ves and half accepted of
each other. Rupert was quite certain that he would return in a few days
with a gold watch and a present for Johnny, and Johnny, with a baleful
vision of never seeing him again, and a catching breath, magnificently
undertook to bring in the wood and build the fire and wash the dishes
"all of himself." And then there were a few childish confidences
regarding their absent father--then ingenuously playing poker in the
Magnolia Saloon--that might have made that public-spirited, genial
companion somewhat uncomfortable, and more tears that were half smiling
and some brave silences that were wholly pathetic, and then the hour
for Rupert's departure all too suddenly arrived. They separated with
ostentatious whooping, and then Johnny, suddenly overcome with
the dreadfulness of all earthly things, and the hollowness of life
generally, instantly resolved to run away!

To do this he prepared himself with a purposeless hatchet, an
inconsistent but long-treasured lump of putty and all the sugar that was
left in the cracked sugar-bowl. Thus accoutred he sallied forth, first
to remove all traces of his hated existence that might be left in his
desk at school. If the master were there he would say Rupert had sent
him; if he wasn't, he would climb in at the window. The sun was already
sinking when he reached the clearing and found a cavalcade of armed men
around the building.

Johnny's first conviction was that the master had killed Uncle Ben
or Masters, and that the men, taking advantage of the absence of
his--Johnny's--big brother, were about to summarily execute him.
Observing no struggle from within, his second belief was that the master
had been suddenly elected Governor of California and was about to start
with a state escort from the school-house, and that he, Johnny, was in
time to see the procession. But when the master appeared with McKinstry,
followed by part of the crowd afoot, this quick-witted child of the
frontier, from his secure outlook in the "brush," gathered enough from
their fragmentary speech to guess the serious purport of their errand,
and thrill with anticipation and slightly creepy excitement.

A duel! A thing hitherto witnessed only by grown-up men, afterwards
swaggering with importance and strange technical bloodthirsty words, and
now for the first time reserved for a BOY--and that boy him, Johnny!--to
behold in all its fearful completeness! A duel! of which, he, Johnny,
meanly aband