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 page 8 and Martin l.c. page 5. We have never seen it ourselves. It is said to be found in Iwashiro.

NinethNinth [sic].— (cuivre oxydulé, ) is also found in Japan in company with ochre (brown, ochry haematite) and copper green (mountain-green). We have seen several specimens from Hiuga, Satsuma, Nagato. The quantity in which it is found, seems, however, to be small, although it occurs in several mountain ranges. It constitutes the mineralogical guide for the Japanese miners, for they consider it as the chief criterion for good copper ores and learn from this mixture of coppergreen, iron-ochre and red copper where to construct mines. The Japanese call it Yaké. The experts of mines believe they can determine à priori the quality and quantity of the copper ore which will be found in the mountain, if they have examined the colour, the grain and other properties of yake. Thus the directions in which the mines are to be laid out, and the degree of declivity of the mine-roads, are chiefly determined by the occurrence of this mineral.

These are the Japanese copper-minerals known to us. We will now describe the metallurgy of copper, since the 16th century such a valuable branch of industry in this country. It will in future remain an industry of the highest interest for Japan. It is true, many of the very old mines, worked for several centuries, commence to be exhausted or at least give, by their long mine-roads, so much trouble in bringing the ore to light, that they do not pay the cost of working. But in a country like this where copper-ore, and, especially, copper-pyrites, is found in nearly every province, new mines can be opened after proper borings and mineralogical surveys. The exhaustion of a few very old mines does not by any means involve the exhaustion of the Japanese soil. Exaggerated as were many of the old accounts of the enormous wealth of Japan, the opinion that the sources of copper-ore are also exhausted is equally erroneous. The relatively large quantity of copper exported by the Dutch and Chinese from 1600 to 1858 is small when compared with the

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 men were shooting men, while Kansas cattlemen, as a general rule, were not. Many of the Kansans had been farmers in the eastern states before taking up range life. Moore was a fair example of the class. There would be more than one funeral, for a fact, and it was no pleasant thought for any life-loving Kansas cowman that one of such funerals might be his. A man could much better stand the loss of half his cattle through Texas fever than the loss of his own life through conjunction with a Texas bullet.

Dunham could see that he had set the ferment of doubt and caution working; that the resolution of some of them, at least, was shaken. But Moore was still confident in the array of numbers to bluff Dunham and the Texans back.

"You'll hit the hottest water you ever put your foot in, Dunham, if you try to bring that herd across this river," Moore warned. "I don't care whose funeral comes off tomorrow; you can't bring them cattle into Kansas."

"You'd better call it off, Dunham, as far as you're concerned," Garland advised. "Whatever you're gettin' out of it won't be enough to make it worth while to have everybody in this country down on you. There's not a chance to break through, but if you lead them fellers on to try it you'll be in just as bad with us as if you'd made it. I know you're sore, I don't blame you for bein' sore, but you're a fool if you think you can square accounts this way."

"I don't hold any animosity against you, Mr. Garland," Dunham said with grave courtesy. "But there

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 is a man here that I do hold animosity against for insults and injuries, and if that man stands in my way when I come over here with that herd, I'm goin' after him. If one shot's fired, I'll hold that man responsible for it with his life, and I'll get him if I have to chase him to his own doorstep!"

Dunham turned his horse and rode into the river, looking as straight and as steadily ahead as if he drew a furrow to a mark. He did not even lift his feet to bring his new boots above the water, riding through the little stream as though it were not there. He rode up the pebbly strand and into the dusty trail, worn deep into the sod by traffic that had begun to stream up it from the Texas ranges before he was born; and up the gentle slope to the hilltop, eyes as inflexibly ahead as the eyes of a statue.

If any man behind him drew a gun, Dunham did not know it; if there was a movement to ride after him in force and overwhelm him, it was checked by the council of Garland and the others who had sense enough to think, without a ripple of it ever reaching his ears.

On the Kansas shore they looked after Dunham as he disappeared over the little hill. They were nearer the water's edge than Dunham had left them, and Garland had his horse turned like a barrier across the road. He looked at Moore, accusingly, heaping the blame for the situation on his shoulders.

"There's such a thing as carryin' a joke too damn far, as I guess you're about due to learn," he said. "You sure did play hell when you rubbed that kid the wrong way!"

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was more like a funeral than a triumphal entry when Bill Dunham came leading the Texas herd into Kansas. Not even the belligerent Scotsman stood at the crossing to bar the way; not a voice was raised in protest, not a gun was fired. Somebody's counsel had prevailed.

The herd came down to the water slowly, the leaders stopping at knee-deep to sup a bit, then go on a little way and sup again, merely by way of sampling what they had come to, it seemed, for they were not thirsty, having been feeding on the dew-drenched grass since dawn. Dunham was across before the first of the cattle had set foot in the stream, Hughes and his son, with about half their force, coming along with the vanguard of the herd, everybody expecting a fight, and ready for it.

Dunham rode over to the Kansas shore, where he stopped, looking around as if waiting for anybody who felt disposed to dispute the way with him to make his appearance and get to work. The Kansas men had backed off from the ford, as Dunham had warned them to back. They were collected at the side of the trail a hundred yards or more beyond the ford, bunched up in what appeared to be a council.

Some of these men, of whom there must have been

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 at least eighty, Dunham roughly computed, were watching the approaching herd with hostile front, and others appeared to be arguing vociferously, with emphasis of flourishing arms, but nobody came out in the road to challenge Dunham when he went on at the lead of the big herd which came rolling over the low hilltop, urged on by the anxious, silent cowboys, some of whom would have welcomed a little row as a fitting climax to their long drive.

They were all looking ahead at Bill Dunham, riding thirty yards in advance of the leaders, full of admiration for his single-handed challenge to seventy-five or eighty men. What powerful argument had this unknown young man used to change the attitude of the Kansas cowmen so completely and suddenly? Was his reputation as a gunman so great and fearful in his own country that his announced intention of doing something was sufficient to throw the bars down to his uncontested passage?

It appeared so, for a fact, and the marvel of it increased as they rode after him, urging the cattle across the ford and up the sloping bank. They were quivering with the daring of the enterprise, and swelling with the exultation that would be theirs as they rode by that bunch of Kansas men who had stood ready only a little while ago to enforce their rule of ruinous tyranny.

Hughes was no less struck with the marvel of this easy passage of what he lately had thought an insuperable barrier, for Dunham had not gone to the trouble of making any explanation when he returned from laying down the law at the ford. He simply had

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 {|style="width:100%"
 * style="color:#94ca4e; vertical-align:text-top"|JOURNAL OF GENERAL VIROLOGY
 * style="color:#94ca4e; vertical-align:text-top"|JOURNAL OF GENERAL VIROLOGY

 * style="text-align:center; vertical-align:text-top"|ICTV VIRUS TAXONOMY PROFILE Gatherer et al., Journal of General Virology 2021;102:001673 DOI 10.1099/jgv.0.001673
 * style="vertical-align:text-top"|Microbiology Society logo.jpg

 * }

Derek Gatherer, Daniel P. Depledge , Carol A. Hartley , Moriah L. Szpara , Paola K. Vaz , Mária Benkő , Curtis R. Brandt , Neil A. Bryant , Akbar Dastjerdi , Andor Doszpoly , Ursula A. Gompels , Naoki Inoue , Keith W. Jarosinski , Rajeev Kaul , Vincent Lacoste , Peter Norberg , Francesco C. Origgi , Richard J. Orton , Philip E. Pellett , D. Scott Schmid , Stephen J. Spatz , James P. Stewart , Jakob Trimpert , Thomas B. Waltzek , Andrew J. Davison ,* and ICTV Report Consortium

Table 1. Characteristics of members of the family Herpesviridae Example:

herpes simplex virus type 1 (JN555585), species Human alphaherpesvirus 1, genus Simplexvirus, subfamily Alphaherpesvirinae

Virion

Spherical (150–200 nm) particles with condensed DNA core, icosahedral capsid, tegument and a lipid envelope containing glycoproteins

Genome

125–241 kbp of linear dsDNA

Replication

Infection has lytic and latent phases; transcription occurs in the nucleus by a kinetic cascade; DNA replicates by a rolling-circle mechanism to generate concatemers, from which genomes are cleaved and packaged into preformed capsids; virions mature in the cytoplasm

Translation

Occurs from capped, polyadenylated mRNAs, some of which are spliced

Host range

Mammals, birds and reptiles

Taxonomy

Realm Duplodnaviria, kingdom Heunggongvirae, phylum Peploviricota, class Herviviricetes, order Herpesvirales; 3 subfamilies, >10 genera and >100 species

icosahedron containing 162 capsomers arranged as 150 hexons, 11 pentons and one portal. The tegument consists of inner and outer layers. The lipid envelope contains integral viral glycoproteins forming a network of spikes.

