d more
decent to stand and watch the two go shooting and yelling round
the cabin, crazy with their youth. The door was opened, and Taylor
courageously emerged, bearing a Winchester. He fired at the sky
immediately.

"B' gosh!" he roared. "That's one." He fired again. "Out and at 'em.
They're running."

At this, duly came Mrs. Taylor in white with a pistol, and Miss Peck in
white, staring and stolid. But no Tommy. Noise prevailed without, shots
by the stable and shots by the creek. The two cow-punchers dismounted
and joined Taylor. Maniac delight seized me, and I, too, rushed about
with them, helping the din.

"Oh, Mr. Taylor!" said a voice. "I didn't think it of you." It was Molly
Wood, come from her cabin, very pretty in a hood-and-cloak arrangement.
She stood by the fence, laughing, but more at us than with us.

"Stop, friends!" said Taylor, gasping. "She teaches my Bobbie his A B C.
I'd hate to have Bobbie--"

"Speak to your papa," said Molly, and held her scholar up on the fence.

"Well, I'll be gol-darned," said Taylor, surveying his costume, "if Lin
McLean hasn't made a fool of me to-night!"

"Where has Tommy got?" said Mrs. Taylor.

"Didn't yus see him?" said the biscuit-shooter speaking her first word
in all this.

We followed her into the kitchen. The table was covered with tin plates.
Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the
plates were rattling up and down like castanets.

There was a silence among us, and I wondered what we were going to do.

"Well," murmured the Virginian to himself, "if I could have foresaw, I'd
not--it makes yu' feel humiliated yu'self."

He marched out, got on his horse, and rode away. Lin followed him, but
perhaps less penitently. We all dispersed without saying anything,
and presently from my blankets I saw poor Tommy come out of the silent
cabin, mount, and slowly, very slowly, ride away. He would spend the
night at Riverside, after all.

Of course we recovered from our unexpected shame, and the tale of the
table and the dancing plates was not told as a sad one. But it is a sad
one when you think of it.

I was not there to see Lin get his bride. I learned from the Virginian
how the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush,
bearing the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the
peace. She was astride the horse he had brought for her.

"Yes, he beat Tommy," said the Virginian. "Some folks, anyway, get what