nd making
up, while the open-air bars were crowded with the drinkers.

Saxon walked very close to Billy. She was proud of him. He could fight,
and he could avoid trouble. In all that had occurred he had striven
to avoid trouble. And, also, consideration for her and Mary had been
uppermost in his mind.

"You are brave," she said to him.

"It's like takin' candy from a baby," he disclaimed. "They only
rough-house. They don't know boxin'. They're wide open, an' all you
gotta do is hit 'em. It ain't real fightin', you know." With a troubled,
boyish look in his eyes, he stared at his bruised knuckles. "An' I'll
have to drive team to-morrow with 'em," he lamented. "Which ain't fun,
I'm tellin' you, when they stiffen up."

CHAPTER V

At eight o'clock the Al Vista band played "Home, Sweet Home," and,
following the hurried rush through the twilight to the picnic train, the
four managed to get double seats facing each other. When the aisles and
platforms were packed by the hilarious crowd, the train pulled out for
the short run from the suburbs into Oakland. All the car was singing
a score of songs at once, and Bert, his head pillowed on Mary's breast
with her arms around him, started "On the Banks of the Wabash." And he
sang the song through, undeterred by the bedlam of two general fights,
one on the adjacent platform, the other at the opposite end of the car,
both of which were finally subdued by special policemen to the screams
of women and the crash of glass.

Billy sang a lugubrious song of many stanzas about a cowboy, the refrain
of which was, "Bury me out on the lone pr-rairie."

"That's one you never heard before; my father used to sing it," he told
Saxon, who was glad that it was ended.

She had discovered the first flaw in him. He was tonedeaf. Not once had
he been on the key.

"I don't sing often," he added.

"You bet your sweet life he don't," Bert exclaimed. "His friends'd kill
him if he did."

"They all make fun of my singin'," he complained to Saxon. "Honest, now,
do you find it as rotten as all that?"

"It's... it's maybe flat a bit," she admitted reluctantly.

"It don't sound flat to me," he protested. "It's a regular josh on me.
I'll bet Bert put you up to it. You sing something now, Saxon. I bet you
sing good. I can tell it from lookin' at you."

She began "When the Harvest Days Are Over." Bert and Mary joined in; but
when Billy attempted to add his voice he was dissuaded by a shin-kick
f