VIRION Virions consist of a core, capsid, tegument and envelope (Table 1, Fig. 1) [1]. The core comprises the viral genome packaged into the capsid as a linear, dsDNA molecule. The capsid is a T=16

Received 11 August 2021; Accepted 14 August 2021; Published 27 October 2021 Author affiliations: 1Lancaster University, UK; 2NYU School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA; 3The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; 4 Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, USA; 5Veterinary Medical Research Institute, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Budapest, Hungary; 6 University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA; 7University of Cambridge, UK; 8Animal and Plant Health Agency-Weybridge, Addlestone, Surrey, UK; 9Virokine Therapeutics, London BioScience Innovation Centre, Royal Veterinary College, London, UK; 10Gifu Pharmaceutical University, Gifu, Japan; 11University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA; 12University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi, India; 13Institut Pasteur du Laos, Vientiane, Lao PDR, Laos; 14University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden; 15University of Bern, Switzerland; 16University of Glasgow, UK; 17Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan, USA; 18Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 19US National Poultry Research Center, Athens, Georgia, USA; 20University of Liverpool, UK; 21Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 22University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. Keywords: Herpesviridae; ICTV Report; taxonomy. 001673 © 2021 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
 * Correspondence: Andrew J. Davison, andrew.davison@glasgow.ac.uk

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 come riding down the trail, to pull up short within two hundred yards, wave his hat for them to come on, and turned to lead the way which he was keeping with such admirable poise.

How this unassuming young man, who was so green in spots the bark hadn't set, could push aside an organized opposition of such strength passed the cattlemen's conjecture. He hoped Dunham had not gone too strong on the force he had back of him, which soon must be revealed to the Kansans, who outnumbered them almost three to one.

If Hughes advanced into Kansas with more than a little trepidation he could not be blamed. It seemed unreasonable to a man who had been denied the passage of that road less than an hour before, that the program was to go on without sudden and serious hitch. He had come over there expecting to fight; the grim set of his face, his stern and watchful eyes, showed him ready to stand for his rights, now he had made the beginning to claim them. But he was an uneasy man; there was a strain on him as if each nerve of his body suspended a thousand pounds. Trouble was due to break when Dunham passed that crowd. Hughes felt it to be as certain as thunder after lightning.

Moore was not in the road, nor anywhere to the front, as Dunham approached the surly Kansas cowmen; he didn't step out to accept the challenge Dunham had given in his parting words. Dunham saw him among the others, and he had a look of thunder in his face, but he stayed where he was as Bill rode by and passed on, eyes straight ahead.

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 There was not a sound but the clatter and click of split hoofs on the hard road as Dunham went on his way; not a whoop out of a cowboy, not a word from the Kansas drovers. The silence was more dramatic than the noise of a fight.

This portentous stillness had the opposite of a calming effect on the cattle. They were conscious of the unusual conditions surrounding them on the march, where the racket of their human guardians hitherto had been their constant assurance that all was well. They crowded forward in little starts of panic, little rushes that massed them and disorganized the orderly formation.

The cowboys riding alertly on the flanks of the long line were quick to press forward and subdue these incipient stampedes, with many an anxious look back to see if the rear had cleared the ford. The cattle were so nervous a blowing leaf might have set them off on a blind rush away from that indefinable terror of silence.

The Kansas cowmen who watched this dark column of beef hurrying by were fully conscious of the flighty condition. That impending threat of a stampede was a greater restraint over their passions than the counsel of the older and wiser heads. Any man could see where a stampede would put them, with some of their own herds not five miles away.

Bill Dunham rode on without a glance behind. His business was in Pawnee Bend; it looked as if he intended to go right on without a stop.

Dunham did not know whether the Kansas cattlemen

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 would allow this invasion to proceed without some attempt to do damage. He had sensed the sullen temper of the crowd in passing as plainly as he ever felt the heat of a brushwood fire beside the road. What the final outcome of it was to be, he could not guess.

He did not care particularly, now he had brought the herd into Kansas against this strong force. He had proved to Moore and the rest of them, but especially to Moore, that a man need not be raised on the range, nurtured on rawhide and schooled in the commonplace tricks of that simple trade, to be able to confound them at their own devices and defeat them at their own game.

Bill had no notion of how fast beef cattle ought to travel, or how far in a day; he had no thought of wearing off the profit by keeping up that scrambling, pushing, crowding start for Pawnee Bend, more than fifty miles away. He did have some recollection of Hughes saying it would take at least four days to drive that last stage of his long journey, but his main thought was to get the cattle as far as possible up the trail before trouble broke. Every mile along would add to the wariness of the Kansas cowmen, and the herd's security.

Dunham jogged on ahead of the nervous herd, wondering just where he was going to get off. Hughes had not hired him; he had refused indignantly the proffer of reward for his services, and he was still a man out of a job. How far should he go with his self-appointed guardianship of Hughes' cattle?

It looked to him as if he had fulfilled his obligation,

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 both to himself and Hughes. It would be time for him to ride aside after escorting the herd a few miles, and turn his talents to finding a job that would hold still long enough for him to get a rope on its nose.

Curiously enough, he began to have a qualm of conscience over the trick he had turned against his fellow citizens. Loyalty was expected of a man in Kansas. It began to look like a kind of mean trick for no larger or nobler reason than the gratification of personal revenge.

How could he go riding by Moore's pea-green house with its turned columns and fancy gables, and tower where Zora might be watching like another Elaine for a Lancelot to come riding out of the south? Not that he could be the knight in her romance. She hadn't as much as a collar button of his to sit by the window and polish, or a slight thought of him that would draw her gaze down the road she had ridden with him when he went away to do this treason against her kin and kind.

It made Bill sweat to think of it as a treasonable act. Zora had expected something better of him than that. And she had trusted him to deliver that telegram, until this moment forgotten in the heat of his anger and the hungry gnawing of his vengeful passion. There it was in his shirt pocket, all crumpled from sleeping on it, and no telling now when he'd have a chance of handing it to Moore.

From the look of things at that moment, Dunham concluded he'd better turn Hughes loose to make his own way to Pawnee Bend and pull his freight out of

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 that country. The cattlemen would be down on him; it would be a lucky chance if some of them didn't go gunning for him, Garland especially. Zora would have no further use for him; it was more than likely the best people in Pawnee Bend would turn the cold side of their faces to him when he went back there. Nobody but the saloon keepers got much out of the Texas cattlemen and their gangs, he knew, while present prosperity and future consequence depended on the increase of the cattle industry at the town's doors.

And there he was, Bill Dunham, a Kansan born and bred, leading in a herd of Texas cattle that might be dripping the seeds of plague which would clean the range down to bones. He felt so mean and worthless he could have sneaked off and disappeared if there had been any place to go.

There was no place to go. A man was mighty conspicuous in that country, where there wasn't a bush ahead of him as far as he could see big enough to hide a rabbit. He'd have to stick to it till night, then tell Hughes his future was in his own hands, return to Pawnee Bend, sell his horse and go on to New Mexico, where he could use the wisdom of his experience to guide him to a better start.

First he must contrive to get that letter of Zora's enclosing the telegram to Moore. The message might be important; maybe Moore had suffered damage already through the delay. Bill pulled up for a squint back to see how things were shaping, surprised to find himself at least a quarter of a mile ahead of the cattle. He must have struck a lope when he began to think

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 about Zora, and lay the charge of treason to himself.

The Kansas cattlemen were still bunched by the side of the road, their horses headed in toward a common point as if they were discussing the next move in their completely upset plan of establishing a quarantine without sanction of law. Some of them, at least, had been sensible enough of the thing they had undertaken.

He was not seriously concerned over the case any longer, let it be as it might. Hughes was across the line, the last of the cattle were clear of the river. He was able, without a doubt, to take care of himself the rest of the way. Dunham joined him where he rode, and told him about the letter for Moore.

Hughes called a cowboy and started him back to deliver the letter to Moore.

"There's a whole lot of bad feelin' against you back there, Dunham," Hughes said, looking worried and all on edge.

"You couldn't expect them to feel very friendly," Dunham replied.

"I don't know what they're figurin' on startin', but it's something," Hughes speculated. "I could feel trouble scratchin' me like a mesquit' when I passed them fellers. If they took it in their heads to make me stick to the trail and shut me off from grazin', I'd be in a hell of a hole."

"No worse off than where you were, that I can see. Your cattle wouldn't starve to death between here and Pawnee Bend."

"No, but they'd be as flat as boards by the time I

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 got 'em there. My profits'd go up in smoke. If they want to be mean about it, they've got me."

"It ain't likely they'd start a fuss that'd stampede your herd to hell and gone over the prairie," Dunham said.

"Well, you got me in here, Dunham, and I believe I'm purty near big enough to hold 'em."

"That's what I was thinkin' a little while ago."

"You mean you're goin' to cut loose from me now?"

"I don't see how I can do you any good, and I might do you a lot of harm. They're not half as sore at you as they are at me."

"It will be a kind of unfriendly place for you after this, Dunham. I was wonderin' what your plans might be. Wouldn't you like to help me to Kansas City with the cattle, and go back to Texas with us?"

"No, I don't exac'ly figure on goin' to Texas."

"Whatever you plan to do, Dunham, I want to show my appreciation for the way you've helped me through. I don't know how you worked it on 'em, but I know I didn't breathe for about ten minutes when you rode over here and stopped. I looked for hell to pop."

"Maybe it takes a fool for luck, the way the old folks say," Dunham replied to this respectful bid for enlightenment on his methods of breaking quarantine. He seemed to shut the door on that lead, and Hughes was wise enough to take the hint.

