m a--I
am the angel of civilization, you may say."

Mizzoo started up, too excited to notice Wilfred's suddenly distorted
face. It was no time to display a sense of the ludicrous; the young
man hotly burst into passionate argument and reasonable hypothesis.

"We've got civilization," Mizzoo declared doggedly, "and we aim to hold
on to her, you bet! There's going to be no such doings as three
corpses stretched out on the sidewalk for breakfast, not while I'm at
the helm. How'd that look, if wrote up for the New York papers? That
ain't all--remember that ghost I used to worry my life out over, trying
to meet up with on the trail? Him, or her or it, that haunted every
step of the way from Abilene to the Gulf of Mexico? It's a flitting,
that ghost is! Well, I don't claim that no ghost is in my
jurisdiction. Brick's flesh and blood, there's bone to him. As my
aunt (Miss Sue of Missouri) used to say, 'he's some MAN.'"

Waving aside Mizzoo's ghost, Wilfred elaborated his theory of an Indian
attack, described Brick's peaceable disposition, his gentleness to
Lahoma--then dwelt on the friendship between himself and Brick, and the
relations between himself and Brick's ward.

"It all comes to this," Mizzoo declared: "if you could make me think
Willock a harmless lamb and as innocent, it wouldn't change conditions.
This neighborhood calls for his life and'd take it if in reach; and my
warrant calls for his arrest. All I can promise is to get him, if
possible, behind the bars before the mob gets him in a rope. As my
aunt, whom I have oft-times quoted my aunt (Miss Sue of Missouri, a
woman of elegant sense)--'that's the word,' she used to say, 'with the
bark on it!'"

Wilfred permitted himself the pleasure of taunting Mizzoo with the very
evident truth that before Willock was hanged or imprisoned, he must
first be caught.

Mizzoo grinned good-naturedly. "Yap. Well, we've got a clew locked up
in jail right now that could tell us something, I judge, and will tell
us something before set free; its name is Bill Atkins. He's a wise old
coon, but as sour as a boiled owl,--nothing as yet to be negotiated
with him than if he was a bobcat catched in a trap. We're hoping
time'll mellow him--time and the prospect of being took out and swung
from the nearest limb--speaking literary, not by nature, as you know
trees is as scarce about here as Brick Willock himself."

Wilfred insisted on an immediate visit to Bill. "Brick d