r" at the deserted bar, found his cap and went over
to investigate. He was much surprised to see Bill Wright working, and
smiled to himself as he walked quietly up to him through the soft,
step-muffling snow.

"What you doing, Bill--building a chicken house?" he asked, a quirk of
amusement at the corner of his lips.

Bill jumped and came near swallowing a nail; so near that his eyes
bulged at the feel of it next his palate. Tom Aldershot dropped his end
of the strip of paper, which tore with a dull sound of ripping, and
remarked that he would be damned. Necks craned, up on the roof, and
startled eyes peered down like chipmunks from a tree. Some one up there
dropped a hammer which hit Bill on the head, but no one said a word.

"You act like you were nervous, this morning," Ford observed, in the
tone which indicates a conscious effort at good-humored ignorance.
"Working on a bet, or what?"

"What!" snarled Bill sarcastically. "I wisht, Ford, next time you bowl
up, you'd pick on somebody that ain't too good a friend to fight back!
I'm gittin' tired, by hokey--"

"What--did I lick you again, Bill?" Ford's smile was sympathetic to a
degree. "That's too bad, now. Next time you want to hunt a hole and
crawl into it, Bill. I don't want to hurt you--but seems like I've kinda
got the habit. You'll have to excuse me." He hunched his shoulders at
the chill of the morning and walked around the jail, inspecting it with
half-hearted interest.

"What is this, anyway?" he inquired of Tom. "Smoke-house?"

"It's a jail," snapped Tom. "To put you into if you don't watch your
dodgers. What 'n thunder you want to carry on like you did last night,
for? And then go and sober up just when we've got a jail built to put
you into! That ain't no way for a man to do--I'll leave it to Bill if it
is! I've a darned good mind to swear out a warrant, anyway, Ford, and
pinch you for disturbin' the peace! That's what I ought to do, all
right." Tom beat his hands about his body and glared at Ford with his
ultra-official scowl.

"All right, if you want to do it." Ford's tone embellished the reply
with a you-take-the-consequences sort of indifference. "Only, I'd advise
you never to turn me loose again if you do lock me up in this coop
once."

"I know I wouldn't uh worked all night on the thing if I'd knowed you
was goin' to sleep it off," Bill complained, with deep reproach in his
watery eyes. "I made sure you was due to keep things agitated around