"You refused my offer to pay you, Dunham, but I want to do something to acknowledge the debt I'm under to you before we part."

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 "The best way you can do it, Mr. Hughes, will be to tell Moore and Garland and the rest of them that Bill Dunham said it wasn't a money consideration with him. Tell them he said he lost more, maybe, than you gained, and you never paid him a damn cent. Tell them that, and make it strong."

"Trust me to make it strong," Hughes said, bearing down hard on his words, turning to Dunham with a mystified look, yet a look of respectful admiration.

They rode on in silence, too much in the thoughts of each for many words. There was no sound but the clicking of the cattles' hoofs as they marched on in that uneasy, jogging way of starts and flurries.

"I'll stop to let 'em feed about two o'clock," Hughes said after a while. "If that crowd keeps hands off we ought to make nine or ten miles by then."

"I'll stay with you till evening," Dunham said, not for any assurance there might be in the promise, for he seemed to be speaking apart from his thoughts, his eyes far ahead where heat was beginning to waver like oil in water over the trail, "and then I'll go my way."

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Rh history of science. Roger Bacon (1214-1294) had long before said a similar thing: “Michael Scot claimed the merit of numerous translations. But it is certain that a Jew labored at them more than he did. And so with the rest.”

In what precedes, nothing has been said of the original contributions made by Jewish authors to scientific literature. Jews were active in original research especially in astronomy, medicine, and mathematics. Many Jewish writers famous as philosophers, Talmudists, or poets, were also men of science. There are numerous Jewish works on the calendar, on astronomical instruments and tables, on mathematics, on medicine, and natural history. Some of their writers share the medieval belief in astrology and magic. But it is noteworthy that Abraham Ibn Ezra doubted the common belief in demons, while Maimonides described astrology as “that error called a science.” These subjects, however, are too


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was not much romance for Bill Dunham in making his bed on a blanket out under the stars, for even the bones of tired youth will find the inequalities of the sod, every stick and small stone, before daylight breaks. Bill Dunham wondered if men ever grew so hardened to the earth's unpadded surface for a mattress that they could stretch out, lie still and sleep serenely. It was a matter open to the most substantial doubt.

His second night on a cowboy's bed was not as successful as his first, for he was a grain between the millstones of conscience and the lumpy surface of buffalo-grass sod. He tossed and groaned, thinking what a dunce he had been to leave the land of feather beds to come out there pursuing the enchantment of distance, where romance materialized as trouble and the selfishness of men stood out raw-boned on the gray-green prairie without a bush to hide its vulpine ugliness.

Dunham was troubled over what he had done. While he knew very well his act had been within the law, he didn't like to think of the possible devastation Texas fever might work in the herds of men quite innocent of any affront to him. He had been moved by a flare of hate against Moore, which had cooled now and

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 left a taste like the nausea of a debauch in his mouth.

While his resentment had not been without justification, he admitted now that it had not been sufficient to warrant him in setting out maliciously to ruin Moore by a means which might break a hundred men whom he never had met. He might as well have gone on and forgotten it, as he had gone on and forgotten many a threat to knock his head off before. Moore had been testy that day. He was a man full of troubles, and it no doubt seemed to him that Dunham was a sort of pestiferous insect that couldn't be fanned away.

Bill saw it all in a wiser and cooler mind as he lay gazing wide-eyed at the stars, for that is a very good situation for a man to get hold of himself, measuring his stature against the universe that way, and finding out how very little he actually weighs.

A worse feature of the business was the certain alienation of Zora Moore. She would pass him as a stranger from that day; she would scorn him as a traitor to the interests of his native state, by which a man was required to stand and put up a good fight, after the heroic traditions of Old John Brown. And he had been thinking of arriving at that happy pass with her when he might hold her soft white chin in the cup of his hand, as he used to hold the chins of little girls—cold little chins, and wind-rough—when they fell and bumped them on the ice, long, long ago.

Bill had parted company with Hughes after the cattle were bedded down for the night, pickets thrown around them to guard against dispersion by panic or wanton design. Dunham had gone on north ten or

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 twelve miles, withdrawn from the trail, hobbled his horse and stretched out for needed repose. The strain of the day had been heavy; he was weary, and sore from unaccustomed travel in the saddle.

There was a smell of summer in the night wind, a sound of summer in the zirr of insects, which seemed far away, distant revellers in what bowers of green he could not guess. He was lonesome; he longed for the scent of a black, moist furrow, the melon-sweet odor of blooming corn.

It didn't appeal to him as much of a life, riding by day, and day after day, in the unvarying dumb routine of guarding plodding cattle on the trail, or watching over them on the range, to bunk down on the ground at night like a hog. Romance had glamored over the mind-cramping routine and the hardships, as romance always gilds its trumpery, after the fashion of sin.

As soon as it was light enough to find his horse, which had wandered far in the freedom of a too-humane hobble, Bill mixed up a mess of biscuit dough, which turned out a distressing failure of burnt crust and clammy interior, and leaded himself down like a diver. He thought if he felt as heavy to the horse as he did to himself with that mess inside him, he'd wear the poor old devil out before he reached the Arkansas. The sun was well up when he took the trail again, with a look toward the south, where he expected to see the dust of Hughes' herd on the march.

There was no sign of the herd. Bill speculated on how things were with Hughes by that time: whether the Kansas cattlemen had forced him to go back, or

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 were permitting him to advance under guard. He rode on northward in a leisurely canter, with the feeling of a man whose time was all his own, and not so very valuable at that.

Dunham soldiered along, making little side excursions now and then to inspect the varying nature of the soil, with more the interest of agriculturist than stockman, delaying purposely to bring himself past the Moore ranch about noon. He believed he would have a better chance of slipping by unseen at that hour, when the family would be feeding in the heavy-going, earnest range fashion.

All was quiet there when he passed, the sun hot on his shoulders, hot in the dust-white road. A few horses were dozing, neck over neck, in the corral; they lifted their heads and set their ears in a listless interest when they heard him. A few hens lolling in dust-wallows beside the road cut for the fence, expressing chicken resentment over the disturbance, which is a weak kind of protest at the best. Dunham felt a crawling thrill of apprehension in his scalp at the cackling. He feared one of the boys would pop out to see who was going by, and shout the news to Zora.

It would be an awkward thing to explain to Zora that he was the kind of a man who couldn't stay hired, in spite of her confident assurance that he'd stick this time. One explanation would involve another, and Zora would be the girl who could say things to make a man squirm. So Bill breathed easier when he had passed the house and rounded the little point of cottonwoods at the bend of the road.

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 He probably never should see Zora again, for he felt that his way led wide from that land. It gave him a sinking pang to think of that, for Zora was a girl that a man could easily like too well for his own peace. It made him lonesome and hollow-feeling to think of the entrancing allurement of her round white chin.

Bill rode along with his head bent, his heart as heavy as the sour biscuit dough he had mixed that morning. His road was drawing out between him and Zora; she would soon be far behind him, for his path would not lead back that way again, the one precious reality among the false figures and fancies which romance had set to deceive his eagerly credulous eyes.

How could he have been so stupid as to think of humbling Moore's arrogance and bringing his fortunes low without including Zora in the disaster? She would suffer as keenly as her father in any humiliation or loss that might fall on him. It was strange, but he had not thought of Zora as John Moore's daughter while his rage drove him on against the cattleman. It was hard, even in sober sanity and half-acknowledged regret, to think of Zora in that relation. She was no more like her father than an egg is like a hen.

A nice girl, a generous girl, where her father was overbearing, full of loud egotism, and profanely coarse. Perhaps Zora would grow to a fleshy redness in that atmosphere of cattle after a while, when she had married some cavalier of the range with a big mustache under his snout. Bill sighed over the thought. He wished better fortune for Zora, but there did not appear to be any plan in his horoscope for helping her

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 immense quantity of ore existing in different parts of the country. We think, however, that for giving practical results and pecuniary profit to the explorers of new mines, three principal changes will be necessary in Japan.

First.—Better ordinary roads throughout the whole country.

Second.—Liberal mining laws on the same basis as those in Western mining countries.

Third.—The introduction of Western knowledge, Western experience and Western machinery in working the mines, in removing the mine-water and smelting the ores.

The first point is so clear to every European that it is unnecessary to dwell on it. It would seem, however, that the Japanese Government is not yet convinced of this truth. What is the advantage of a few miles of railway for the thirty millions of an agricultural people, if even provinces so fertile as Kiusiu remain without good ordinary roads on which the numerous products of agriculture, the fisheries, mining and commerce can be transported on wheeled vehicles? A great many products cannot now be brought to market, because the cost of transport by means of pack-horses, oxen or human labour costs so much money and time. In Kiusiu, one of the most fertile and prosperous islands of the Japanese Archipelago, the roads are generally in a deplorable condition, and have become much worse since the abolition of the daimiates. To convey ores or metals over considerable distances good roads or canals are matters of vital necessity.

The second point should also be a question of serious consideration with the Japanese Government, because the present mining laws are inimical to the interests and welfare of the country. There is no good reason why mining companies should not be formed from the union of Japanese and foreign capital, if these companies work under the supervision and control of the Government, so far as the stipulated royalty or percentage on the net proceeds is concerned.

