uriously ached. Brad
Charlton was just beginning to wake up to his surroundings.

A crowd had miraculously gathered from nowhere. The fat marshal of
Battle Butte was puffing up the street a block away. Beaudry judged it
time to be gone. He dropped the leg of the stool and strode toward the
hotel.

Already his fears were active again. What would the hillmen do to him
when they had recovered from the panic into which his madness had
thrown them? Would they start for him at once? Or would they mark one
more score against him and wait? He could scarcely keep his feet from
breaking into a run to get more quickly from the vicinity of the Silver
Dollar. He longed mightily to reach the protection of Dave Dingwell's
experience and debonair _sang froid_.

The cattleman had not yet reached the hotel. Roy went up to their room
at once and locked himself in. He sat on the bed with a revolver in
his hand. Now that it was all over, he was trembling like an aspen
leaf. For the hundredth time in the past week he flung at himself his
own contemptuous scorn. Why was the son of John Beaudry such an arrant
coward? He knew that his sudden madness and its consequences had been
born of panic. What was there about the quality of his nerves that
differed from those of other men? Even now he was shivering from the
dread that his enemies might come and break down the door to get at him.

He heard the jocund whistle of Dingwell as the cattleman came along the
corridor. Swiftly he pocketed the revolver and unlocked the door.
When Dave entered, Roy was lying on the bed pretending to read a
newspaper.

If the older man noticed that the paper shook, he ignored it.

"What's this I hear, son, about you falling off the water-wagon and
filling the hospital?" His gay grin challenged affectionately the boy
on the bed. "Don't you know you're liable to give the new firm,
Dingwell & Beaudry, a bad name if you pull off insurrections like that?
The city dads are talking some of building a new wing to the accident
ward to accommodate your victims. Taxes will go up and--"

Roy smiled wanly. "You've heard about it, then?"

"Heard about it! Say, son, I've heard nothing else for the last twenty
minutes. You're the talk of the town. I didn't know you was such a
bad actor." Dave stopped to break into a chuckle. "Wow! You
certainly hit the high spots. Friend Meldrum and Charlton and our kind
host Hart--all laid out at one clatter. I