o ye ask? Ye know ol' Mike Sheets in Virginia never bored a
better. I've never changed."

"Ner I from my old Hawken. Two good guns, an' two good men, Bill, o' the
ol' times--the ol' times! We kain't say fairer'n this, can we, at our
time o' life, fer favor o' the old times, Bill? We got to do somethin',
so's to kind o' git rested up."

"No man kin say fairer," said his friend.

They shook hands solemnly and went onward with their devil-may-care
test, devised in a historic keel-boat man's brain, as inflamed then by
alcohol as their own were now.

Followed by the terrified clerk, Bill Jackson, tall, thin and grizzled,
stoical as an Indian, and too drunk to care much for consequences, so
only he proved his skill and his courage, walked steadily down to the
chosen spot and stood, his arms folded, after leaning his own rifle
against the door of the trading room. He faced Bridger without a tremor,
his head bare, and cursed Chardon for a coward when his hand trembled as
he balanced the cup on Jackson's head.

"Damn ye," he exclaimed, "there'll be plenty lost without any o' your
spillin'!"

"Air ye all ready, Bill?" called Bridger from his station, his rifle
cocked and the delicate triggers set, so perfect in their mechanism that
the lightest touch against the trigger edge would loose the hammer.

"All ready!" answered Jackson.

The two, jealous still of the ancient art of the rifle, which nowhere in
the world obtained nicer development than among men such as these, faced
each other in what always was considered the supreme test of nerve and
skill; for naturally a man's hand might tremble, sighting three inches
above his friend's eye, when it would not move a hair sighting center
between the eyes of an enemy.

Bridger spat out his tobacco chew and steadily raised his rifle. The man
opposite him stood steady as a pillar, and did not close his eyes. The
silence that fell on those who saw became so intense that it seemed
veritably to radiate, reaching out over the valley to the mountains as
in a hush of leagues.

For an instant, which to the few observers seemed an hour, these two
figures, from which motion seemed to have passed forever, stood frozen.
Then there came a spurt of whitish-blue smoke and the thin dry crack of
the border rifle.

The hand and eye of Jim Bridger, in spite of advancing years, remained
true to their long training. At the rifle crack the tin cup on the head
of the statue-like figure opposite h