The third point we believe also to be necessary in order to secure good practical results. It is true that the

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 out. He was on his way; where it might lead he did not know.

Bill sighed again, turning a quick glance over his shoulder to see if anybody had come out of the house. All was quiet there; even the horses had lapsed into their sunny somnolence. From the hilltop where Shad Brassfield had told of the fittified man's revival, Bill took one last look at the house and said good-by. It was a shame that such a nice girl as Zora didn't have a father worthy of her.

From there Dunham swung on a little more briskly, thinking of the explanation he'd have to give MacKinnon, and of selling his horse and getting his ticket to Santa Fé, Zora Moore persisting in the background of his thoughts like prism spots before the eyes after one has looked too openly at the sun. At a turn of the trail he met her, the very substance of the shadow that could not be excluded from his mind.

Zora pulled up with a startled look; Bill hauled in so suddenly he skidded his horse through the dust, raising considerable commotion, for he had been pounding along at a pretty lively clip. Zora looked at him coldly. Bill's heart swung low at sight of her pale face and unfriendly eyes. The news of his exploit with the Texas herd had beaten him to Pawnee Bend.

"I see they let you live!" Zora said contemptuously.

"They didn't exac'ly kill me," Bill admitted, but with weak embarrassment, as if he apologised for being undeservedly alive.

"You bluffed it through, but you wouldn't 'a' done it if I'd been there!"

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 "No, Miss Zora," Bill replied, his voice steady and frank, "I wouldn't even 'a' tried it."

"You made it on the bluff you threw in my father's face, singlin' him out that way from the rest of them," she charged, hot blood rising in her pale face. "You knew darned well he wasn't a fightin' man—not that kind of a fightin' man."

"When you get the straight of it some day, and stand off and look at it calm and cool," Bill said, beginning to feel his contrition dissolving fast away as the incidents of his reception at Moore's camp flashed up like a flare revealing his just grievance, "you'll be a little easier on me, maybe."

"You made a quick deal, sellin' out on the fame you got by killin' Ford Kellogg," she sneered. "Your big nhame's worth money to you now, but wait and see where you'll land."

Bill turned his horse and drew up beside her, heading the way he had come. He put out his hand with a dignified slow motion, as if to fix her attention on some object down the road.

"I could say a whole lot on my side of this thing, but I know it wouldn't do a bit of good," he said. "I bid you good-by when I passed your house, so I guess I'll be rackin' on."

"Good-by?" She looked at him queerly, her eyes stretching, her mouth half open. "You must be crazy! I wasn't there."

"No, but I thought you were."

"Oh, Mr. Dunham! what made you do it, what made you do it!" she said, her contemptuous hard manner

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 changed suddenly to injured lamentation. "What made you want to turn on us this way and ruin us all?"

Bill looked at the road, his long face as solemn as if his last hope lay in the dust at his horse's feet. He sat that way in his meditative posture a little while, her beseeching, sorrowfully regretful words echoing in his ears.

"I stood there and sweat blood to keep my hand off of my gun"—looking up with disconcerting suddenness—"I took what he—what they said with my teeth shut on my tongue, and I rode away with a bullet singin' over my head. I let 'em cuss me and belittle me, and tell me what kind of big men they needed to keep Texas cattle out of here, and then I headed over that river swearin' I'd show him—show them if I wasn't man enough to help keep 'em out I was man enough to bring 'em in. I didn't so much consider the consequences then, for I was sore—I was sore to the bone."

He turned his earnest face away, to look off toward the south as if for the evidence that would prove to her he had made good on his intention. But the herd was many miles away; its dust was not rising high enough, if rising at all, to be seen at that great distance.

"Maybe I was wrong," he said, "but I was tired of bein' the under dog. I had to bear that long enough when I was a starved, cowed boy, picked on and kicked around by the bigger and richer fellers when I wasn't able to help myself. I put them days behind me when I came out here— Excuse me, Miss Zora."

He cooled off suddenly, as if he had became alarmed at showing that corner of his heart. The red embers

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 of anger faded out of his lean cheeks, the fire of resentment out of his eyes.

"I always did talk too much," he said slowly, his voice low as if he lay the charge to his own conscience, and not for the ears of anybody at all.

Zora reached out with quick impulse, leaning, and touched his shoulder.

"Did you give pa that letter?"

"I didn't think of it that minute, I was so rattled. They started on me as soon as I rode into camp. I sent it to him after I came back across the river yesterday morning."

"It might have made a big difference in the way he talked to you if you'd handed him the letter first," she said regretfully. "You saw what a difference it made in all of them after they'd heard about Kellogg. If it hadn't been for that you'd never 'a' got that herd through, Bill."

"I wasn't any better man after that than before."

"They thought you were, anyhow. If that herd brings in the fever it'll clean us out. Oh, Bill! why didn't you think of me—me and mother and the boys? We tried to treat you right when you were here."

"Hughes, the man that owns them, says they're clean cattle."

"They all say that, but they don't know. Their cattle never show it."

"Yes, you folks treated me white," Bill said, going back to the question which he was too honest to dodge.

"Hal Garland came by last night and told us about you bringin' the herd in. Everybody's gettin' their

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 cattle away from the trail—they're going to let this herd come on and load, now the damage is done. The news is all over the range to-day, and everybody's sore at you. Where are you going now?"

"Up to Pawnee Bend to sell my horse."

"Leavin'?"

Bill nodded, heavy with remorse for having brought this shadow of disaster to Zora's door. She was still friendly, in spite of the way she had come at him, and ready to be more than friendly, as he never had hoped she would be, only indulging the alluring speculation as another mirage of romance that he never could approach.

"I hoped you'd stay," she confessed wistfully, as for something gone. "But I don't see how you can stay now."

"I didn't think there was anything to stay for," Bill said miserably.

"Whatever there was you spoiled it."

"I'm sorry," Bill said, his contrition far deeper than the waters of the Cimarron.

"Where are you going when you sell your horse, Bill?"

"I was thinkin' of New Mexico, but I may make it California; I don't know."

"Oh, what made you do it! what made you do it!"

There was a shake in her voice; it broke at the end in asob. She turned her face away, to hide her tears, Bill knew. If he had suspected himself of treason to her before, he stood convicted of it now.

"I was a damn fool!" he said in abject bitterness.

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 Zora put her handkerchief to her nose. Bill saw her round white chin quiver as she gulped her tears.

"You—sure—was!" she said. "But maybe"—hopefully, turning to him with a quick light in her tearful eyes—"if it is a clean herd you can come back."

"And if it ain't," Bill leaned yearningly, his hand put out in expressive gesture of appeal, "if it ain't, Zora, maybe you can come to me?"

She shook her head and turned away, handkerchief pressed hard to her teeth.

"You'll be outlawed on this range, even mother will be against you. What made you do it, Bill—what made you do it!"

Bill couldn't answer that question even to his own satisfaction now. A reason for a man's acts might appear entirely valid when he hadn't a friend on earth; quite different when he had just one friend like Zora Moore. He felt so abject and mean he couldn't say a word.

"I know how you felt about it, Bill; I don't blame you like the rest of them do. Garland said he told them they'd made a mistake treatin' you that way, but he don't excuse you for endangerin' everybody to play even with a few. Nobody will, or not many, anyhow. It would have been better if you'd pulled your gun and cleaned up on 'em, but the way it stands I don't see what there is for you to do but go."

"Nobody's goin' to lose any cattle, Zora," he said. "Hughes has got a lot of Herefords, as fine and healthy lookin' cattle as any on this range—better than any

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 I've seen on it so far. I'd bet my life on it they never had anything wrong with 'em in their lives."

"That's what you've done," Zora said, nodding her head sadly. "No matter how it turns out, you've bet your life. They may not be expecting you to come on ahead of the herd—maybe you've got a chance if you work fast. But if you can't sell your horse don't hang around Pawnee Bend for that. Leave it there; I'll take care of sellin' it and send you the money if you'll write. They'll be down on me for it, but I don't give a darn. They might 'a' given you a little more decent deal than they did—pa and all the rest of them."

"You're the best friend I ever had, Zora. Nobody ever offered to risk as much as a dog-bite for me before in my life."

"They'll be after you as soon as they find you've left the Texas herd and come to town. It'd be safer if you didn't wait at all, but put your horse in the stable and take the first train. You can write to me when you get where you're going. I don't suppose there'll be much harm in that."

"I hate a fuss," Bill said cogitatively, looking hard at the ground, "but I don't like to be crowded when I'm goin' someplace. I never was run out of anywhere yet, Zora, and if they come at me that way they'll find me kind of hard to scare. I didn't break any law when I brought that Texas herd over the river."

"No, it would have been different if you'd broken the law. They don't go after a man down here near the line half as hard for breakin' the law as they do for hurtin' their feelings. You've hurt their pride, even if

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 they come through without losing any cattle, and that's going to be hard to square."

"Yes, I guess it runs in the human breed that way."

"You intended to leave the country, Bill," she said, as if reminding him of a good intention in the way of being disregarded.

"Of my own free will; not with somebody tellin' me I had to go. I don't mind dancin', either, but I object to somebody tryin' to make me do it by shootin' at my feet."

