inety-six. Might
have been ninety-seven. Funny he ain't ever told you about me. Never
mentioned, did he, how we got into a snow drift one time and had to eat
our dogs and I got him out final?"

"No," she said, wondering a little what sort of being he would prove to
be if one came to know him. He did not look as though he had ever
lived the rough life he mentioned so glibly; certainly his hands were
not the hands of a frontiersman.

"Maybe it's because I made him promise not to talk about it," he went
on carelessly. "The papers was full of it up there and I got kinda
sore being made so much of. He's grateful though. But he hadn't ought
to be. He more than squared the deal six months ago when we run up
against one another in New York. It was this way:"

And asking no encouragement he plunged eagerly into his tale. It
devolved from the first word that Red was sure a corker, a guy you
could tie to until snowballs foregathered in a clime in which,
according to popular fancy, they are an extreme rarity. He was on the
dead level, he was at once a game kid and a red hot sport. Red had
seen the name of his friend in a society sheet and had looked him up at
the Astoria. Mr. Dart had been naturally overjoyed to renew
acquaintance with an old pal. And as it happened Red was to step in
between him and certain death.

Mr. Dart had been going it a bit and had got into a foreign set. He
mentioned casually a couple of French dukes and a German prince with
fat, puffy eyes. There were others of them. They had played cards
together at one time and another and it seemed a general truth that
foreigners were bad losers. Besides, one of the French dukes, a shiny
man like a waiter in a cheap cafe, had a very lovely wife. Mr. Dart
esteemed her with a snow white friendship. But the French Duke was
jealous.

Mr. Dart's fine, white fingers gracefully annexed a piece of buttered
bread and the tale went on. They had decoyed him to a dreary downtown
haunt. They were all there, all armed with revolvers. In a moment it
would be all night with Mr. Willie Dart. Enter Red, the game kid. A
scene of thrilling unreality in which the game kid temporarily disabled
or permanently crippled every man of the would-be assassins. Mr. Dart
finished the tale and his bit of bread together, offering the
thoughtful, concluding remark, that so much powder smoke in the close
room had made him cough.

"You seem to be on very intimate terms w