oning the waiter--"bar-slave," they call them
in Montana--to refill our glasses. "And I'll be glad to call some day,
when I happen in your neighborhood. And if you ever ride over toward the
Bay State, be sure you stop."

Well, say! old King turned the color of a ripe prune; every hair in that
stubble of beard stood straight out from his chin, and he looked as if
murder would be a pleasant thing. He took the glass and deliberately
emptied the whisky on the floor. "John Carleton's son, eh? I might 'a'
known it--yuh look enough like him. Me drink with a son of John Carleton?
That breed uh wolves had better not come howling around _my_ door. I asked
yuh to come t' King's Highway, young man, and I don't take it back. You
can come, but you'll get the same sort uh welcome I'd give that--"

Right there I got my hand on his throttle. He was an old man,
comparatively, and I didn't want to hurt him; but no man under heaven can
call my dad the names he did, and I told him so. "I don't want to dig up
that old quarrel, King," I said, shaking him a bit with one hand, just to
emphasize my words, "but you've got to speak civilly of dad, or, by the
Lord! I'll turn you across my knee and administer a stinging rebuke."

He tried to squirm loose, and to reach behind him with that suggestive
movement that breeds trouble among men of the plains; but I held his arms
so he couldn't move, the while I told him a lot of things about true
politeness--things that I wasn't living up to worth mentioning. He yelled
to the postmaster to grab me, and the fellow tried it. I backed into a
corner and held old King in front of me as a bulwark, warranted bullet
proof, and wondered what kind of a hornet's-nest I'd got into. The waiter
and the postmaster were both looking for an opening, and I remembered that
I was on old King's territory, and that they were after holding their
jobs.

I don't know how it would have ended--I suppose they'd have got me,
eventually--but Perry Potter walked in, and it didn't seem to take him all
day to savvy the situation. He whipped out a gun and leveled it at the
enemy, and told me to scoot and get on my horse.

"Scoot nothing!" I yelled back. "What about you in the meantime? Do you
think I'm going to leave them to clean you up?"

He smiled sourly at me. "I've held my own with this bunch uh
trouble-hunters for thirty years," he said dryly. "I guess yuh ain't got
any reason t' be alarmed. Come out uh that corner and let 'em a