"But you were going, Bill—you were going!" Zora spoke almost frantically, as if everything in her life depended on his pursuit and faithful performance of his original intention.

"Yes, but I didn't have anything to stay for then," Bill replied serenely.

Zora pressed him farther, urging him, for her sake at last, to go. But the best she could get out of him when all was said was maybe. Maybe he'd go, maybe he wouldn't. He'd let her know.

There was no reservation in Bill's mind when they parted. He was not going to leave that country; that was a cinch. Not when he had found there the most precious thing that ever had entered his lean and lonely life. He didn't want to set up in business as a professional fighting man, but there was a whole lot of comfort in the thought that if they went to throwing lead he was a pretty handy man that way himself.

He looked around the broad open country, untrammeled by a fence, unmarked by the habitation of man as far as the eye could sweep, enlarging with a pleasant

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 home-feeling as he drew his breath deeply and felt his happiness increase. That country, lately so bare and unfriendly to his gaze, had become the most beautiful, the one to be desired above all the lands of earth.

More than that: it was Kansas, his Kansas. It was home. He'd like to see the color of any man's hair that was going to make him dig his toes in the road to leave it, now that he had more to stay for than flocks and herds, or suzeranity over unfenced plains.

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was right about it: Bill Dunham was an outlaw under the moral code of the range, which moral code was purely a business one, to be sure, a code of mine and thine, with far the greater stress on mine. They'd get him, MacKinnon said. He advised Bill to hit the road at once, not waiting to sell his horse. Ride it, MacKinnon said; go on to the Panhandle or somewhere, and get a job. Go anywhere, but get out of southwestern Kansas as fast as he could hop.

No, said Bill. He was beginning to like that country; he'd continue to stick around awhile. He changed his thirty-eight gun for one that would make more noise, as well as a bigger hole in the anatomy of the species, opened a dicker for a rifle and scabbard that some Texas cowboy up with a trail herd had left with MacKinnon on an unpaid bill. Dunham got this for twelve dollars in the end, and hung it on his saddle, his horse hitched in front of the hotel as if he intended to go somewhere in a hurry, when there was nothing farther from his mind.

MacKinnon said a man might think Dunham had discovered a gold mine from the way he was determined to stay there. Bill pulled one of his rare, slow-coming, hard-going grins, and replied that a gold mine was cheap stuff compared to what he had discovered.

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 So that day passed, uneventfully, Dunham's horse at the rack in front of the hotel, except for the time it was putting away a stiff feed of oats in the livery barn. And then Dunham sat around waiting while the animal made its leisurely, luxurious meal. He chatted with the liveryman, who was distant, but respectful.

The story of Dunham's exploit had gone not only to the utmost sod hut in Pawnee Bend by that time, but to the far places of the range as well. He had brought the Texas herd across in the face of seventy-five or eighty men without pulling a gun. It was something to command respect, if no especial admiration. When a man came among them in Pawnee Bend who never pulled his gun except to use it, they walked humbly in his presence. He was a pretty good sort of man to leave alone.

Dunham kept his horse hitched in front of the hotel until after dark, the scuffed and worn scabbard, with its battered rifle-stock showing, hung on the saddle-horn. Nothing happened to disturb the serenity of the town, which appeared to be getting along very well without a marshal. It was nearly nine o'clock when he took the horse to the livery barn to leave it for the night. That done, he took a stroll around town, making himself as inconspicuous as possible, hoping to avoid the windy Bergen in case he might be abroad.

Few men were in town that night, probably due to the fact that everybody available had been called to the border or put under orders to stand ready to be called. Dunham thought it would be only a neighborly act to drop in and see Charley Mallon, who had treated him

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 decently enough on a certain day. He wanted to get a line on public feeling regarding the Texas cattle, not quite convinced that the town stood a unit against him as MacKinnon had said.

Business was slack in the Casino, where Charley Mallon stood in white shirt and apron behind the bar, sleeves rolled up on his long stringy arms, ready for a rush, and in a cynical and surly humor because it did not come. A first-class bartender would not be able to maintain his social position unless things began to pick up pretty soon.

Mallon greeted Dunham like a prodigal come to spend. Here was one man who was doing something for his country, anyhow, let the rest of them in Pawnee Bend sleep on. Mallon said as much, although in different words. He was shining with admiration for Dunham's feat in conducting the Texans across the border. He suggested champagne.

When Dunham declined the drink which cattlemen regularly ordered with their catfish when out to impress the civilized centers, such as Wichita and Kansas City, with their sophistication and wealth, Mallon insisted on shaking one of his notable lemonades, to which he added an egg as a special mark of his esteem.

"You've done more for this town by openin' the trail to them Texas cowboys than any man ever done for it, Mr. Dunham," Mallon declared, or rather announced, his voice lifted for the benefit of his customers.

Bill put down the glass, which he had drained at one long pull, like the burgomaster of Rothenburg. He wiped the mucilage of raw egg from his chin, and stood

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 thoughtfully studying the grain of the mahogany bar, which was entirely honest mahogany, no matter what other substitutes one might find in Poteet's Casino.

"I hope it won't do anybody harm," he said.

"Business in this town would have to shut up without the Texas trade, Mr. Dunham," Mallon said, hands on the bar, eyes roving up and down and across to the tables where a few gamesters tempted fortune with their slender earnings. Here was a notable guest at his bar; the news of his presence would stimulate a forward movement, quickly spread to the outside and draw trade. Curiosity could not excuse itself in a frontier saloon. To enter was equivalent to an order.

Some of the cowboys at the games looked around at the loud, rolling, Irish pronunciation of Dunham's name. Others, who were trifling with the ladies of the establishment along the bar or at card tables, quickened and began to talk between their lips.

"Name yours, gentlemen," said Mallon, in a sort of general challenge to set some money moving in his direction or heels knocking toward the door. One of the ladies got busy with the piano, a high-backed old jingle-box with the ivory coating gone from several keys, making it look as if it had lost some of its teeth. They played the piano fortissimo in Pawnee Bend those days.

Gentlemen named theirs, and ladies carried it to them on trays, partaking thereof with ingenuous cordiality. The little flurry of business made Mallon feel better. He came along to where Dunham lounged against the bar, wiping in the entirely useless and mechanical

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 way bartenders used to do, with a circular movement as if he wound himself up.

"Pawnee Bend would dry up and blow away if it wasn't for the Texas trade," Mallon said. "There wouldn't be a decent place left runnin' in this town in six months if these Kansas cattlemen shut up the trails and kep' them Texas cowboys out like they want to. It would come down to a class of joints no decent man'd put his face in. Gentlemen, what's yours?"

The gentlemen who were targets of this pertinent shot had come lounging up to the bar in a bow-legged cowboy shamble from one of the tables. Theirs was whisky, of which each took as big a slug as the law allowed, scorning the chaser that Mallon stood out with each glass.

Some of the cowboys were attempting to follow the speedy, though somewhat erratic, course of the waltz the pianist was offering, encouraged and aided in this pursuit by the ladies of the house, who were familiar with the rapids and shallows of that tune. These ladies went to it with purely business alacrity and, like a coyote family, it was surprising what amount of noise a party so small could raise.

They rollicked and raced around, up and down the long room, cowboy enthusiasm and pleasure expressed in one of the two ways their limited resources could command. As the decorum of the occasion, as well as the safety of the ladies, did not permit shooting, they yipped.

Yipping is now a lost accomplishment; it passed with the old-time cowboy. Feeble echoes of it may be heard

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 at times on the ranges of to-day, and at the big stockyards when cattle are being unloaded into the pens, but to one who has memories of those wide-flaring days on the Kansas frontier, the sound is a sham and theatrical imitation. There was a wild note in the yip of the old cowboy. When one hears it in these days of Hollywood vaqueros he knows the yipper is one who follows his herd in a Ford.

Not that art is much poorer, or that morality has suffered a setback in the passing of the old-time cowboy and his wild, high-pitched, tremulous howl. It was a sound to raise the hair on the head of a listener whose years did not permit his participation in such scenes as were enacted nightly in Poteet's Casino in the roaring little city of Pawnee Bend. There is something in police sirens reminiscent of that high-voiced revelry.

That sort of thing was new to Bill Dunham, but he had a good face for masking interest, curiosity or surprise. He stood like a man absorbed in some deep problem of his own while the dancers swirled around him with a more or less rhythmic scraping on the roughboarded floor. He was singularly interested in the two men who stood at the bar a few feet from him, waiting a little while between shots, talking in close-mouthed confidences between themselves.

One of these was a tall narrow man, bony, inflamed, morose; the other a hand shorter, of good proportions, younger and quite handsome in a purely animal way. The larger one was a spiny-featured man who seemed to disregard his appearances, probably in the full knowledge that no amount of adornment would do him

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 any good. Nature had made him so lean and mean, so long-necked and gobbler-eyed, that scraping his hide would only reveal his imperfections that much plainer to the eye. His black hair was tipped with gray.

The other was a pinkish-white man, his hair fair, his lazy eyes light. He looked like he might be an overbearing fellow, give him a chance, Dunham thought, one to make a pretext for a quarrel out of very little if he had the strength of numbers and size on his side.

