elighted.

"Bring on this feller; I'll knock the everlasting spots offen 'im f'r
two cents."

"I'll tell 'im that."

"Tell him and be damned," roared Steve, with a wolfish gleam in his eyes
that drove the boys away whooping with mingled terror and delight.

Steve saw that the men about him held Johnny's opinion of Lime, and it
made him furious. For several years he had held undisputed sovereignty
over the saloons of Rock County, and when, with both sleeves rolled up
and eyes flaming with madness, he had leaped into the center of a
bar-room floor with a wild shout, everybody got out, by doors, windows
or any other way, sometimes taking sash and all, and left him roaring
with maniacal delight.

No one used a revolver in those days. Shooting was almost unknown.
Fights were tests of physical strength and savagery.

Harvest brought into Iowa at that time a flood of rough and hardy men
who drifted north with the moving line of ripening wheat, and on
Saturday nights the saloons of the county were filled with them, and
Steve found many chances to show his power. Among these strangers, as
they gathered in some saloon to make a night of it, he loved to burst
with his assertion of individual sovereignty.

* * * * *

Lime was out mending fence when Johnny came home to tell him what Steve
had said. Johnny was anxious to see his faith in his hero justified, and
watched Lime carefully as he pounded away without looking up. His dress
always had an easy slouch about his vast limbs, and his pantaloons,
usually of some dark stuff, he wore invariably tucked into his
boot-tops, his vest swinging unbuttoned, his hat carelessly awry.

Being a quiet, sober man, he had never been in a saloon when Steve
entered to swing his hat to the floor and yell:

"I'm Jack Robinson, I am! I am the man that bunted the bull off the
bridge! I'm the best man in Northern Iowa!" He had met him, of course,
but Steve kept a check upon himself when sober.

"He says he can knock the spots off of you," Johnny said, in conclusion,
watching Lime roguishly.

The giant finished nailing up the fence, and at last said: "Now run
along, sonny, and git the cows." There was a laugh in his voice that
showed his amusement at Johnny's disappointment. "I ain't got any
spots."

On the following Saturday night, at dusk, as Lime was smoking his pipe
out on the horse-block, with the boys around him, there came a
swiftly-driven wagon down