horses, he found, were always straying,--that he had
an adventure of a more serious and decidedly lurid sort. The horses
had led him a pace through the Bad Lands westward out over the
prairie, and night overtook him not far from Mingusville, a primitive
settlement named thus with brilliant ingenuity by its first citizens,
a lady by the name of Minnie and her husband by the name of Gus. The
"town"--what there was of it--was pleasantly situated on rolling
country on the west bank of Beaver Creek. Along the east side of the
creek were high, steep, cream-colored buttes, gently rounded and
capped with green, softer in color than the buttes of the Bad Lands
and very attractive in spring in their frame of grass and cottonwoods
and cedars. Mingusville consisted of the railroad station, the
section-house, and a story-and-a-half "hotel" with a false front. The
"hotel" was a saloon with a loft where you might sleep if you had
courage.

Roosevelt stabled his horse in a shed behind the "hotel," and started
to enter.

Two shots rang out from the bar-room.

He hesitated. He had made it a point to avoid centers of disturbance
such as this, but the night was chilly and there was no place else to
go. He entered, with misgivings.

Inside the room were several men, beside the bartender, all, with one
exception, "wearing the kind of smile," as Roosevelt said, in telling
of the occasion, "worn by men who are making-believe to like what they
don't like." The exception was a shabby-looking individual in a
broad-brimmed hat who was walking up and down the floor talking and
swearing. He had a cocked gun in each hand. A clock on the wall had
two holes in its face, which accounted for the shots Roosevelt had
heard.

It occurred to Roosevelt that the man was not a "bad man" of the
really dangerous, man-killer type; but a would-be "bad man," a bully
who for the moment was having things all his own way.

"Four-eyes!" he shouted as he spied the newcomer.

There was a nervous laugh from the other men who were evidently
sheepherders. Roosevelt joined in the laugh.

"Four-eyes is going to treat!" shouted the man with the guns.

There was another laugh. Under cover of it Roosevelt walked quickly to
a chair behind the stove and sat down, hoping to escape further
notice.

But the bully was not inclined to lose what looked like an opportunity
to make capital as a "bad man" at the expense of a harmless "dude" in
a fringed buckskin suit. He foll