These two appeared to be alone, their attention strictly on their affairs. As they drank their several rounds, deliberately, giving each drink time to soak up before putting another on top of it, they talked in close-mouthed way, never turning an eye, except casually, in Dunham's direction. His fame did not appear to move their curiosity. Old-timers on the trails, Dunham thought them to be.

Others were coming in; Mallon was up to the elbows in business, taking his drinks when invited in, which he generally was, with the systematic motion of a man pouring something into a jug. He didn't get a bit livelier for these frequent jolts of raw liquor, or a shade redder. He was as pale as a fish, with lean jaws and melancholy, reproachful dark eyes, which gave him the appearance of an ascetic rather than a repository for quarts of strong liquor every week of his life.

Dunham would have gone his way when this tide of activity began to set in against the bar, only that Mallon kept up an over-shoulder conversation with him as he ranged up and down the bar. His dexterity was admirable to watch; Dunham found diversion in it,

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 greatly as he would have been pleased to go. He did not want to be discourteous, yet the publicity which Mallon was bent on giving him made him feel that he was playing a braggart's part.

He told Mallon at last that he'd have to be traveling, and they shook hands across the bar, Charley giving him a loud invitation to make his headquarters there when in town, taking up the lemonade glass, which he had left standing, the curl of lemon peel in it proclaiming what it had contained.

That was an advertisement Charley was too shrewd to put away out of sight while it had a drop of virtue in it. This was Bill Dunham, the empty glass had said, the lemonade-drinking gunman, the fear of whom was so great in the breasts of men that he could drive a herd of Texas cattle across the line without ever throwing hand to his gun.

Dunham felt their eyes on him as he went to the door, a lull falling in the noisy diversions of the place as they forgot their pleasures to watch this slow-speaking, bashful young man go his way. A precarious way, and a doubtful one, as the way of all killers, no knowing who might be waiting for him outside to take a shot at him from the dark.

No thought like this crossed Dunham's mind as he stepped out of the door. He had only a feeling of relief at getting out of there; the fresh air was welcome to his nostrils after the fumes of Charley Mallon's hospitable presence. He walked briskly up the street in direction opposite the hotel, thinking he would stretch

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 his legs a little while along the road before going to bed.

Things had come to him so fast in the three days since leaving Pawnee Bend for the border that his encounter with Kellogg seemed a remote incident of the past. Not so regrettable, either, as to cause him any further uneasiness. Strangely, the laughable incident of the fittified man was much fresher in his thoughts.

When Dunham returned to the Family Hotel he found MacKinnon behind the desk, smoking reflectively, the register at his elbow. There was nobody lounging in the office, although the sound of movement overhead indicated that guests had arrived. MacKinnon nodded, his behavior distant and uneasy.

"I thought maybe you'd changed your mind and gone," he said.

"Where to?" Dunham inquired, pretending surprise.

"Panhandle, as I told you. First thing you know, kid, you'll hang around this man's town a little bit too long."

"I didn't run into anybody that acted very sore," Dunham said. He turned the register as if looking for a familiar name among the late arrivals. "If I can't hook up to a job around here I guess I'll have to move."

"You can railroad, if that'd suit your tastes, like I told you before."

"No, I don't think I'm cut out for a railroader."

"Well, I tell you now, Bill, if you've got a quarter the sense I gave you credit for you'll straddle your horse and leave here tonight. You're a man that's standin' between two fires right now, either one of

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 them likely to spring up and singe you before you can jump—unless you take an old fool's advice and get out of the way while there's time and a clear road."

"You mean the cattlemen on one hand, and—who?"

"The solid business interests of this town, if you've got to have it straight between the eyes, Bill. Texas cattle were all right in their day, but this country ain't buildin' its future on them: it's the ones on the range around us that mean life or death for Pawnee Bend. This will be the last year Texas cattle will come up the trails, if they don't close the state to 'em tight after this herd you brought in. My opinion is it will be the last herd of Texas cattle ever to come on foot to a Kansas town.

"Personally, I don't blame you for bringin' in that herd. I might go on to say it will be to my profit to have them southern cowboys here, and it would be more to my profit to have the country wide open to all corners from down that way. But my profit might be loss to my neighbors, you see. I built on the future when I put this buildin' up; I had my last movable, collapsible cardboard hotel in Caldwell. This one I built up from the ground to remain and stay. A man gets weary of roamin' and rovin', Will-ium."

"He sure does," Bill agreed emphatically, as if he, as a wanderer, had come to the end of the rope himself.

"You made friends here, and you might 'a' kep' them but for this unfortunate step, well-intended as it was, no doubt."

"Not a bit of it," Bill denied, just as emphatically as he had endorsed the preceding sentiment. "I didn't

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 methods of mining, but especially of smelting are, in a high degree laudable and practical, considering it is only lately that they have acquired any knowledge of chemistry and scientific mineralogy. But their methods are defective when compared with those at present employed in Europe, and if we also compare the quantity of metal obtained with that which could be obtained. Much metal always remains in the slag and stones which are castaway. Even until the year 1600 the Japanese did net separate the gold and silver from the copper ores which contained these metals.

Bürger has already described with much accuracy the manner in which the Japanese work their copper mines (l. c. page 14-99). Every one who has seen a Japanese coal-mine may learn from this how all other ores are dug, for, in Japan, for there is no difference between the processes. On a greater or less, though generally on a moderate, incline, the Japanese miner digs at the foot or in the middle of a mountain his chief entrance, and is guided by his omnipotent yake as to the direction of the subterranean incline. As soon as he meets with veins of proper richness, he follows the direction of these veins. If the veins seem not rich enough, he digs steadily in the first or in another direction to meet with the main lode of the mine. Perpendicular shafts are not sunk by the Japanese in search of the ore. If the mine has a considerable length and depth, they construct small perpendicular ventilating shafts, as the air is not sufficiently renewed if there is only one opening. These air shafts, which unite the inclined road with the top or side of the mountain, cause a better draught of air and are therefore called shaku-hachi (a kind of flute) or kase-mawashi (wind wheeler). In small mines these air shafts are often wanting, and in these cases the miners suffer much in health from the noxious gases emitted. The quantity of carbonic acid is sometimes so great that the flames of the small open mining lamps are extinguished. The greatest labour of the Japanese miner, however, is spent upon the removal of the water from the mine. The means resorted to for

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 help Hughes out of any good wishes for him. I did it because I wanted to sock one man. I wanted to sock it to him so hard he'd stagger all the rest of his life."

"Vengeance is a thing that turns out sometimes to be sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly, as the Book says, Will-ium."

"I'm beginnin' to think so myself," Bill confessed frankly, giving MacKinnon a square and honest look. "It's something like the cracker of my own whip had quirled back and cut me across the face."

MacKinnon nodded, and nodded again, to express his opinion that it was very well put in those words.

"The cowmen they'll be after you—I've got it straight they'll be after you, strong—and there's a crowd of men, some of them representin' the solid business interests in this town, swearin' tonight you'll dance on air if you're here after breakfast in the morning. There you have it, Will-ium. You see the reason for my anxiety, as a friend and well-wisher, to see you on your way to-night."

There was no use trying to explain to MacKinnon that he didn't care a damn for the sentiments of the solid business interests of Pawnee Bend, and less than that for the attitude of the cattlemen. That would only open inquiries into something that could not be spoken of to any man.

"I can't exac'ly leave tonight," Dunham said slowly, pondering it in his deep, meditative way, "and I expect, more than likely, I'll be around here to-morrow. But I don't want to cause you any trouble, or make any muss around your ho-tel, Mr. MacKinnon. If

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 my presence in your house is goin' to embarrass you, I'll take my grip and move."

"No guest of mine was ever taken out of my door to be hung!" MacKinnon said, drawing himself up in dignity and pride for the clean record of his hospitality. "No guest of mine ever shall be taken out of my door to be hung as long as I can handle a gun. You can rest on that."

Dunham said that was all the assurance any reasonable guest could ask to quiet his apprehensions, no matter how deep his guilt. As for himself, he did not stand in need of anybody's protection to insure a sound repose. The thought of a bed was a luxurious anticipation after two nights on the soft side of lumpy earth. He said good-night, and climbed the stairs, which came down steeply into the well of the office, arranged that way so MacKinnon could catch head-strong or careless guests and shake them down for the bill.

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the night Dunham's attitude toward his situation changed. Perhaps it was a subconscious adjustment, at work within him while he slept, or it may have been only the assertion of his common sense over the stubborn spirit of defiance. He woke in the conviction that he had made a mistake by remaining in Pawnee Bend, and that he would complicate it if he stopped there to tempt the rope some solid citizen might be knotting for his neck even then.

There was no chance of getting anything under his feet in that town but air, a foundation altogether too uncertain for a young man of ambitions and matrimonial designs. Nobody would give him a job; by staying there he would only be inviting disaster. They were accustomed to handling wilder men than he in that country, and it was as true that morning as when John Moore had put it bluntly some days back in Bill's adventurous career, that he could not fight them all.

