n
it--don't talk!"

"He means," said Shuttleworth still feebly, "that we--we--grabbed
ANOTHER MAN'S six-shooter and--and--he that is--and they--he--he and
me grabbed each other, and--don't you see--?" but here, becoming more
involved and much weaker, he discreetly fainted away.

And that was all Buckeye ever knew of the affair! For they refused
to speak of it again, and Dr. Duchesne gravely forbade any further
interrogation. Both men's revolvers were found undischarged in their
holsters, hanging in their respective cabins. The balls which were
afterwards extracted from the two men singularly disappeared; Dr.
Duchesne asserting with a grim smile that they had swallowed them.*

* It was a frontier superstition that the ball extracted
from a gunshot wound, if swallowed by the wounded man,
prevented inflammation or any supervening complications.

Nothing could be ascertained of the facts at the tienda, which at
that hour of the day appeared to have been empty of customers, and was
occupied only by Miss Mendez and her retainers. All surmises as to the
real cause of the quarrel and the reason for the reticence of the two
belligerents were suddenly and unexpectedly stopped by their departure
from Buckeye as soon as their condition permitted, on the alleged
opinion of Dr. Duchesne that the air of the river was dangerous to their
convalescence. The momentary indignation against the tienda which the
two combatants had checked, eventually subsided altogether. After all,
the fight had taken place OUTSIDE; it was not even proven that
the provocation had been given AT the tienda! Its popularity was
undiminished.

PART III.

It was the end of the rainy season, and a wet night. Brace and Parks
were looking from the window over the swollen river, with faces quite as
troubled as the stream below. Nor was the prospect any longer the same.
In the past two years Buckeye had grown into a city. They could now
count a half dozen church spires from the window of the three-storied
brick building which had taken the place of the old wooden Emporium, but
they could also count the brilliantly lit windows of an equal number of
saloons and gambling-houses which glittered through the rain, or, to
use the words of a local critic, "Shone seven nights in the week to the
Gospel shops' ONE!" A difficulty had arisen which the two men had never
dreamed of, and a struggle had taken place between the two rival powers,
which was devel