were with Rice Jones in that political sympathy which bands unlike men
together. He could say in bright words what they nebulously thought. He
was the high development of themselves. They were proud of him, with
that touching hero worship which is the tribute of unlettered men to
those who represent their best.

Dr. Dunlap stopped an instant at the edge of the crowd, carrying his
saddle-bags on his arm. He was so well known to be Rice Jones's
political and personal enemy that his momentary lingering there drew a
joke or two from his observers. He was exhorted to notice how the
speaker could wipe up Kasky with such as he, and he replied in kind.
But his face was wearing thin in his deeper and silent struggle with
Rice Jones.

He knew that that judicial mind was fathoming and understanding his past
relations with Maria upon the evidence he had himself furnished. Every
day since their encounter in the college the doctor had armed himself.
If he saw Rice Jones appear suddenly on the street, his hand sought his
pocket. Sometimes he thought of leaving the Territory; which would be
giving up the world and branding himself a coward. The sick girl was
forgotten in this nightmare of a personal encounter. As a physician, he
knew the danger of mania, and prescribed hard labor to counteract it.
Dismounting under the bluff and tying his horse, he had many times
toiled and sweated up the ascent, and let himself down again, bruised
and scratched by stones and briers.

Very trivial in Dr. Dunlap's eyes were the anxieties of some poor
fellows whom he saw later in the day appealing to Colonel Menard. The
doctor was returning to a patient. The speeches were over, and the
common meadow had become a wide picnic ground under the slant of a low
afternoon sun. Those outdwelling settlers, who had other business to
transact besides storing political opinions, now began to stir
themselves; and a dozen needy men drew together and encouraged one
another to ask Colonel Menard for salt. They were obliged to have salt
at once, and he was the only great trader who brought it in by the
flatboat load and kept it stored. He had a covered box in his cellar as
large as one of their cabins, and it was always kept filled with cured
meats.

They stood with hands in their pockets and coonskin caps slouching over
their brows, stating the case to Colonel Menard. But poverty has many
grades. The quizzical Frenchman detected in some of his clients a
moneyed ab