of his long black coat. At that the major flung up the muzzle of
his weapon so that it pointed skyward, and he braced his left arm at his
side in the attitude you have seen in the pictures of dueling scenes of
olden times.

"I am waiting, sir, for you to draw," said the major quite briskly. "I
will shoot it out with you to see whether right or might shall control
this convention." And his heels clicked together like castanets.

Dancy's right hand kept stealing farther and farther back. And then you
could mark by the change of his skin and by the look out of his eyes how
his courage was clabbering to whey inside him, making his face a milky,
curdled white, the color of a poorly stirred emulsion, and then he
quit--he quit cold--his hand came out again from under his coat tails
and it was an empty hand and wide open. It was from that moment on that
throughout our state Fighting Dave Dancy ceased to be Fighting Dave and
became instead Yaller Dave.

"Then, sir," said the major, "as you do not seem to care to shoot it out
with me, man to man, you and your friends will kindly withdraw from this
stage and allow the business of this convention to proceed in an orderly
manner."

And as Dave Dancy started to go somebody laughed. In another second we
were all laughing and the danger was over. When an American crowd
begins laughing the danger is always over.

* * * * *

Newspaper men down in that town still talk about the story that Ike Webb
wrote for the last edition of the Evening Press that afternoon. It was a
great story, as Ike Webb told it--how, still sitting on the floor, old
Judge Barbee got his wits back and by word of mouth commissioned the
major a special sergeant-at-arms; how the major privily sent men to
close and lock and hold the doors so that the Stickney people couldn't
get out to bolt, even if they had now been of a mind to do so; how the
convention, catching the spirit of the moment, elected the major its
temporary chairman, and how even after that, for quite a spell, until
some of his friends bethought to remove him, Mink Satterlee slept
peacefully under our press table with his mismated legs bridged across
the tin trough of the footlights.

* * * * *

In rapid succession a number of unusual events occurred in the Evening
Press shop the next morning. To begin with, the chief came down early.
He had a few words in private with Devore and went u