mp. Couldn't you see that? None of them loafers
ever worked as he did."

"He may not be a tramp," said Matlack, "but he's trampin'. What are you
goin' to do about him? Let him stay there?"

"What's he doin' now?" asked Sadler.

"He's cookin' for those two young men."

"Well, they need some one to do it for them, and they didn't want to go to
the expense of a guide. Let the parson alone for a day or two, and if he
does anything out of the way just you take him by one ear and Martin take
him by the other and bring him to me. I'll attend to him. What's the next
trouble?"

"That's out of my camp, too," said Matlack, "but I'm bound to report it.
The bicycle fellow that you hired a gun to don't know the fust thing about
usin' it, and the next thing you'll hear will be that he's shot his
pardner, who's worth six of him."

Mr. Sadler sat up very straight in his chair and stared at the guide.
"Phil Matlack," he shouted, "what do you take me for? I hired that gun to
that young man. Don't you suppose I know what I'm about?"

"That's all right," said Matlack, "but the trouble is he don't know what
he's about."

"Get away man," said Peter, with a contemptuous sniff, "he'll never hurt
anybody. What do you take me for? When he came to me and wanted a gun, I
handed him two or three, so that he might choose one that suited him, and
by the way he handled them I could see that most likely he'd never handled
one before, and so I set him up all right. He's got a good gun, and all
the cartridges he'll be likely to want; and the cartridges are all like
this. They're a new kind I heard of last winter, and I got a case from
Boston last week. I don't see how I ever managed to run my camps without
them. Do you see that shot?" said he, opening one end of a cartridge.
"Well, take one in your hand and pinch it."

Phil did so, and it crumbled to dust in his hand.

"When that load's fired," said Peter, "all the shot will crumble into
dust. It wouldn't do to give raw hands blank-cartridges, because they'd
find that out; but with this kind they might sit all day and fire at a
baby asleep in its cradle and never disturb it, provided the baby was
deaf. And he can't use his pardner's cartridges, for I gave that fellow a
twelve-bore gun and his is a ten-bore."

Phil grinned. "Well, then," said he, "I suppose I might as well make my
mind easy, but if that bicycle man hunts much he'll get the conviction
borne in on him that he's a dreadful bad sh