I'm one of them that don't care
much for company, and can take better care of myself alone than with a
crowd about me."

"So! Well, it is a good thing to be independent. Do you know the party
that is going?"

"Some of 'em, by sight. The captain is Sam Chichester, and he has
California Joe, Cap'n Jack, and about twenty more in his party. And Wild
Bill has just come on the train, and I heard him say he was going with
the crowd."

"Wild Bill!" cried the stranger, flushing up. "Did you say he was
going?"

"Yes."

"Then I'd like to go, too--but I'd like to go with another party, either
just before or behind that party. Do you know Wild Bill?"

"_Know_ him! Who does not? Hasn't he killed more men than any other
white man in the States and Territories--I'll not say _how_, but is he
not a hyena, sopped in blood?"

"You do not like him?"

"Who says I don't?"

"_You_ do! Your eyes flash hate while you speak of him."

"Do they? Well, maybe I don't like him as well as I do a glass of
brandy--maybe I have lost some one I loved by his hand. It isn't at all
unlikely."

The traveler sighed, and with an anxious look, said:

"You don't bear him any grudge, do you? You wouldn't harm him?"

A strange look passes like a flash over the face of the other: he seemed
to read the thoughts or wishes of the traveler in a glance.

"Oh, no," he said, with assumed carelessness. "Accidents will happen in
the best families. It's not in me to bear a grudge, because Bill may
have wiped out fifteen or twenty Texans, while they were foolin' around
in his way. As to harm--he's too ready with his six-shooter, old
Truth-Teller, he calls it, to stand in much danger. I'm quick, but he is
quicker. You take a good deal of interest in him? Do you know him?"

"Yes; that is, I know him by sight. He is thought a great deal of by an
intimate friend of mine, and that is why I feel an interest in him."

"And that friend is a woman?"

"Why do you think so?"

"It is a fancy of mine."

"Well, I will not contradict you. For her sake I would hate to see any
evil befall him."

There was a cynical smile on the face of the young man with auburn hair.

"If a woman loved him, she ought, not to leave him, for his life is
mighty uncertain," said the latter. "I heard him say to Captain
Chichester, not half an hour ago, that he didn't believe he would live
long, and such a man as he is sure to die with his boots on!"

"Did he say that?" asked the travele