u finish what you were after, Phil?"

"You bet!"

"Tell me about it. I wish to size the thing up."

With the exception of his encounter with the Mayor, Phil recounted all
that had happened. He preferred keeping to himself that little bout he
had had with Brenchfield, for he knew Jim already had suspicions that
he and Brenchfield had some old secret antagonism toward each other.
Some day, he thought, he might feel constrained to unburden himself on
the point to Jim, but the time for that did not appear to be ripe.

"Darned funny!" remarked Langford, when Phil concluded. "I can't
recollect the man from your description and there doesn't seem to be
any connection between him and the flour and feed steal. But--what the
devil could that fellow be after, anyway?"

Suddenly, as was his habit, he dismissed the subject and broke in on
another.

"Say, Phil,--know who's in the card-room?"

"No!"

"An old pal of yours!" He commenced to sing a line of an old Scot's
song:--"Rob Roy McGregor O."

"Yes!"

"How's your liver?"

"Don't know I have one--so it must be all right!"

"What do you think about paying off old scores?" Mischief was lurking
in his eyes.

"Oh, let's forget that, Jim! It is too cold-blooded for me."

"Cold-blooded nothing! The dirty skunk didn't look at it that way when
you were as weak as Meeting-house tea and hardly able to stand on your
two pins."

"That's no lie, either!"

"And he'd do it again if he thought it would work."

Phil looked at Jim.

"I guess you are right,--and I feel mad enough to scrap with
anybody."

"Right! Let us work it as near as we can the way he worked it on
you."

They went over to the table near the window and rehearsed quietly
their method of operation, and it was not long before a noise in the
back room signalled the break-up of the card game. Half a dozen
rough-looking fellows from Redmans Creek followed one another out to
the saloon, headed, as usual, by McGregor, straddling his legs and
swaggering, looking round with a cynical twist on his handsome face.
They went over to the bar.

McGregor pushed himself in at the far end, brushing an innocent
individual out of his way in the operation. The man who followed
McGregor wedged himself in next. McGregor slid along and two more
harmless men at the bar gave way. It was an old trick and they knew
how to perform it. Still the McGregor gang pushed in, one after
another, until the entire counter was taken up by th