Heart's Desire; but the outcry made by this man from Leavenworth, now the postmaster of the town and in some measure a leader in the meetings of the population, began to attract attention.