It was unpleasant to think of a mob composed of the solid business interests of Pawnee Bend—of Puckett, Bergen, and the grumpy hardware man who had cursed because there was nobody to pay for the window broken by the fittified man. It would be better to slip away quietly, cowardly as it would seem to go,

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 than to exasperate them to some desperate action by the continued challenge of his presence.

There was no question but he stood outlawed on that range. Nobody would give him a job, unless it might be on the railroad gang, which did not appeal to him. His money would waste away if he continued in Pawnee Bend, where there would be constant danger of embroilment with riders of the range who would be seeking a pretext for taking his life. After breakfast he would get his horse and depart quietly, heading for the next westward town, where he could sell the animal and continue on to Santa Fé by train.

He could not hope to see Zora before going; it would be an affront to Moore, after all that had passed, to visit his place. He would write to her, post the letter in Pawnee Bend, and she would be happily relieved to know that he had taken her advice. He would go on in the expectation of a happy reunion when he should find his place and get something more substantial under his feet than a prospect of unlimited Kansas air.

MacKinnon had not said whether the time for his departure had been arbitrarily fixed by the solid interests. Dunham believed MacKinnon had named the hour in his own friendly desire to make it safe. Early morning was a dead hour in Pawnee Bend; few people but railroaders got up in time for the ordinary farmer's breakfast. Even the stores opened late, with the exception of the butcher shop, which supplied the breakfast steaks, and the saloons, which furnished the appetizers necessary to create a yearning for the butcher's beef. And the saloons, of course, never closed.

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 The breakfast steak and the before-breakfast dram were the established formula in Pawnee Bend. Gentlemen who went out for the early nip ambled on to the butcher's and brought home the breakfast steak. When the wives of Pawnee Bend put the skillets on in the morning, the atmosphere of the town was blue with the smoke of beef that had been care-free steer the night before.

Dunham felt like a sluggard when he went down stairs, for the sun was high. All his years he had been accustomed to a generous handicap in his daily race with the sun. MacKinnon was on duty, ready to collect from guests as they came clumping on high bootheels down his resounding stairs. He eyed Dunham's overstuffed suitcase with approval.

MacKinnon said he was glad reason had prevailed against the stubborn spirit of youth. The more territory a man left behind him in life's travels the farther he could see ahead. He was greatly relieved that Will-ium had taken an old fool's advice—he was not a day over fifty—and decided to journey on. Yes, he would keep the suitcase there, and send it along when Bill supplied the address.

After putting away the liberal portion of breakfast steak they cut for a man in Pawnee Bend in those days, Dunham settled with MacKinnon and said good-by. MacKinnon asked no questions on his destination or intentions, but seemed under a nervous anxiety to have him gone.

It was then about seven o'clock, which seemed to Dunham a very late hour for making a start. He

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 dropped the note he had written to Zora in the post office, and went angling across the street toward the livery stable to get his horse.

As Dunham crossed the street he saw the two men who had attracted his attention in the Casino the night before, standing in front of the San Angelo café. They were for the road also, he thought, wondering what their business could be that called for so much close conference. They were standing there in the sun picking their teeth, talking in the same oblivious manner to outside interference as last night when they leaned on Poteet's bar. They hadn't the appearance of very much consequence. Cowboys on the move from one job to another, he judged, dismissing them with the thought.

When Dunham came leading his horse out of the livery stable he found the two strangers standing near the door, looking about aimlessly, as if they had the day before them and didn't know what to do with it. He was adjusting a stirrup strap, when the elder of the pair, the tall one with the dusty stubble of beard, exclaimed to his companion and pointed to the-horse.

Dunham nodded across the saddle as they came sauntering up, in the wide-legged, ungainly gait of men who lived in the saddle, thinking they wanted to talk. They ignored the salutation with severe aloofness, looking at the horse, then at Dunham, then again at the horse, a hard look of accusation in their eyes.

"Where in the hell're you goin' to with that horse, feller?" the lanky man asked. He took hold of the bridle and stood glowering over the horse's head, Dunham with a foot in the stirrup ready to mount.

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 "Well, I don't know as that's exac'ly any of your business, friend," Dunham replied, outwardly unruffled, but feeling in that area which he defined as his craw a sinking and dragging, which told him as well as any barometer of human passions that ever might be devised, that trouble was standing in the road.

"I make it my business when I find a man ridin' off on my horse," the slab-sided fellow said. "I've been trailin' that horse, and I'm here to take him."

"You'll have to prove your ownership—I'm not goin' to take your word for that, pardner," Dunham replied, getting a little hot around the sweatband. "I bought this outfit from the man that owns this stable, and I've got his bill of sale."

"I ain't carin' a cuss about the man that had him; I'm talkin' to the man that's got him. Back up there, feller, and give me this horse!"

Dunham didn't believe the man ever saw the horse before. He raised his hand in a cautioning gesture, turned to the door and called the liveryman, whom he had left in his dusty little office smelling of neat's foot oil only a minute before.

The liveryman had disappeared. He didn't answer to the hail that Dunham sent roaring through the empty barn, but an open door at the back told which way he had gone. Whether he had dusted it out of caution, or because there was something crooked about the ownership of the horse, Dunham did not try to guess.

It came to Dunham suddenly, through that subtle sense that pricks its ears when a man confronts a situation bulging with danger, and strains every faculty to

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 escape its threat, that this was merely a trick to involve him in an altercation upon which an excuse for killing him could be hung. He believed these two had been sent there by the cattlemen to put an end to what they considered his pernicious activity. He was a stranger who might have influential relatives. There must be a color of justification for the deed, and these rascals had been inspired by sight of his horse.

"Now, look here, pardner," Dunham said, argumentatively cool, his foot withdrawn from the stirrup, hands free of the saddle, but the rein still in his left hand, "if this is your horse, what is his brand?"

The brand, the letters SJ, was on the left shoulder, opposite the claimant, and out of his sight.

"I don't have to prove the brand on anything I own," the spokesman of the pair said—the other had not opened his mouth to let out a word—with a significant motion toward his gun.

This confirmed Dunham in the belief that the man was not honestly trying to regain possession of a stolen horse, but working to frame a situation that would provoke Dunham to go after his gun. They were confident of getting him, being doubled on him that way, working to a plan they no doubt had perfected well in advance.

Dunham did some of the quickest thinking of his life in the next few seconds. Their intention could not be altered by further words. If he mounted and started out of town, they would kill him on the pretext that he was escaping with a horse they believed had been stolen from them. Even if it should be plain to every-

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 body their claim was only a pretense, it would be enough to clear them in the code of that lawless land.

"You never saw that horse before!" Dunham said, a cold bristling feeling sweeping over him. The alertness of his body and mind was intensified by the exigency. He jerked the bridle, breaking the hooked-fingerhold the man had on the bit ring, whirled the animal, gave it a sharp slap, and turned it back into the stable with a jump and a grunt. The man who had been holding the bridle had to jump lively to keep from being trampled as the horse whirled.

"He'll stay there till the liveryman comes back, then he'll do the explainin,' ifexplainin', if [sic] there's any comin' to you fellers," Dunham said.

He had maneuvered the horse into the livery barn without turning his back for a second, and at the same time put a little distance between himself and the two men. He was standing not more than ten feet from the door, the man who had done the talking on his left, the other almost directly facing him.

These two now began to spread apart, edging along watchfully, their aim being to divide Dunham's attention and get him off guard. It was easier to watch two men in one place than two men separated. When they had him right, they'd get him with little risk to themselves. That was the theory of it, as Dunham could see.

At the same time Dunham began to back off, as he had backed away from Ford Kellogg in that same street, not two hundred feet from where he stood playing his part in the prologue to this new tragedy. The

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 craft that was the most subtle force of his fighting heritage told him the farther he withdrew from them the harder it would be for them to coördinate action with intention.

Few people were on the street to witness the formation of this fighting triangle. Such as were abroad stopped in their tracks when they saw the hostile maneuvering, the wise ones dodging into the most convenient doors. The butcher, informed by a breathless customer of what was shaping up in the street, came to the door with his cleaver in his hand.

Across the street MacKinnon sat in his office reading a Kansas City paper brought over by the night operator when he went off duty, unconscious of Fate's busy writing before his very door what might turn out to be the last paragraph in Bill Dunham's brief, adventurous tale.

Nothing more was said by the weedy lank scoundrel who had pushed the unfounded quarrel to this ominous pass; not a word was uttered on either side. The argument in the case was finished; nothing was wanting but the decision, which must come in a hot streak very soon.

Dunham was prickling all over with a cold nervous thrill that maybe was nothing more noble than a savage exultation in the fight. There was no thought of danger in him, nothing but the clear, sharp calculation of chances, the keen watch for opportunity.

Give him the bulge, he kept telling himself, his main concern with the thinner man. He was the dangerous one, he was the surer one, but keep within the law; give him the bulge.

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 This man was sidling along into the street, scuffing his feet in the quick dragging movement of a boy who plays off base toward goal in some game of wits and speed, something in his movement of plain intent to deceive. His companion had backed up against the front of the barn, where he stood surly and watchful as if held at bay. His hand was near his gun, but not on it. They, also, were making a pretense of keeping within the law.

