innesotian order steps forward. "What mought yer lay be ag'in
me?"

"A _sure_ lay!" hisses the masked road-agent, sternly. "You are
advertising for one Deadwood Dick, and he has come to pay you his
respects!"

The next instant there is a flash, a pistol report, a fall and a
groan, the clattering of iron-shod hoofs; and then, ere anyone
scarcely dreams of it, _Deadwood Dick is gone!_

CHAPTER III.

THE "CATTYMOUNT"--A QUARREL AND ITS RESULTS.

The "Metropolitan" saloon in Deadwood, one week subsequent to the
events last narrated, was the scene of a larger "jamboree" than for
many weeks before.

It was Saturday night, and up from the mines of Gold Run, Bobtail,
Poor Man's Pocket, and Spearfish, and down from the Deadwood in
miniature, Crook City, poured a swarm of rugged, grisly gold-diggers,
the blear-eyed, used-up-looking "pilgrim," and the inevitable wary
sharp, ever on the alert for a new buck to fleece.

The "Metropolitan" was then, as now, the headquarters of the Black
Hills metropolis for arriving trains and stages, and as a natural
consequence received a goodly share of the public patronage.

A well-stocked bar of liquors in Deadwood was _non est_ yet the saloon
in question boasted the best to be had. Every bar has its clerk at a
pair of tiny scales, and he is ever kept more than busy weighing out
the shining dust that the toiling miner has obtained by the sweat of
his brow. And if the deft-fingered clerk cannot put six ounces of dust
in his own pouch of a night, it clearly shows that he is not long in
the business.

Saturday night!

The saloon is full to overflowing--full of brawny rough, and grisly
men; full of ribald songs and maudlin curses; full of foul
atmospheres, impregnated with the fumes of vile whisky, and worse
tobacco, and full of sights and scenes, exciting and repulsive.

As we enter and work our way toward the center of the apartment, our
attention is attracted by a coarse, brutal "tough," evidently just
fresh in from the diggings; who, mounted on the summit of an empty
whisky cask, is exhorting in rough language, and in the tones of a
bellowing bull, to an audience of admiring miners assembled at his
feet, which, by the way, are not of the most diminutive pattern
imaginable. We will listen:

"Feller coots and liquidarians, behold before ye a real descendant uv
Cain and Abel. Ye'll reckolect, ef ye've ever bin ter camp-meetin',
that Abel got knocked out o' time by his cuzzi