the
present time, despite its owner's unremitting applications of all the
patent nostrums he could get--the latest being an unguent built by Red
McVey's suggestion out of rattlesnake oil and Tobasco sauce!

"Well," said one of the more optimistic among them as he kicked off his
boots preparatory to turning in after supper, "this yeah life might be
better, 'n it might be wuss. But I'm shore thankful fer this yeah leetle
ole baid, an' thu knowin' that I'm goin' to roll out of it to-morrow
mawnin' alive an' kickin'. They's a heap o' satisfaction in bein' able
to ante when yuh are called to eat!"

"An' thu daid don't eat none. Say, Hungry, haow d' yuh like to be
Braun?" The speaker was the friend of the dead man who had discovered
the mutilation of the revolver. The badinage ceased instantly and an
ominous silence fell upon the whole assemblage.

"Hungry" Thompson looked over to where Douglass was morosely glaring
over the demolished ruins of his spring's labor. Even through the murk
of the gathering night the clenched hands and swelling neck cords were
visible to that sharp eye.

"Haow d'yuh like to be Matlock?"

A match snapped sharply as some inveterate smoker kindled his cigarette.
A man sat bolt upright in his blankets and Hungry swore angrily. The
camp sank to rest but not exactly to sleep, as the occasional clearing
of a throat evinced. Eventually, when the fire had sunk to a heap of
smouldering coals, tired nature asserted itself and the men slept.

To Douglass alone came neither sleep nor rest. His mind was in a turmoil
of doubt and anger--doubt as to the nature of the strange obsession
under which he travailed, and anger directed chiefly against himself.
His hatred of Matlock was very bitter, but it was inconsequential in
comparison with his savage self-objurgation. He did not go to bed, as
common sense would have dictated and overwrought frame pleaded, but sat
by the dead coals smoking himself black in the face.

"What an egregious ass I am!" he reflected, reviewing his senseless and
stilted actions of the day before. "Here I am quarreling with the first
bread and butter that ever came my way with jelly on it. After all, I am
only a menial, Carter's hired man, and I presumed too far. What in the
devil's name is the matter with me? My hide ought to be thick enough by
this time, God knows! And yet that fool girl's little bodkin went
through it like an electric spark and cut to the marrow! Well, she's
taugh