d, and
just how he felt.

After some days his literary instincts perforce awoke. In spite of his
gloom, he caught himself sifting and assorting and placing things in
their relative values. In fine, he began to conceive a Western story.
Shortly after, he cleaned his fountain pen, by inserting a thin card
between the gold and the rubber feeder, and sat down to write. As he
wrote he grew more and more pleased with the result. The sentences
became crisper and crisper. The adjectives fairly sizzled. Poetic
connotation faded as a mountain mist. And he remembered and described
just how Alkali Ike spit through his mustache--which was disgusting,
but real. It was his masterpiece. He wrote on excitedly. Never was such
a short story!

But then there came a pause. He had successfully mounted his hero, and
started him in full flight down the dark gorge or narrow canon--I forget
which--pursued by the avenging band. There interposed here a frightful
difficulty. He did not know how a man felt when pursued by an avenging
band. He had never been pursued by an avenging band himself. What was he
to do? To be sure, he could imagine with tolerable distinctness the
sensations to be experienced in such a crisis. He could have put them on
paper with every appearance of realism. But he had no touchstone by
which to test their truth. He might be unconsciously false to his art,
to which he had vowed allegiance at such cost! It would never do.

So, naturally, he did the obvious thing--that is to say, the obvious
thing to a serious-minded writer with no sense of humour. He went forth
and sought an acquaintance named Colorado Jim, and made to him a
proposition. It took Severne just two hours and six drinks to persuade
Colorado Jim. At the end of that time Colorado Jim, in his turn, went
forth, shaking his head doubtfully, and emitting from time to time
cavernous chuckles which bubbled up from his interior after the
well-known manner of the "Old Faithful" geyser. He hunted out six
partners of his own--"pards," he called them--to whom he spoke at
length. The six pards stared at Colorado Jim in gasping silence for some
time. Then the seven went into a committee of the whole. The decision of
the committee was that the tenderfoot was undoubtedly crazy, harmless,
and to be humoured--at a price. Besides, the humouring would be fun.
After a number of drinks, Colorado Jim and the pards concluded that it
would be _lots_ of fun!

Early the next morning, th