show her that he had not given up.

Matters were in this state when the "aggregation" settled down at the
Wagon-Tire House for the week during which the Fourth of July was to
occur. For this occasion La Rue promised a display of fireworks
"superior to anything ever shown in West Texas."

The fame of this spectacle had preceded the show. It had been given in
Emerald the year before, and all the cowboys who had seen it there
brought back word that it was "the finest ever." The particular feature
was in the closing act which La Rue had christened "Columbia
Enlightening the World."

For this performance a wire was stretched across the street from the top
of one building to another. La Rue intended this year to have it
stretched from the Roundup to the Wagon-Tire House. Across this wire
Minnie was to walk, dressed as Columbia, with a high-spiked diadem upon
her head, her whole form outlined with colored fires, and bearing
certain rockets which were set off when she reached the center of the
street.

Everybody in the Wagon-Tire House liked the girl; Frosty was offensively
polite or aggressively insulting; Mrs. La Rue was, as Troy Gilbert said,
"a pretty tough specimen"; or, if one would rather follow Aunt Huldah's
cheerful and charitable lead, "She looked a heap nicer, and appeared a
heap better, in the show than out of it"; the Aerial Wonder was
something of a terrestrial terror; but there was no question that Minnie
La Rue was one of the sweetest and best little girls ever brought up in
an inappropriate circus.

Therefore, when Kid Barringer appeared, a day after the La Rue family,
and told the boys freely what the situation of his affairs was, he
received unlimited sympathy and offers of assistance.

"I wish I could help you, Kid," Troy Gilbert said. "There isn't a soul
in town that doesn't feel as though that little girl ought to be taken
out of that man's keeping. But you see he's her own father, I
reckon--says he is--and the law can't go behind that."

"If you boys would fix up a scheme to get me a chance to speak to
Minnie--" Kid began. "At first I thought I could steal her just as easy
as anything. She'd be glad to go; I had a little note from her--Say,
Gib," he broke off suddenly, with a catch in his voice, "he's liable to
strike her--to hurt her--when he's drinking."

"Well, if it went as far as that, here in Blowout, I would arrest him,
you know," Gilbert suggested.

"It won't," Kid returned, dejectedly