omer.

"I guess if he is going to get after all of Terpy's ardent admirers, he
will have his hands pretty full," observed Mr. Plume--a sentiment which
appeared to meet with general approval.

Just then the door opened a little roughly, and a man entered slowly
whom Keith knew intuitively to be Mr. Bill Bluffy himself. He was a
young, brown-bearded man, about Keith's size, but more stockily built,
his flannel shirt was laced up in front, and had a full, broad collar
turned over a red necktie with long ends. His slouch-hat was set on the
back of his head. The gleaming butts of two pistols that peeped out of
his waistband gave a touch of piquancy to his appearance. His black eyes
were restless and sparkling with excitement. He wavered slightly in his
gait, and his speech was just thick enough to confirm what his
appearance suggested, and what he was careful to declare somewhat
superfluously, that he was "on a ---- of a spree."

"I am a-huntin' for a ---- furriner 'at I promised to run out of town
before to-morrow mornin'. Is he in here!" He tried to stand still, but
finding this difficult, advanced.

A pause fell in the conversation around the stove. Two or three of the
men, after a civil enough greeting, hitched themselves into a more
comfortable posture in their chairs, and it was singular, though Keith
did not recall it until afterwards, that each of them showed by the
movement a pistol on his right hip.

After a general greeting, which in form was nearer akin to an eternal
malediction than to anything else, Mr. Bluffy walked to the bar. Resting
himself against it, he turned, and sweeping his eye over the assemblage,
ordered every man in the room to walk up and take a drink with him,
under penalties veiled in too terrific language to be wholly
intelligible. The violence of his invitation was apparently not quite
necessary, as every man in the room pulled back his chair promptly and
moved toward the bar, leaving Keith alone by the stove. Mr. Bluffy had
ordered drinks, when his casual glance fell on Keith standing quietly
inside the circle of chairs on the other side of the stove. He pushed
his way unsteadily through the men clustered at the bar.

"Why in the ---- don't you come up and do what I tell you? Are you
deaf?"

"No," said Keith, quietly; "but I'll get you to excuse me."

"Excuse ----! You aren't too good to drink with me, are you? If you
think you are, I'll show you pretty ----d quick you ain't."

Kei