ybody--least of all old Bill! Look at them knuckles! You
couldn't thump a feather bed. Anyway, you got the guilty party when you
done slapped Sam up to a peak and then knocked the peak off. Made him
swaller his cud, too, by hokey! Say, Sam, my old dad used to feed a cow
on bacon-rinds when she done lost her cud. You try it, Sam. Mebby it
might help them ears! Shove that there trouble-killer over this way,
Sammy, and don't look so fierce at your uncle Bill; he's liable to turn
you across his knee and dust your pants proper." He turned again to
Ford, scowling at the group and at life in general, while the snow
melted upon his broad shoulders and trickled in little, hurrying drops
down to the nearest jumping-off place. "Come, drownd your sorrer," Bill
advised amiably. "Nobody said nothing but Sammy, and I'll gamble he
wishes he hadn't, now." If his counsel was vicious, his smile was
engaging--which does not, in this instance, mean that it was beautiful.

Ford's fingers closed upon the bottle, and with reprehensible
thoroughness he proceeded to drown what sorrows he then possessed.
Unfortunately he straightway produced a fresh supply, after his usual
method. In two hours he was flushed and argumentative. In three he had
whipped Bill--cause unknown to the chronicler, and somewhat hazy to Ford
also after it was all over. By mid-afternoon he had Sammy entrenched in
the tiny stronghold where barreled liquors were kept, and scared to the
babbling stage. Aleck had been put to bed with a gash over his right eye
where Ford had pointed his argument with a beer glass, and Big Jim had
succumbed to a billiard cue directed first at his most sensitive bunion
and later at his head. Ford was not using his fists, that day, because
even in his whisky-brewed rage he remembered, oddly enough, his skinned
knuckles.

Others had come--in fact, the entire male population of Sunset was
hovering in the immediate vicinity of the hotel--but none had conquered.
There had been considerable ducking to avoid painful contact with flying
glasses from the bar, and a few had retreated in search of bandages and
liniment; the luckier ones remained as near the storm-center as was safe
and expostulated. To those Ford had but one reply, which developed into
a sort of war-chant, discouraging to the peace-loving listeners.

"I'm a rooting, tooting, shooting, fighting son-of-a-gun--_and a good
one!_" Ford would declaim, and with deadly intent aim a lump of coal,
bi