dlord Larry found nearly every denizen of Last
Chance awaiting him, and a suppressed excitement was apparent in all.

The two bodies had been taken into the hotel office, to await the coming
of the landlord, and there they lay covered with a blanket. The moment
Landlord Larry was seen, coming from the cabin of Doctor Dick, cries
arose of:

"Speech! speech!

"Tell the news, landlord!" and so on.

Larry mounted to the piazza of the hotel and in a few words told the
story of Doctor Dick's running the gantlet and the nerve he had shown in
the ordeal he had passed through.

"Oh, he's got ther narve of Old Nick, as we all knows," cried a miner,
and this intended compliment was acquiesced in by one and all.

Having learned the news the miners adjourned to the saloons and the
toasts for the next few hours were to:

"Doctor Dick, a man o' narve from Wayback."

Until a late hour the miners drank and gambled, and then, toward dawn,
quiet reigned in the camps, broken only now and then by a yell from some
man who was too full of liquor to go to sleep.

The next morning, greatly to the delight of all, Doctor Dick appeared at
breakfast and received an ovation. Loo Foo had dressed his wounded arm,
and though sore, it was all right, Doctor Dick said, yet he was pale
from loss of blood.

After breakfast he mounted his horse and took the rounds to see his
patients, and everywhere he was greeted with a welcome that could not
but flatter him.

But the two weeks before date for the return of the coach--for the runs
were semimonthly--passed away and no driver appeared from W---- to take
the stage out. It began to look very much as though Doctor Dick would
have to again take the reins.

The search of the dead bodies of the two road-agents had revealed
nothing as to their identity, for, excepting their weapons, a little
money, some odds and ends in their pockets, they had nothing of value
about them, and they were buried at the expense of Doctor Dick, who
would have it so, as he very laconically remarked:

"As I killed them, I should pay their expenses when they are unable to
do so."

At last the day for the starting of the coach came round, and Doctor
Dick, as no one else volunteered, expressed his willingness to take the
reins, though he remarked:

"This will be the last run I shall make, so you must get a man here,
Landlord Larry, to go, if I do not bring one back with me from W----."

And once more Doctor Dick rolled aw