f the second incident that befell on the journey to Camp Kettle I must tell you because it had a far-reaching effect and a good deal more to do with our expedition than could possibly have been foretold at the time.

Of the incident at the Rest House, which I have just narrated, Apache Kid said nothing, and as curiosity is not one of my failings (many others though I have), to question I never dreamt; and besides, in the West, even the inquisitive learn to listen without inquiring, and he evidently had no intention of explaining. But when, at last, after a very long silence during which our three fellow-travellers looked at him in the dusk of the coach (whose only light was that reflected from the lamp-lit road) with interest, and admiration, I believe, he said in a low voice which I alone could hear, owing to the creaking and screaming of the battered vehicle: "I think you and I had better be strangers; only fellow-travellers thrown together by chance, not fellow-plotters journeying together with design."

"I understand," said I, and this resolution we accordingly carried out.

After a night and a day's journey, with only short stops for watering and "snatch meals," we were hungry and sleepily happy and tired when we came to the "Half-Way-to-Kettle Hotel" standing up white-painted and sun-blistered in the midst of the sand and sage-brush; and I, for my part, paid little heed to the hangers-on who watched our arrival, several of whom stretched hands simultaneously for the honour of catching the reins which the driver flung aside in his long-practised, aggressive manner-a manner without which he had seemed something less than a real stage-driver.

I noticed that Apache Kid had taken his belt and revolver from his blanket-roll and now, indeed, was "heeled" for all men to see, for it was a heavy Colt he used.

Indoors were tables set, in a room at one side of the entrance, with clean, white table-cloths and a young woman waiting to attend our wants after we had washed the dust of the way from our faces and hands and brushed the grit from our clothes with a horse brush which hung in the cool though narrow hall-way.

Apache Kid sat at one table, I at another, two of our fellow-voyagers at a third. The remaining traveller announced to the bearded proprietor who stood at the door, in tones of something very like pride, that he wanted no supper except half a pound of cheese, a bottle of pickles, and a medium bottle of whisky.

This request, to my surprise, was received without the slightest show of astonishment; indeed, it seemed to mark the speaker out for something of a great man in the eyes of the proprietor who, with a "Very good, sir-step into the bar-room, sir," ushered the red-eyed man into the chamber to right, a dim-lit place in which I caught the sheen of glasses with their pale reflection in the dark-stained tables on which they stood.

In the dining-room I found my eyes following the movements of the young woman who attended there. A broad-shouldered lass she was, and the first thing about her that caught me, that made me look upon her with something of contentment after our dusty travel, was, I think, her clean freshness. She wore a white blouse, or, I believe, to name that article of apparel rightly, with the name she would have used, a "shirt-waist." It fitted close at her wrists which I noticed had a strong and gladsome curve. The dress she wore was of dark blue serge. She was what we men call "spick and span" and open-eyed and honest, with her exuberant hair tidily brushed back and lying in the nape of her neck softly, with a golden glint among the dark lustre of it as she passed the side window through which the golden evening sunlight streamed. I had been long enough in the country to be not at all astonished with the bearing, as of almost reverence, with which the men treated her, tagging a "miss" to the end of their every sentence. The stage-driver, too, for all he was so terrible and important a man, "missed" her and "if you pleased" her to the verge of comicality.

I think she herself had a sense of humour, for I caught a twinkle in her eye as she journeyed to and fro. That she did so without affectation spoke a deal for her power over her pride. A woman in such a place, I should imagine, must constantly find it advisable to remind herself that there are very few of the gentler sex in the land and a vast number of men, and tell herself that it is not her captivating ways alone that are responsible for the extreme of respect that is lavished upon her. She chatted to all easily and pleasantly, with a sparkle in her wide-set eyes.

"I think I remember of you on the way up to Baker City," she said: "about two months ago, wasn't it?"

And when I had informed her that it was even so she asked me how I had fared there. I told her I thought I might have fared better had I been in a ranching country.

"Can you ride?" she asked.

I told her no-at least, not in the sense of the word here. I could keep a seat on some horses, but the horses I had seen here were such as made me consider myself hardly a "rider" at all.

