at me well. They drink with me--much. They would make life a
hell for me if I was poor--shoot me, perhaps, quick!--if--if I didn't
shoot first. They would wipe me with their feet. They would spoil Pretty
Pierre." This he said with a grim kind of humour and scorn, refined in
its suppressed force. Fastidious as he was in appearance, Pierre was not
vain. He had been created with a sense of refinement that reduced the
grossness of his life; but he did not trade on it; he simply accepted it
and lived it naturally after his kind. He was not good at heart, and he
never pretended to be so. He continued: "No, I have not much love; but
Val, well, I think of him some. His tongue is straight; he makes no
lies. His heart is fire; his arms are strong; he has no fear. He does
not love Pierre; but he does not pretend to love him. He does not think
of me like the rest. So much the more when his trouble comes I help him.
I help him to the death if he needs me. To make him my friend--that is
good. Eh? Perhaps. You see, Galbraith?"

The old man nodded thoughtfully, and after a little pause said: "I
have killed Injins myself;" and he made a motion of his head backward,
suggestive of the past.

With a shrug of his shoulders the other replied "Yes, so have
I--sometimes. But the government was different then, and there were
no Riders of the Plains." His white teeth showed menacingly under his
slight moustache. Then there was another pause. Pierre was watching the
other.

"What's that you're doing, Galbraith?"

"Rubbin' laudanum on my gums for this toothache. Have to use it for
nuralgy, too."

Galbraith put the little vial back in his waistcoat pocket, and
presently said: "What will you have to drink, Pretty Pierre?" That was
his way of showing gratitude.

"I am reform. I will take coffee, if Jen Galbraith will make some. Too
much broke glass inside is not good. Yes."

Galbraith went into the sitting-room to ask Jen to make the coffee.
Pierre, still sitting on the bar-counter, sang to himself a verse of a
rough-and-ready, satirical prairie ballad:

"The Riders of the Plains, my boys, are twenty thousand strong
Oh, Lordy, don't they make the prairies howl!
'Tis their lot to smile on virtue and to collar what is wrong,
And to intercept the happy flowin' bowl.

They've a notion, that in glory, when we wicked ones have chains
They will all be major-generals--and that!
They're a lovely band of pilgrims are the R