most agonizingly if you hold your hand in the
blaze.

One of his night bartenders came up; and Bill, dismissing Jack from
his mind, with a grunt of disgust, went in to talk over certain
changes which he meant to make in the bar as soon as he could get
material and carpenter together upon the spot.

He was still fussing with certain of the petty details that make or
mar the smooth running of an establishment like his, when his ear,
trained to detect the first note of discord in the babble which filled
his big room by night, caught an ominous note in the hum of the street
crowd outside. He lifted his head from examining a rickety table-leg.

"Go see what's happened, Jim," he suggested to the man, who had just
come up with a hammer and some nails; and went back to dreaming of the
time when his place should be a palace, and he would not have to nail
the legs on his tables every few days because of the ebullitions of
excitement in his customers. He had strengthened the legs, and was
testing them by rocking the table slightly with a broad palm upon it,
when Jim came back.

"Some shooting scrape, back on the flat," Jim announced indifferently.
"Some say it was a hold-up. Two or three of the Committee have gone
out to investigate."

"Yeah--I'll bet the Committee went out!" snorted Bill. "They'll be
lynching the Diggers' dogs for fighting, when the supply of humans
runs out. They've just about played that buckskin out, packing men
out to the oak to hang 'em lately," he went on glumly, sliding the
rejuvenated table into its place in the long row that filled that
side of the room. "I never saw such an enthusiastic bunch as they're
getting to be!"

"That's right," Jim agreed perfunctorily, as a man is wont to agree
with his employer. "Somebody'll hang, all right."

"There's plenty that need it--if the Committee only had sense enough
to pick 'em out and leave the rest alone," growled Bill, going from
table to table, tipping and testing for other legs that wobbled.

Jim sensed the rebuff in his tone and went back to the door, around
which a knot of men engaged in desultory conjectures while they waited
expectantly. A large tent that Perkins had found convenient as a
temporary jail for those unfortunates upon whom his heavy hand fell
swiftly, stood next to Bill's place; and it spoke eloquently of the
manner in which the Committee then worked, that men gathered there
instinctively at the first sign of trouble. For when the Co