former, their pipes in full blast. "Any fool could see you
were no new hand at that sort of thing, by the way in which you grasped
the ins and outs of the position the other day."

"Oh, I saw something of the Indian wars out West a few years ago. By
the way, Darrell, what was the name of that lunatic we picked up the
other day, armed with only a quince switch?"

"Bolton. He's a law-agent, and broker, at Barabastadt. And, confound
him, he forgot to give me back the revolver I lent him."

"Serves you right for being such a fool as to lend it him. Now that's a
thing I'd never do. I'd see him hanged first. If the fellow had lost
his gun by accident, it would be another thing; but to go about without
one, out of mere swagger and bounce, and then come down on the first
sensible cuss he meets, to rig him out with his! No, no. It's a little
too thin."

"That's how fellows come to grief in war-time," struck in another man.
"They get so confoundedly careless, and at last they do it once too
often. It always happens. I say, Musgrave, tell us something about
that Indian business. Are the redskins as good at a fight as Jack
Kaffir?"

"They're just as good at one as any fellow need wish. But now, if you
don't mind, I'm most confoundedly sleepy, and would as soon turn in as
not." And in a very few minutes, in spite of the talk and discussion
going on around him, he was fast asleep.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roden held to his resolve and, notwithstanding all persuasion to the
contrary, he started soon after sunrise. To many a man, not more timid
than his kind, that return journey of seventy or eighty miles, the bulk
of it over the hostile ground, might well have seemed a formidable
undertaking, the more so that it was a solitary journey. This one,
however, entered upon it with no great concern. He had brought off
riskier things than that, he said in his casual way, in reply to
misgivings more than once expressed by Darrell and the rest. As for the
solitary side of the matter, he rather preferred it. Fighting was out
of the question. It would be a case of leg-bail entirely, and that was
a game at which one could play better than two. Again, the presence of
one was more likely to pass unnoticed than that of two.

"You keep your weather eye skinned, Musgrave, and a particularly bright
look-out for small gangs," was Darrell's last injunction having ridden a
few