due, who were engaged all the way to Malvern in
relating anecdotes and narrating humourous stories. It seemed that
everything either one of them said reminded the other of a story or a
humourous incident, and they kept the car in a roar until Malvern was
reached.

Mr. Sanders did not go at once to the hotel, but turned his attention to
the various details which he had arranged for. Mr. Tidwell went to the
hotel opposite the railway station, while Major Perdue and Colonel
Blasengame, for obvious reasons, went to the rival hotel. There they
found Captain Buck Sanford lounging about with a Winchester rifle slung
across his shoulder. A great many people were interested when this pale
and weary-looking little man appeared in public with a gun in his hands,
and he was compelled to answer many questions in regard to the event. To
all he made the same reply, namely, that he had been out practising at a
target.

"I'm getting so I can't miss," he said to Major Perdue. "I wasted
twenty-four cartridges trying to miss the bull's eye, but I couldn't do
it. I don't know what to make of it," he complained. "There must be
something wrong with me. That kind of shooting don't look reasonable.
I'm afraid something is going to happen to me. It may be a sign that I'm
going to fall over a cellar-door and break my neck, or tumble downstairs
and injure my spine."

Then he left his gun with a clerk in the hotel, and, taking Major Perdue
by the arm, went into a corner and discussed the scheme which Mr.
Sanders had mapped out. They were joined presently by Colonel
Blasengame; and as they sat there, whispering together, and making many
emphatic gestures, they were the centre of observation, and word went
around that some personal difficulty, in which these noted men were to
act together, was imminent.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

_Malvern Has a Holiday_

Very early the next morning Malvern aroused itself to the fact that the
firemen and the police, and a very large crowd of the rag, tag and
bobtail that hangs on the edge of all holiday occasions, were out for a
frolic. A band was playing, and the old-fashioned apparatus with which
fire departments were provided in that day and time, was showing the
amazed and amused crowd how to put out an imaginary conflagration. And
it succeeded, too. Worked as it was by hand-power, it sent a famously
strong stream into the very midst of the imaginary conflagration; and
when the fire raged no longer, the