me. And I want
'em to drink with me now. _Now_--do you understand?" He rapped the bar
with his knuckles.

Years of experience had calloused the bartender. He merely grew sulky.
"I hear you," he answered.

"Well," cried the Swede, "listen hard then. See those men over there?
Well, they're going to drink with me, and don't you forget it. Now you
watch."

"Hi!" yelled the barkeeper, "this won't do!"

"Why won't it?" demanded the Swede. He stalked over to the table, and
by chance laid his hand upon the shoulder of the gambler. "How about
this?" he asked, wrathfully. "I asked you to drink with me."

The gambler simply twisted his head and spoke over his shoulder. "My
friend, I don't know you."

"Oh, hell!" answered the Swede, "come and have a drink."

"Now, my boy," advised the gambler, kindly, "take your hand off my
shoulder and go 'way and mind your own business." He was a little,
slim man, and it seemed strange to hear him use this tone of heroic
patronage to the burly Swede. The other men at the table said nothing.

"What! You won't drink with me, you little dude? I'll make you then!
I'll make you!" The Swede had grasped the gambler frenziedly at the
throat, and was dragging him from his chair. The other men sprang up.
The barkeeper dashed around the corner of his bar. There was a great
tumult, and then was seen a long blade in the hand of the gambler. It
shot forward, and a human body, this citadel of virtue, wisdom, power,
was pierced as easily as if it had been a melon. The Swede fell with a
cry of supreme astonishment.

The prominent merchants and the district attorney must have at once
tumbled out of the place backward. The bartender found himself hanging
limply to the arm of a chair and gazing into the eyes of a murderer.

"Henry," said the latter, as he wiped his knife on one of the towels
that hung beneath the bar-rail, "you tell 'em where to find me. I'll
be home, waiting for 'em." Then he vanished. A moment afterwards the
barkeeper was in the street dinning through the storm for help, and,
moreover, companionship.

The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon, had its eyes fixed upon
a dreadful legend that dwelt atop of the cash-machine: "This registers
the amount of your purchase."

IX

Months later, the cowboy was frying pork over the stove of a little
ranch near the Dakota line, when there was a quick thud of hoofs
outside, and presently the Easterner entered with the letters and the
pa