She thought it "great," she said, to get on horseback and gallop "to the horizon and back," as she put it.

"It makes you feel so free and glad all over."

I would soon learn, she said, but "the boys" would have their fun with me to start.

All this was a broken talk, between her attending on the tables; and as she kept up a conversation at each table as she visited it I could not help considering that her mind must be particularly alert. Perhaps it was these rides "to the horizon and back" that kept her mind so agile and her form and face so pure. It was when she was bringing me my last course, a dish of apricots, that a man with a rolling gait, heavy brows, and red, pluffy hands, a big, unwieldy man in a dark, dusty suit, came in and sat down at my table casting his arm over the back of the chair.

This fellow "my deared" her instead of following the fashion of the rest, and surveyed me, with his great head flung back and his bulgy eyes travelling over me in an insolent fashion. When she returned with his first order he put up his hand and chucked her under the chin, as it is called.

"Sir," said she, with a pucker in her brows, "I have told you before that I did n't like that:" and she turned away.

My vis-à-vis at that turned to his soup, first glancing at me and winking, and then bending over his plate he supped with great noise,-something more than "audible" this,-and perennial suckings of his moustache.

When the maid came again at his rather peremptory rattle on the plate, "Angry?" he asks, and then "Tuts! should n't be angry," and he made as though to embrace her waist, but she stepped back.

He turned to me, and, wagging his head toward her, remarked:

"She does n't cotton to me."

I make no reply, looking blankly in his face as though I would say: "I don't want anything to do with you"-just like that.

"Ho!" he said, and blew through his nose at me, thrusting out his wet moustache. "Are you deaf or saucy?"

I looked at him then alert, and rapped out sharply: "I had rather not speak to you at all, sir. But as to your remark, I am not astonished that the young lady does not cotton to you."

With the tail of my eye, as the phrase is, I knew that there was a turning of faces toward me then, and my lady drew herself more erect.

"Ho!" cried the bully. "Here's a fane how-de-do about nothing! You want to learn manners, young man. I reckon you have n't travelled much, else you would know that gentlemen setting down together at table are not supposed to be so mighty high-toned as to want nothin' to do with each other."

I heard him to an end, and, laying down my spoon, "With gentlemen-yes," I said, "there can be no objection to talk, even though your remark is an evasion of the matter at present. But seeing you have gone out of your way to blame my manners, I will make bold to say I don't like yours."

The girl stepped forward a pace and, "Sir, sir," she began to me and the bully was glaring on me and crying out, "Gentlemen! 'between gentlemen' you say, and what you insinuate with that?"

But I waved aside the girl and to him I began:

"I have been in this country some time, sir, and I may tell you that I find you at the top of one list in my mental notes. Up to to-night I have never seen a woman insulted in the West--" and then, as is a way I have and I suppose shall have a tendency to till the end of my days, though I ever strive to master it (and indeed find the periods between the loss of that mastery constantly lengthening), I suddenly "flared up."

To say more in a calm voice was beyond me and I cried out: "But I want no more talk from you, sir; understand that."

"Ho!" he began. "You--"

But I interrupted him with: "No more, sir; understand!"

And then in a tone which I dare say savoured very much as though I thought myself quite a little ruler of men, I said: "I have told you twice now not to say more to me. I only tell you once more."

"Good Lord!" he cried. "Do you think you can scare me?"

"That's the third time," said I, mastering the quaver of excitement in my voice, lest he should take it for a quaver of fear. "Next time I don't speak at all."

"Maybe neither do I," said he, and he lifted the water carafe as though to throw the contents on me, but he never did so; for I leant quickly across the table and with the flat of my hand slapped him soundly on the cheek, as I might have slapped a side of bacon, and, "That," said I, "is for insulting the lady."

It was "clear decks for action" then, for he flung back his chair and, spinning around the end of the table, aimed a blow at me; but I had scarce time to guard, so quick was he for all his size. I took the simplest guard of all-held my left arm out rigidly, the fist clenched, and when he lunged forward to deliver the blow I ducked my shoulder but kept my fist still firm.

