ng to outrun his own
tail. For the outfit, it was the lark of their lives. Crashing pistol
shots and ringing yells bore practical testimony to their joy. But
they were not to have it entirely their own way.

Just as they were all balled up before the rhinoceros, staggered a bit
by his great bulk and threatening horn, out upon them charged a body of
canvasmen, all the manager could contrive to rally, for a desperate
effort to stop the damage and avenge the outrage. In their lead ran
the ticket seller, armed with a pistol and keen for evening up things
with the man who had hit him, dashing straight for Circuit. Circuit
did not see him, but Lee did; and thus in the very instant Circuit
staggered and dropped to the crack of his pistol, down beside Circuit
pitched the ticket man with a ball through his head. Then for two
minutes, perhaps, a hell of fierce hand-to-hand battle raged, cowboy
skulls crunching beneath fierce blows, circus men falling like autumn
leaves before the cowboys' fire. And so the fight might have lasted
till all were down but for a startling diversion.

Suddenly, just as Circuit had struggled to his feet, out from among the
wrecked wagons sprang a dainty figure in tulle and tights, masses of
hair red as the blood of the battlers streaming in waves behind her,
and fired at the nearest of the common enemy, which happened to be poor
Circuit. Swaying for a moment with the shock of the wound, down to the
ground he settled like an empty sack, falling across the legs of the
ticket-seller.

Startled and shocked, it seemed, by the consequences of her deed, the
woman approached and for a moment gazed down, horror-stricken, into
Circuit's face. Then suddenly, with a shriek of agony, she dropped
beside him, drew his head into her lap, wiped the gathering foam from
his lips, fondled and kissed him. Ripping his shirt open at the neck
to find his wound, she uncovered Circuit's buckskin bag and memorandum
book, showing through its centre the track of a bullet that had finally
spent itself in fracturing a rib over Circuit's heart, the
ticket-seller's shot, that would have killed him instantly but for the
shielding bulk Netty's treasured letters interposed. Moved, perhaps,
by some subtle instinctive suspicion of its contents, she glanced
within the book, started to remove it from Circuit's neck, and then
gently laid it back above the heart it so long had lain next and so
lately had shielded.

Meantime abou