up--is that it?"

Ivan Peloff nodded his head delightedly.

P. Walton swung himself lazily from his bunk.

"Eat?" invited Ivan Peloff, moving toward the table.

"No," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "I'm not hungry; I'm
going out for some air."

Ivan Peloff pulled two bottles of a deadly brand from under his coat,
and set them on the table.

"Me eat," he grinned. "By an' by have drinks all 'round"--he waved his
hands as though to embrace the whole Polack quarter--"den we
comes--rise hell--do him goods by midnight."

P. Walton halted in the doorway.

"Who put you up to this, Peloff?" he inquired casually.

"Cowboys," grinned Peloff, lunging at the sheep's head. "Plenty drink.
Say have fun."

"The cowboys, eh?" observed P. Walton. "So they're in town, are
they--and looking for fun?"

"We fix him goods by midnight," repeated Ivan Peloff, wagging his head;
then, with a sudden scowl: "You not tell--eh, Meester Walton?"

P. Walton smiled disinterestedly--but there wasn't any doubt in P.
Walton's mind that devilment was in the wind--Big Cloud, in the early
days, knew its full share of that.

"I?" said P. Walton quietly, as he went out. "No; I won't tell. It's
no business of mine, is it?"

It was fall, and already dark. P. Walton made his way out of the
Polack quarters, reached the tracks, crossed them--and then headed out
through the fields to circle around the town to the upper end again,
where it dwindled away from cross streets to the houses flanking on
Main Street alone.

"I guess," he coughed--and smiled, "I won't postpone it till to-morrow
night, after all."

It was a long walk for a man in P. Walton's condition, and it was a
good half hour before he finally stopped in the rear of Sheriff
Carruthers' back shed and listened--there were no fences here, just a
procession of buttes and knolls merging the prairie country into the
foothills proper of the Rockies--neither was there any sound. P.
Walton stifled a cough, and slipped like a shadow through the darkness
around to the front of the shed, shifted the wooden bar noiselessly on
its pivot, opened the door, and, as he stepped inside, closed it softly
behind him.

"Butch!" he whispered.

A startled ejaculation, and a quick movement as of a man suddenly
shifting his position on the floor, answered him.

"Keep quiet, Butcher--it's all right," said P. Walton calmly--and,
stooping, guiding his knife blade by the sense of touch, cut awa