itchen. Simpson, his eyes wandering like a
trapped rat, saw, and called, through teeth that chattered in an ague of
fear, "Ree--memm--her thth--there's la--dies p--present! For Gawd's sake,
remember t--there's ladies p--present!"

The pale man looked towards the kitchen, and, seeing the woman, he gave
Simpson a look in which there was only contempt. "You've hid behind the
law once, and this time it's petticoats. The open don't seem to have no
charm for you. But--" He didn't finish, there was no need to. Every one
knew and understood. He put up his revolver and walked into the street.

The men broke into shouts of laughter, loud and ringing, then doubled up
and had it out all over again. And their noisy merriment was as clear an
indication of the suddenly lifted strain, at the averted shooting, as it
was of their enjoyment of the farce. Simpson, relieved of the fear of
sudden death, now sought to put a better face on his cowardice. Now that
his enemy was well out of sight, Simpson handled his revolver with easy
assurance.

"Put ut up," shouted Costigan, above the general uproar. "'Tis toime to
fear a revolver in the hands av Simpson whin he's no intinsions av
shootin'."

Simpson still attempted to harangue the crowd, but his voice was lost in
the general thigh-slapping and the shouts and roars that showed no signs
of abating. But when he caught a man by the coat lapel in his efforts to
secure a hearing, that was another matter, and the man shook him off as if
his touch were contagion. Simpson, craving mercy on account of petticoats,
evading a meeting that was "up to him," they were willing to stand as a
laughing-stock, but Simpson as an equal, grasping the lapels of their
coats, they would have none of.

He slunk away from them to a corner of the eating-house, feeling the
stigma of their contempt, yet afraid to go out into the street where his
enemy might be waiting for him. Much of death and blood and recklessness
"Town" had seen and condoned, but cowardice was the unforgivable sin. It
balked the rude justice of these frontiersmen and tampered with their
code, and Simpson knew that the game had gone against him.

"What was it all about? Were they in earnest, or was it only their way of
amusing themselves?" inquired Mary Carmichael, who had slipped into Mrs.
Clark's kitchen after the men at the table had taken things in hand.

"Jim Rodney was in earnest, an' he had reason to be. That man Simpson was
paid by a catt