ching his blood-shot
blue eyes. "You promised, Freme, and--you know I'll marry ye," she
said, "jest as I said I would if ye'll only keep to what ye promised.
I guess we kin be as happy as most folks," she added, smiling bravely
through tears.

"Thar ain't no guessin' 'bout it, Belle. Thar--you needn't cry 'bout
it," he replied.

"You was awful drunk, Freme," she went on. "There warn't no one could
handle ye 'cept me. They was tryin' to get ye upstairs and to bed, but
ye was uglier 'n sin."

"Pshaw--I want to know," drawled the giant sheepishly. "Didn't none
git hurted, did they?"

"None 'cept Ed Munsey; ye throwed him downstairs."

"Ed ain't hurted, be he?" he asked in alarm.

"His shoulder was swelled bad when he come back to work," she
confessed. She nodded to the door behind the bar and the splinters
sticking through its panel.

"Gosh all whimey!" he exclaimed; "who done that?"

"You done it, Freme; you was crazy drunk. There warn't none of 'em
could handle you 'cept me, I tell ye. I spoke to ye and ye come
'long with me back inter the kitchen and set there lookin' at me
strange-like for most an hour. Arter I got my dishes washed I took ye
up to the little room at the end of the hall."

The Clown scratched his head as if trying to remember.

"Warn't it Ed that throwed that buffalo hide over me?" he asked after
a moment of useless research.

"No," she said, "I wouldn't let one of 'em tech ye."

"And do you think he'll keep his promise, Belle?" asked Holcomb, when
she had finished the story.

"I dunno. He will if I kin stay 'longside of him. But if he don't he's
got to git along without me. He says he loves me better 'n liquor, and
I guess maybe he does."

The following night Freme swung into the forest and took the short cut
to Big Shanty, and that same night Holcomb welcomed him with a hearty
handshake and the morning after set him to work. When the next day
came around and Freme shook his head when the liquor passed, those
around the stove at Morrison's marvelled at his grit and speculated
how long it would last, wondering if Freme had "got religion"--to
which the girl had answered, "Yes, he has--I'm his religion."

* * * * *

But liquor was not the only menace that threatened the work down
Morrison's way. Drunkenness Holcomb could handle to some extent--had
handled it in the cases of both the Clown and the Clown's
head-chopper, a little French Canadian by the nam