is feet with tobacco juice. Then shaking his head
thoughtfully, a look of solemn wonder replaced the grin. "Say," he
added, "but he must 'a' bin a dandy chunk of a man."

Tresler was about to reply. But a glance at Mr. Ranks, and an audible
snigger coming from the doorway, suddenly changed his mind. He swung
round to face a howl of laughter; and he understood.

"The drinks are on me," he said with some chagrin. "Come on, all of
you. Yes, I'm a 'tenderfoot.'"

And it was the geniality of his reply that won him a place in the
society of Forks Settlement at once. In five minutes his horse was
stabled and cared for. In five minutes he was addressing the occupants
of the saloon by their familiar nicknames. In five minutes he was
paying for whisky at an exorbitant price. In five minutes--well, he
sniffed his first breath of prairie habits and prairie ways.

It is not necessary to delve deeply into the characters of these
citizens of Forks. It is not good to rake bad soil, the process is
always offensive. A mere outline is alone necessary. Ike Carney
purveyed liquor. A little man with quick, cunning eyes, and a mouth
that shut tight under a close-cut fringe of gray moustache. "Shaky"
Pindle, the carpenter, was a sad-eyed man who looked as gentle as a
disguised wolf. His big, scarred face never smiled, because, his
friends said, it was a physical impossibility for it to do so, and his
huge, rough body was as uncouth as his manners, and as unwieldy as his
slow-moving tongue. Taylor, otherwise "Twirly," the butcher, was a man
so genial and rubicund that in five minutes you began to wish that he
was built like the lower animals that have no means of giving audible
expression to their good humor, or, if they have, there is no
necessity to notice it except by a well-directed kick. And Slum,
quiet, unsophisticated Slum, shadier than the shadiest of them all,
but a man who took the keenest delight in the humors of life, and who
did wrong from an inordinate delight in besting his neighbors. A man
to smile at, but to avoid.

These were the men John Tresler, fresh from Harvard and a generous
home, found himself associated with while he rested on his way to
Mosquito Bend.

Ike Carney laid himself out to be pleasant.

"Goin' to Skitter Bend?" he observed, as he handed his new guest the
change out of a one hundred dollar bill. "Wal, it's a tidy
layout;--ninety-five dollars, mister; a dollar a drink. You'll find
that c'rect--best ra