Don't depend on the new sheriff." Lawler got up, his face paling.

He dismissed the secretary and then stood for several minutes looking down at the pistols on the desk.

They offered a quick solution of the problem that confronted him.
At this minute he was conscious of one thing only--that Slade was in Willets.

Slade, who had led the gang that had killed his men--Slade, whose face haunted Blackburn's dreams--the man the Circle L outfit held responsible for the massacre that day on the plains above the big valley.
Lurking in the metal cylinders of the two weapons on the desk was that death which Warden, Singleton, Slade, and the others deserved at his hands.

He took up the pistols, nestling their sinister shapes in his palms, while his blood rioted with the terrible lust that now seized him--the old urge to do violence, the primal instinct to slay, to which he had yielded when Shorty told him of the things Blondy Antrim had done.
Another minute passed while he fondled the weapons.