with empty pockets.

On this Fourth of July at Doubleday's, both men, as well as Lefever,
had been hit by hard luck. Their free criticism of the horse-racing
and the shooting did not pass unresented and the fact that Tom Stone
and his following had most of the Sleepy Cat money while the sun was
still high did not tend to temper the acerbity of their remarks.

Nothing that the crack shots of the range could do would satisfy either
Sawdy or Carpy. Van Horn, himself an expert with rifle and gun, was
master of these ceremonies and the belittling by the Sleepy Cat sports
of the best the cowboys could show, nettled him: "Before you knock this
any more," he said, "put up some better shooting."

The taunt went far enough home to stir the fault-finders. Sawdy and
Carpy took grumpy counsel together. Presently they hunted up Laramie,
who in front of the ranch-house was talking horses with Kitchen and
Doubleday. They told him the situation and asked for help: "Come over
to the creek and show the bunch up, Jim," was Sawdy's appeal.

The response was cold. Laramie refused to take any part in the
shooting. Sawdy could not move him. In revenge he borrowed what money
Laramie had--not much in all--and went back in bad humor. With the
peeve of defeated men, the Sleepy Cat sports called for more horse
racing to retrieve their fortunes--only to lose what money they had
left and suffer fresh jeering from Van Horn and his following.

But abating in defeat and with empty pockets, nothing of their
confident swagger, Carpy and Sawdy reinforced this time by
Lefever--McAlpin trailing along as a mourner--headed again for the
ranch-house after Laramie.

They found him on a bench where he could command the front door,
whittling and talking idly with Bill Bradley. Laramie was there intent
on waylaying Kate, within. His friends descended on him for the second
time in a body. They laid their discomfiture before him. They begged
him to pull them out of the hole. It was too much in the circumstances
to refuse men he counted on when he, himself, needed friends, but he
yielded with an ill grace: "What do you want me to do?" he demanded
finally.

They told him. He would not stand up before a target, nor would he
shoot in competition with anybody else.

"I've only got a few cartridges, anyway," he objected. "Suppose when
they're shot away these fellows get a fight going on me?"

It was argued that there were enough gunmen in the Slee