UD OF WAR

"I KNOW the cause of Dawson's trouble," remarked Vose Adams, late one
night at the Heavenly Bower.

"What is it?" asked Wade Ruggles, while the rest listened intently.

"On my last trip to Sacramento, two months ago, I brought him a thick
letter: that's what is raising the mischief with him."

"But what was in the letter to make him act so queer?"

"How should I know? do you expect me to open and read all the letters
I bring through the mountains?"

"Bein' as you couldn't read the big letters the parson has painted on
the side of the rock a foot high," said Al Bidwell sarcastically,
"there ain't much danger of your doin' that, which the same is lucky
for them as gits love letters like myself regular by each mail."

"Which the same you won't git any more onless you sling your remarks a
little more keerful," warned the mail carrier.

"And the same being that you can't read the directions writ onto
them, I don't see how you're going to help yourself."

"The postmaster at Sacramento is very obligin'," was the significant
comment of Vose.

Bidwell saw the dangerous ground on which he was treading, and made it
safe by a jesting remark and an invitation to Adams and the rest to
join him at the bar.

"We was on the subject of Dawson," remarked Ruggles from his seat, for
all had learned long before of the uselessness of inviting him to
drink; "and it's the opinion of Vose, I understand, that it was the
letter that has made the change in him."

"There ain't any doubt about it," said Adams; "fur the attack took him
right after; I noticed the difference in him the next day. He sets by
himself these evenings after the little gal has gone to bed, smoking
his pipe, without any light in his shanty, and thinking hard."

Wade smoked thoughtfully a minute and then remarked:

"I wonder whether it wouldn't be a good idee to app'int a committee to
wait on Dawson and ask him what the blazes is the matter and whether
we can't do nothin' to make a man of him agin."

Since Ruggles had become accustomed to act as chairman at the
discussions in the Heavenly Bower, he had developed a strong faith in
committees.

"That's a piece of the most onspeakable foolishness that I've run
aginst since I settled in New Constantinople," observed the landlord
with a contemptuous sniff; "the minute the committee arrove and stated
their bus'ness, Dawson would kick 'em out of his shanty and clean
across the street, and he'd be lackin