effect on the choked draft beneath, and went back to his chair and his
dozing.

During the clamor of the fire-building Lance turned over, drawing up
his feet and straightway extending them again; making a sleepy, futile
clutch at the fur coat, that had slipped off his shoulders when he
turned. The bartender reached out and flung the coat up on Lance's
shoulders, and bit off a chew of tobacco and stowed it away in his
cheek. Presently he dozed again.

Dawn seeped in through the windows. Lance, lying flat on his stomach
with his face on his folded arms, slept soundly. The unpainted
buildings across the street became visible in the gloomy, lifeless
gray of a sunless morning. With the breeze that swept a flurry of gray
dust and a torn newspaper down the street, came the rattle of a wagon,
the sound of voices mingled in raucous, incoherent wrangling.

"They're comin'," yawned the bartender, glancing at the sleeper on the
pool table. "Better wake up; they're comin' pickled and fighty,
judgin' by the sound."

Lance sighed, turned his face away from the light and slept on,
untroubled by the nearing tumult.

Galloping horses came first, _ka-lup, ka-lup, ka-lup_, a sharp
staccato on the frosted earth. The rattle of the wagon ceased,
resumed, stopped outside the saloon. Other galloping horsemen came up
and stopped. The door was flung open violently, letting in men with
unfinished sentences hot on their tongues.

"Next time a Lorrigan dance comes off--"

"What I'd a done, woulda--"

"Fix them damn Lorrigans!"

Detached phrases, no one man troubling to find a listener, the words
came jumbled to the ears of Lance, who fancied himself in the
bunk-house at home, with the boys just in from a ride somewhere. He
was wriggling into a freshly uncomfortable posture on the table when
the fur coat was pulled off him, letting the daylight suddenly into
his eyes as his brain emerged from the fog of sleep.

"And here's the--guy that run away from me!" Bill Kennedy jerked off
his hat and brought it down with a slap on Lance's face. "Run off to
town, by jiminy, and hid! Run--"

Half asleep as he was--rather, just shocked awake--Lance heaved
himself off the table and landed one square blow on Bill Kennedy's
purple jaw. Bill staggered, caught himself and came back, arms up and
fists guarding his face. Lance disentangled his feet from the fur
coat, kicked it out of his way and struck again just as Kennedy was
slugging at him.

At the