It was a fierce blow that he aimed, but it slipped over my shoulder and then there was an unpleasant sound-a soft, sloppy sound-for his nose and my rigid fist had met. Then the blood came, quite a fountain. But this only heated him and he dealt another blow which I received with the "cross-guard," one of the best guards in the "straight on" system of boxing, a system generally belittled, but very useful to know.

I think he had never seen the guard in his life, there was so astonished a look on his face; but before he recovered I had him down with a jar on the floor so that the floor and windows rattled,-and his brains, too, I should imagine.

He sat up glaring but something dazed and shaken. God forgive me that I have so feeble a control of my passions once they are roused and such a horrible spirit of exultation! These have their punishment, of course, for a man who exults over such a deed, instead of leaving it to the onlookers to congratulate, falls in their estimation.

However, to give over moralising, I cried out, as he sat up there on the floor with the blood on his face and chin and trickling on his thick neck: "Come on! Sit up! If you lie malingering, I 'll kick you to your feet! I 'm only beginning on you."

I think the onlookers must have smiled to hear me, for, though so far I had got the better, the match was an absurd one. But my foe was a man of a bad spirit; without rising he flung his hand round to his hip.

I had a quick glimpse of the girl clasping her hands and heard the gasp of her breath and her voice: "Stop that now-none of that!"

But another voice, very complacent and with a mocking, boyish ring, broke in:

"Throw up your hands, you son of a dog!" And then I ceased to be the centre of interest and my brain cleared, for Apache Kid was sitting at his table, his chair pushed back a little way, his legs wide apart as he leant forward, his left hand on the left knee, his right forearm lying negligently on the right leg-and loosely in his hand was a revolver pointed at the gentleman on the floor.

The other two were looking on from under their brows, the stage-driver sitting beaming on the scene. The girl swung round on Apache with an infinite relief discernible in her face and gesture. The cook who had come from the rear of the room, having seen the business through the wicket window from his pantry, I suppose, cried out: "Make him take out his gun and hand it over, sir."

Apache did not turn at the voice, but, "You hear that piece of advice?" said he. "Well, I 'm not going to take it. You can keep your little toy in your hip-pocket. Do you know why? Because you can do no harm here with it. Before you could get your hand an inch to it my Colt's bullet would have let all the wind sighing out of your contemptible carcass."

Then he gave a laugh, a chuckling, quiet, hearty laugh in his throat, hardly opening his lips and added: "In the language of the country, sir, I would advise you to shake a leg-to get up and get-hike-before I plug you."

And up rose the man, a commercial traveller (as the girl told me afterwards when trying to thank me-for what I cannot say, as I told her at the time), or a "drummer," as the name is, who had been there since yesterday's Baker-bound stage arrived, drinking at the bar and making himself disagreeable in the dining-room.

He looked a sorry figure as he shuffled from the chamber.

I turned to Apache Kid and began: "You saved my life, A--" but his frown reminded me that we were strangers;-"sir," I ended, "and I have to thank you."

"That's all right, sir; that's all right, sir. Don't mention it," said Apache Kid, throwing his revolver back into its holster.

That was the end of the drummer; we saw him no more that night, and when we came down in the morning we were told he had gone on to Baker City with the stage which went west earlier by an hour than the one toward the railway, the one we were to continue in-part of its journey.

But when we came to settle our bill the proprietor drew his hand under his long beard and put his head on the side-reminding me of a portrait of Morris I had seen-and remarked, looking from Apache to me and back again: "Well, gentlemen, I 'd consider it a kind of honour to be allowed to remember that I did n't ask nothing for putting you up. I should n't like to remember about you, any time, and to think to myself that I had charged you up. I 'd be kind of honoured if you 'd let me remember I did n't take nothing from you."

We did not speak, but Apache's bow was something to see, and with a hearty shake of the hand we mounted the stage.

"Look up tew the window, my lad," said the driver, gathering up his reins. "Look up tew the window and get what's comin' to you; a smile to warm the cockles of your heart for the rest o' the trip."

