night, an' I need boat fare. Who wants it?"

Enoch Birdsall and Hank Marshall both reached for it, but Hank was the
quicker. He looked it over carefully and then passed it to his partner.
"What ye think o' her, Tom?" he asked.

After a moment's scrutiny Tom nodded and gave it back. "Looks brand new,
Hank. Good pistol. I tried mine out on th' boat comin' up. They shoot
hard an' straight."

Hank looked up at the stranger and shook his head deprecatingly,
starting the preliminary to a long, hard-driven barter; but he hadn't
reckoned on Birdsall, the skeptic.

"Ten dollars an' this hyar pistol," said Enoch quickly.

"Wall!" exclaimed Hank, staring at him. "Dang ye! Eleven dollars an'
_this_ pistol!"

"Twelve," placidly said Enoch.

"Twelve an' a half!" snapped Hank.

"An' three quarters."

"Thirteen!" growled Hank, trying to hide his misery.

Enoch raised again and, a quarter at a time, they ran the price up to
sixteen dollars, Enoch bidding with Yankee caution and reluctance, Hank
with a stubborn determination not to let his friend get ahead of him.
One was a trader, shrewd and thrifty; the other, a trapper, which made
it a game between a canny barterer on one side and a reckless spender on
the other. At twenty-three dollars Birdsall quit, spat angrily at a box,
and scowled at his excited companion, who was counting the money onto
the table. Hank glared at Enoch, jammed the Colt in his belt and bit
savagely into a plug of tobacco, while the stranger, hiding his smile,
bowed ironically and left them; and in a moment he was back again with
another Colt.

"I knowed it!" mourned Hank. "Dang ye, Enoch!"

"Boys," said the stranger, sadly, "my friend is in th' same fix that I
am. He is willin' ter part with his Colt for th' same money an' another
old fashioned pistol. His mother's dyin' in St. Louie an' he's got ter
git back ter her."

"Too danged bad it ain't him, an' you," snorted Hank.

Jim Ogden held out his hand, took the weapon and studied it. Quietly
handing over his own pistol and the money, he held out his other hand,
empty. "Whar's th' mold; an' some caps?"

"Wall," drawled the stranger, rubbing his chin. "They don't go with th'
weapons--they're separate. Cost ye three dollars fer th' mold; an' th'
caps air two dollars a box o' two hundred."

"Then hand her back ag'in an' take th' Colt," said Ogden, slowly
arising. "Think I'm goin' ter whittle, or chew bullets fer it? Neither
one of them guns has e