ly familiar with the
subject. "Yes, gentlemen," puffed the little man, "on or about the next
snow-fall the Widow, as a widow, ceases to exist. That lovely flower, my
friends, is to be transplanted from its present bed to--to--into--the--O
this wonderful climate of Californy!"

The Howling Wilderness was as silent as the

Catacombs of Rome for nearly a minute.

Then Sandy had not been deterred either by the Widow's strange intimacy
with the eccentric little Poet, or by the suspicion of the camp that
this woman was the last of the doomed family.

The first thing that was heard was something like a red-hot cannon-shot.
The cinnamon-headed man behind the bar dodged down behind his barricade
of sand-bags till only his bristling red hair and a six-shooter were
visible. The decanters tilted together as if there had been an
earthquake.

It was a Missourian swearing.

Somebody back in the corner said "Jer-u-sa-lem!"--said it in joints and
pieces, and then came forward and kicked the fire, and stood up by the
side of the red little man, and looked down at him as if he would like
to eat him for a piece of raw beef.

A fair boy, the dreamer, the poet, went back to a bunk against the
further wall, where the bar-keeper's bull-dog lay sleeping in his
blankets, and put his arms about his neck, and put his face down and
remained there a long time. Perhaps he wept. Was he weeping for joy or
for sorrow?

There was a great big grizzly head moved out of the crowd and up to the
bar. The head rolled on the shoulders from side to side, as if it was
not very firmly fixed there, and did not particularly care at this
particular time whether it remained there or not. A big fist fell like a
stone on the bar. The glasses jumped as if frightened half to death;
they ran up against each other, and clinked and huddled together there,
and fairly screamed and split their sides in their terror. A big mouth
opened behind an awful barricade of beard, again the big fist fell down,
again the glasses screamed and clinked with terror, and the head rolled
sidewise again, and the big mouth opened again, and the big voice said:

"By the bald-headed Elijah!" and that was all.

Then there was another calm, and you might have heard the little brown
wood-mice nibbling at the old boots, and leather belts, and tin cans
stowed away among the other rubbish up in the loft of the Howling
Wilderness.

Then the fist came down again, and the big mouth opened, and