nd insincere, and let our throats hurt, for all
the world like it was Christmas or we'd got mail from home.

BITTER ROOT BILLINGS, ARBITER

Billings rode in from the Junction about dusk, and ate his supper in
silence. He'd been East for sixty days, and, although there lurked
about him the hint of unwonted ventures, etiquette forbade its
mention. You see, in our country, that which a man gives voluntarily
is ofttimes later dissected in smoky bunk-houses, or roughly handled
round flickering camp fires, but the privacies he guards are
inviolate. Curiosity isn't exactly a lost art, but its practice
isn't popular nor hygenic.

Later, I found him meditatively whittling out on the porch, and, as
the moment seemed propitious, I inquired adroitly:--"Did you have a
good time in Chicago, 'Bitter Root'?"

"Bully," said he, relapsing into weighty absorption.

"What'd you do?" I inquired with almost the certainty of appearing
insistent.

"Don't you never read the papers?" he inquired, with such evident
compassion that Kink Martin and the other boys snickered. This from
"Bitter Root," who scorns literature outside of the "Arkansas
Printing," as he terms the illustrations!

"Guess I'll have to show you my press notices," and from a hip pocket
he produced a fat bundle of clippings in a rubber band. These he
displayed jealously, and I stared agape, for they were front pages of
great metropolitan dailies, marred with red and black scare heads, in
which I glimpsed the words, "Billings, of Montana," "'Bitter Root' on
Arbitration," "A Lochinvar Out of the West," and other things as
puzzling.

"Press Notices!" echoed Kink scornfully. "Wouldn't that rope ye? He
talks like Big Ike that went with the Wild West Show. When a puncher
gets so lazy he can't earn a livin' by the sweat of his pony, he
grows his hair, goes on the stage bustin' glass balls with shot
ca'tridges and talks about 'press notices.' Let's see 'em, Billings.
You pinch 'em as close to your stummick as though you held cards in a
strange poker game."

"Well, I _have_ set in a strange game, amongst aliens," said
Billings, disregarding the request, "and I've held the high cards,
also I've drawed out with honours. I've sailed the medium high seas
with mutiny in the stoke-hold; I've changed the laws of labour,
politics and municipal economies. I went out of God's country right
into the heart of the decayin' East, and by the application of a
runnin' noose i