become a kind o' habit. It ain't no use in
getting riled, Bob, it ain't no use in workin' overtime on that college
dictionary o' yours to set me crawlin' around among the spit boxes.
Fac's is fac's. Ken you hand me a list o' the things you--you who
ain't got two spare cents to push into the mission box, an' who'd
willingly sleep in a hog pen if it weren't for a dandy wife who'd got
no more sense than to marry you--wouldn't do if I was to hand you out a
roll of ten thousand dollars right now--cash? Tcha! You think. I
know."

He turned away in a wave of contemptuous disgust. And as he did so a
harsh voice from the other end of the bar held him up.

"What about me, Ju?"

The tough-looking prairie man made his demand with a laugh only a shade
less harsh than his speaking voice.

Ju stood. His desperate, keen face was coldly still as he regarded the
powerful frame of his challenger. Then his retort came swift and
poignant.

"You, Sikkem? You'd allus _give_ yourself away. Get me?"

The frigidity of the saloon-keeper's manner was over-powering. The man
called Sikkem was unequal in words to such a challenge. A flush slowly
dyed his lean cheeks, and an angry depression of the brows suggested
something passionate and forceful. Just for a moment many eyes glanced
in his direction. The saloon-keeper was steadily regarding him. There
was no suggestion of anger in his attitude, merely cat-like
watchfulness. Their eyes met. Then the cloud abruptly lifted from
Sikkem's brow, and he laughed with unsmiling, black eyes. The
saloon-keeper rinsed a glass and unconcernedly began to wipe it.

The incident was allowed to pass. But it was the termination of the
discussion, a termination which left Ju victor, not because of the
rightness of his views, but because there was no man in Orrville
capable of joining issue with him in debate with any hope of success.
Action rather than words was the prevailing feature with these people,
and, in his way, Ju Penrose was equal, if not superior, not only in
debate, but in the very method these people best understood.

A moment later Sikkem took his departure.

* * * * * *

It was well past midnight when the last man turned out of Ju's bar.
But the crowd had not yet scattered to their various homes. They were
gathered in a small, excited cluster gaping up at a big notice pasted
on the weather-boarding of the saloon-keeper's shack. Ju himself w