n his feet he
went tottering off, rebuffing all attempts at assistance. When the
party rounded the corner they were fairly blinded by the pelting of
the snow. It burned their faces like fire. The cowboy carried Johnnie
through the drift to the door. As they entered some cards again rose
from the floor and beat against the wall.

The Easterner rushed to the stove. He was so profoundly chilled that
he almost dared to embrace the glowing iron. The Swede was not in the
room. Johnnie sank into a chair, and, folding his arms on his knees,
buried his face in them. Scully, warming one foot and then the other
at a rim of the stove, muttered to himself with Celtic mournfulness.
The cowboy had removed his fur cap, and with a dazed and rueful air he
was running one hand through his tousled locks. From overhead they
could hear the creaking of boards, as the Swede tramped here and there
in his room.

The sad quiet was broken by the sudden flinging open of a door that
led towards the kitchen. It was instantly followed by an inrush of
women. They precipitated themselves upon Johnnie amid a chorus of
lamentation. Before they carried their prey off to the kitchen, there
to be bathed and harangued with that mixture of sympathy and abuse
which is a feat of their sex, the mother straightened herself and
fixed old Scully with an eye of stern reproach. "Shame be upon you,
Patrick Scully!" she cried. "Your own son, too. Shame be upon you!"

"There, now! Be quiet, now!" said the old man, weakly.

"Shame be upon you, Patrick Scully!" The girls, rallying to this
slogan, sniffed disdainfully in the direction of those trembling
accomplices, the cowboy and the Easterner. Presently they bore Johnnie
away, and left the three men to dismal reflection.

VII

"I'd like to fight this here Dutchman myself," said the cowboy,
breaking a long silence.

Scully wagged his head sadly. "No, that wouldn't do. It wouldn't be
right. It wouldn't be right."

"Well, why wouldn't it?" argued the cowboy. "I don't see no harm in
it."

"No," answered Scully, with mournful heroism. "It wouldn't be right.
It was Johnnie's fight, and now we mustn't whip the man just because
he whipped Johnnie."

"Yes, that's true enough," said the cowboy; "but--he better not get
fresh with me, because I couldn't stand no more of it."

"You'll not say a word to him," commanded Scully, and even then they
heard the tread of the Swede on the stairs. His entrance was made
theat