be the title of
his bar, having at first named it after a little liquor cellar he kept
in his early days in Philadelphia, called "The Shades," but some cowboy
humourist, particular about the external fitness of things, had scraped
out the letter "S," and so the sign over the door had been allowed to
remain. Mike did not grumble. He had taken a keen interest in politics
in Philadelphia, but an unexpected spasm of civic virtue having
overtaken the city some years before, Davlin had been made a victim,
and he was forced to leave suddenly for the West, where there was no
politics, and where a man handy at mixing drinks was looked upon as a
boon by the rest of the community. Mike did not grumble when even the
name "Hades" failed to satisfy the boys in their thirst for appropriate
nomenclature, and when they took to calling the place by a shorter and
terser synonym beginning with the same letter, he made no objections.

Mike was an adaptive man, who mixed drinks, but did not mix in rows. He
protected himself by not keeping a revolver, and by admitting that he
could not hit his own saloon at twenty yards distance. A residence in
the quiet city of Philadelphia is not conducive to the nimbling of the
trigger finger. When the boys in the exuberance of their spirits began
to shoot, Mike promptly ducked under his counter and waited till the
clouds of smoke rolled by. He sent in a bill for broken glass, bottles,
and the damage generally, when his guests were sober again, and his
accounts were always paid. Mike was a deservedly popular citizen in
Salt Lick, and might easily have been elected to the United States
Congress, if he had dared to go east again. But, as he himself said, he
was out of politics.

It was the pleasant custom of the cowboys at Buller's ranch to come
into Salt Lick on pay-days and close up the town. These periodical
visits did little harm to any one, and seemed to be productive of much
amusement for the boys. They rode at full gallop through the one street
of the place like a troop of cavalry, yelling at the top of their
voices and brandishing their weapons.

The first raid through Salt Lick was merely a warning, and all
peaceably inclined inhabitants took it as such, retiring forthwith to
the seclusion of their houses. On their return trip the boys winged or
lamed, with unerring aim, any one found in the street. They seldom
killed a wayfarer; if a fatality ensued it was usually the result of
accident, and muc