And sure enough we had a smile and a wave of a strong and graceful hand from the upper window and raised our hats and bowed and were granted another wave and another also from the proprietor-and a wave from the cook at the gable of the house. And looking round again, as we rolled off, there was the fresh white girl standing at the door now.

She raised her hand to her lips and I felt a little sorry in my heart. I did not like to think she was going to "blow a kiss:" it would be a cheapening of herself methought. Then I felt a little regretful, for she did not blow a kiss, but kept her hand to her mouth as long as she remained there.

We went on in silence and then I heard Apache Kid murmur: "Did she mean it or did she not?"

"Mean what?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" said he, alert suddenly. "Oh! I was talking to myself:" and then he said in a louder tone: "Excuse me, sir, for asking, but do you not carry a gun?"

"No," said I, with a smile part at this revival of his old caution and part at something else.

"Can you shoot?"

I shook my head.

"Well," said he, "this period of the history of the West is a transition period. The old order changeth, giving place to new. Fists are settling trouble that was formerly settled with the gun. But the trouble of the transition period is that you can never be sure whether it's to be a gun or the fists. Men like that drummer, too, carry a gun-but they carry it out of sight and you don't know it's there for certain. I advocate the gun carried openly; and I think you should begin right away learning its use. I must look up that remark of Carlyle's, first time I can, about the backwoods being the place where manners flourish. I want to see from the context if he did n't really mean it. Most people think it was sarcasm, but if it was, it should n't have been. Manners do flourish in all backwoods, until the police come in and the gun goes out, and it's the presence of the gun that keeps everybody mannerly. The gun does it. Now see-you hold a revolver like this," and he exemplified as he spoke. "The usual method of grasping a revolver is with the forefinger pressing the trigger, and even many experts follow this method; but, with all due respect to the advocates of that method, it is not the best. The best way to hold a revolver is with the second finger pressing the trigger, the forefinger extending along the side of the barrel like this, you see. That is the great desideratum in endeavouring to make a shot with a revolver-keeping the thing steady. It kicks under the muscular action required to pull the trigger with the forefinger, and unless one is thoroughly practised the bullet will fly above the mark aimed at. Remember, too, to grip tight, or with these heavy guns you may get your thumb knocked out. Then you throw your hand up and bring it down and just point at what you want to kill-like that!"

"Biff!" went the revolver, and I saw the top leaves on a sage-brush fly in the air.

The horses snorted and leapt forward and the driver flung a look over his shoulder, a gleeful look, and, gathering the reins again, cried out, "My gosh, boys! Keep it up, and we 'll make speed into Camp Kettle. Say, this is like old days!" he cried again, when Apache Kid snapped a second time and we went rocking onward.

So we "kept it up," Apache indicating objects for me to aim at, watching my manner of aiming, and coaching me as we went. It seemed to be infectious, for the traveller who had before kept to himself whipped out a "gun" from some part of his clothing and potted away at the one side while we potted at the other. The other two, the one who had suppered on cheese, pickles, and whisky, and breakfasted on the same, like enough, and the man with whom he had struck up an acquaintanceship, wheeled about and potted backwards; and at that the driver grew absolutely hilarious, got out his whip and cracked it loud as the revolver shots, crying out now and again: "Say, this is the old times back again!" and so we volleyed along the uneven road till dusk fell on the mountains to north and the bronze yellow plain to south and sunset crimsoned the western sky. And lights were just beginning to be lit when, in a flutter of dust and banging of the leathern side-blinds and screaming of the gritty wheels, we came rocking down the hillside into Camp Kettle.

But at sight of that Apache Kid turned to me, and with the look of a man suddenly recollecting, he said, in a tone of one ashamed: "Well, well! Here we are advertising ourselves for all we 're worth, when our plan should have been one of silence and self-effacement."

"Well," said I, "we can creep quietly up to bed when we reach the hotel here, and let no one see us, if that is what you are anxious about."

"You 'll have no more bed now, Francis," he said quietly. "No more bed under a roof, no more hotel now until--" and here for the first time he acknowledged in actual, direct speech the goal of our journey, "until we lie down to sleep with our guns in our hands and our boots on--" he put his mouth to my ear and whispered, "in the Lost Cabin."