n felt, and the three watchers relapsed into comfortless silence.

[FOOTNOTE 52: Rio Bravo--Rio Grande. In Mexico the Rio Grande is
often called the Rio Bravo or the Rio Bravo del
Norte.]

How well Bob Buckley had kept his secret, since these men, for two
years his side comrades in countless border raids and dangers, thus
spake of him, not knowing that he was the most arrant physical coward
in all that Rio Bravo country! Neither his friends nor his enemies had
suspected him of aught else than the finest courage. It was purely a
physical cowardice, and only by an extreme, grim effort of will had
he forced his craven body to do the bravest deeds. Scourging himself
always, as a monk whips his besetting sin, Buckley threw himself with
apparent recklessness into every danger, with the hope of some day
ridding himself of the despised affliction. But each successive
test brought no relief, and the ranger's face, by nature adapted
to cheerfulness and good-humour, became set to the guise of gloomy
melancholy. Thus, while the frontier admired his deeds, and his
prowess was celebrated in print and by word of mouth in many
camp-fires in the valley of the Bravo, his heart was sick within him.
Only himself knew of the horrible tightening of the chest, the dry
mouth, the weakening of the spine, the agony of the strung nerves--the
never-failing symptoms of his shameful malady.

One mere boy in his company was wont to enter a fray with a leg
perched flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging
from his lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever
invention. Buckley would have given a year's pay to attain that
devil-may-care method. Once the debonair youth said to him: "Buck,
you go into a scrap like it was a funeral. Not," he added, with a
complimentary wave of his tin cup, "but what it generally is."

Buckley's conscience was of the New England order with Western
adjustments, and he continued to get his rebellious body into as many
difficulties as possible; wherefore, on that sultry afternoon he chose
to drive his own protesting limbs to investigation of that sudden
alarm that had startled the peace and dignity of the State.

Two squares down the street stood the Top Notch Saloon. Here Buckley
came upon signs of recent upheaval. A few curious spectators pressed
about its front entrance, grinding beneath their heels the fragments
of a plate-glass window. Inside,