sired as a chance to
fight a duel. So I hurried Daggett up; made him keep on sending
challenge after challenge. Oh, well, I overdid it; Laird accepted. I
might have known that that would happen--Laird was a man you couldn't
depend on.

The boys were jubilant beyond expression. They helped me make my will,
which was another discomfort--and I already had enough. Then they took
me home. I didn't sleep any--didn't want to sleep. I had plenty of
things to think about, and less than four hours to do it in,--because
five o'clock was the hour appointed for the tragedy, and I should have
to use up one hour--beginning at four--in practising with the revolver
and finding out which end of it to level at the adversary. At four we
went down into a little gorge, about a mile from town, and borrowed a
barn door for a mark--borrowed it of a man who was over in California on
a visit--and we set the barn door up and stood a fence-rail up against
the middle of it, to represent Mr. Laird. But the rail was no proper
representative of him, for he was longer than a rail and thinner.
Nothing would ever fetch him but a line shot, and then as like as not he
would split the bullet--the worst material for duelling purposes that
could be imagined. I began on the rail. I couldn't hit the rail; then I
tried the barn door; but I couldn't hit the barn door. There was nobody
in danger except stragglers around on the flanks of that mark. I was
thoroughly discouraged, and I didn't cheer up any when we presently
heard pistol-shots over in the next little ravine. I knew what that
was--that was Laird's gang out practising him. They would hear my shots,
and of course they would come up over the ridge to see what kind of a
record I was making--see what their chances were against me. Well, I
hadn't any record; and I knew that if Laird came over that ridge and saw
my barn door without a scratch on it, he would be as anxious to fight as
I was--or as I had been at midnight, before that disastrous acceptance
came.

Now just at this moment, a little bird, no bigger than a sparrow, flew
along by and lit on a sage-bush about thirty yards away. Steve whipped
out his revolver and shot its head off. Oh, he was a marksman--much
better than I was. We ran down there to pick up the bird, and just then,
sure enough, Mr. Laird and his people came over the ridge, and they
joined us. And when Laird's second saw that bird, with its head shot
off, he lost color, he faded, and you