Dunham had been edging toward the barn door as he backed warily off, with a thought of dodging inside. That would put him out of sight of the man against the wall, and give him an even break. The opening was wide and high, cut to admit a wagon loaded with hay; the tall flimsy doors were folded back against the outside wall, one propped with a neckyoke, the other anchored against the wind by an old wagon wheel. A dash of six or eight feet would put Dunham inside.

How to make it was the question. He knew he would be throwing his life down if he turned his back an instant, and if he tried to crawfish that lanky man would let him have it where he lived. The fellow was watching to grab the slightest excuse for jerking out his gun, and this apparent desire to escape would give him all the grounds he needed to make a case. Sending his horse in ahead would look like part of a crafty ruse. The thought stopped Dunham in his tracks.

All this maneuvering had taken place in a very few seconds, so quickly, indeed, that the dust raised by Dunham's horse when it scurried into the barn still hung in the door. When Dunham stopped, the long

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 man stopped. The three of them stood waiting for the next move.

Who was to make it? That was the big question in Dunham's mind. They were not there to let him get away; he might as well force them to show their hands soon as late. With this intention he made a feint of breaking for the door. The pale man with his back to the wall jerked out a quick:

"Look out!"

There was not more than five yards between Dunham and either man, and about an equal distance separating the partners in this double-cinched scheme to have his life. Dunham saw both of them go after their guns at that signal, as he knew it to be. He was standing with right foot thrown back toward the door, desperately alert, hand ready to drop to his gun, a gun, as he remembered with a terrible surge of apprehension, that he never had fired.

This realization gave Dunham a tremendous jolt. It made him feel as if his last hope was gone, that he had bungled the start of that desperate race and never could regain his chance. The long man was throwing down on him when Dunham jerked his gun and fired.

The other man had put his confidence in his partner's hitherto infallible hand, a misguided trust, as he realized too late. When Dunham fired, the lanky man's gun-hand jerked up, the shot going wide and wild. Dunham had heard a chicken make the same sharp little gasping cluck when its head was whipped off quickly with an ax as the tall flat man made in his throat when that bullet cut through his heart.

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 Without turning on his heel, Dunham flipped his gun and caught the fair-skinned man through the hand while his pistol-barrel was scraping the mouth of his scabbard. The shot that the flinching jerk of the fellow's stung fingers fired tore down his leg in a bloody furrow. He dropped his gun, his right hand cut across back of the knuckles as if he had been chopped with an ax. He never would sling a gun with that hand again. His partner lay on his face in the road, his long arms flung wide, like a pilgrim at Mecca embracing the ground the prophet's feet have pressed.

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rammed his gun against the wounded man's ribs, but there was no further thought of fight in him. He stood nursing his crippled hand in his sound one, looking at the damage with that rueful expression one sees in the face of a woman when she picks up the fragments of a valued cup. There was a splotch of blood on the scoundrel's thigh which showed he had tapped himself deeper than the skin.

The shooting had brought such of the town's inhabitants as were out of bed into the street, and many who were late sleepers by reason of nocturnal habits to the windows in their slumber garments. A general, but somewhat cautious, movement set in toward the livery barn, which became almost a rush when MacKinnon came tearing over, consternation in his face.

"You've been workin' that gun again, Bill!" he said, viewing the result of the combat with expression so sorrowful it might have been thought some of his friends had fallen. "I hoped to God I could get you out of here before you could work that gun again!"

"Now, give me the straight of this thing!" Dunham demanded, shoving the wounded man against the barn, gun against his tank. "Did that man have any claim on my horse, or was this a put-up job?"

The surly fellow glowered, but kept his mouth shut.

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 Blood was streaming from his shattered hand, blood was creeping over his boot out of the fold of his trouserleg at the knee. Men came running up with beefsteak gravy and egg on their chins, some of them chewing the bite they had put into their mouths the moment before starting. They pushed up, silent, staring, to look at this desperate Bill Dunham who was loose again with his fateful gun.

"They said I stole their horse, they crowded it on me," Dunham turned to MacKinnon to explain.

"It's a terrible job you've done among 'em, Will-ium!" MacKinnon said, shuddering at the sight.

"Did your pardner ever own that horse?" Dunham pressed the question, twisting his gun-barrel into the bleeding rascal's bowels.

"He said he did; that's all I know about it," the man replied.

"Everybody in this town knows I bought that horse from the liveryman," Dunham said, glowering around on the crowd that seemed to side with this chipped scoundrel. He kicked the fellow's gun out of the way, and slipped his own into the scabbard. "Somebody take this man to a doctor before he bleeds to death," he said, shoving him roughly toward the crowd.

The doctor was on hand, ready for such business as the wreckage might yield, as well as Schubert, who was craning his neck to see, stroking his whiskers with eager hand. When Schubert saw that it was an even split between him and the doctor, he went off to fetch his board.

Dunham drew MacKinnon into the barn, where he

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 this purpose are very primitive and insufficient, and the daily and nightly labour of more than a hundred men is often required to keep this enemy at bay. It sometimes happens that the whole mine has to be abandoned, when the water, especially in April and June, has flooded the mine unusually and demands excessive labour and expense to remove it. A number of defective bamboo pumps, together with small hydraulic foot wheels, constitute the only machinery for removing the water. The combined system of sucking and forcing pumps, used in Western mines, is not known in Japan, whilst the use of steam as a motive power has as yet been introduced in but very few cases.

To bring the ore to light, the Japanese miner goes to the mine in the morning with a primitive kind of Roman lamp, consisting of a shell or small basin filled with oil, and a wick made of the pith of a kind of rush. He detaches the ore with two kinds of instruments, one of which closely resembles our double cutlass, the other being a mining chisel and hammer. The ore is nearly always extracted in small pieces to prevent the falling down of the inside of the mine, though proper care is taken to support it by wooden stays. A straw or bamboo basket receives the ore, but cannot contain more than 80-90 lbs. of mineral. The filled baskets are then dragged along the often long and steep incline of the road by means of a straw rope bound round the body of the workman or of women or children. Sometimes the baskets are carried on the backs of the miners. The wages paid to the miner are mostly according to the weight and quality of the haku-ishi (ore) brought out by him. The ore is cleaned from the adhering stones by hammering, mostly done by women and children. Thus prepared it is ready to be roasted and melted. The roasted ore is then powdered and afterwards melted, till the so called blistered copper (schwarz-kupfer) (Jap. ara-do) is obtained. In former times this ara-do was sent to the imperial copper refining works at Osaka. Here it was lengthened and refined to get pure “bar copper” (tough or poled copper) (Jap.

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 told him briefly how the two strange men had accosted him, and charged him with having stolen property belonging to the one who had paid for the false claim with his life.

"I believe it was a framed-up job. He couldn't tell me the brand on that horse. Do you know either of them?"

"No, they're strangers to me. But it's dreadful, Will-ium, the way you've got to go on killin' and slayin'. I wish to God—"

"So do I, but that don't help me any now. I tell you, MacKinnon, those two men were sent here to get me."

"I don't doubt it. And what are you goin' to do now?"

"I'm goin' on my way if nobody else shoves in to stop me. I wonder where that damn horse went?"

Plainly it had gone through the barn and out the door left open by the liveryman in his hurry to escape being drawn into the quarrel. Dunham expected to find the animal in the corral back of the building, wondering why the liveryman had shown such panic over the fuss, when no blame could attach to him. He had acted as agent for the cowboy who left the horse there to be sold. His bill of sale stated as much, in the cautious custom of those days, when the discrimination of ownership was not so very finely drawn by certain gentry who rode horses round about the land.

There were no horses in the corral, the gate of which swung open, and Dunham's horse was nowhere in sight. There was plenty of territory for a horse to throw its feet in behind the scene of Pawnee Bend's principal

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 street, and Bill Dunham's horse must have stepped lively. There wasn't a clump of bushes big enough to hide a horse within the limit of human vision; not a ravine, not a hill. The land spread away there toward the east as level as if the sea which once covered it had drained off only a little while ago, such a little while, indeed, that the grass had not got much of a start.

Nearly every building along the street had its shanty stable in the back, for that was a country where a man's legs were very short in the vast spaces between spots on the map. Dunham was unable to account for the rapid disappearance of the horse. Only a few minutes had passed since he turned the animal into the barn. It could not have gone far, perhaps across the railroad, where it might be picking around behind the string of boarding cars.

But it was not there. The same red-armed, manly woman who had refused to feed him a few days before, and the bleary, hairy, ashy consort who had ordered him to make tracks for the favored point of consignment in Pawnee Bend, answered his inquiries graciously, even eagerly. They came down out of the car in their desire to show friendly coöperation, for Dunham was known to everybody on both sides of the tracks by that time, by name and fame, if not by sight. He was a man to be propitiated. They would have set a special table for him in the boarding train that morning if he had asked for a meal.

No, they hadn't seen a horse with saddle and bridle on roaming around over there. Toward the south the

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 land began to rise in the swells that became broken country near the river, but it was considerable distance to the first rise big enough to hide a horse. The animal had not come that way, Dunham was certain, but where it had gone was a puzzle.

Dunham was not thinking very clearly just then, his faculties being in a state of readjustment after the pulling strain of the fight. He was hazy and dizzy, a heavy numbness blunting his reasoning powers, which lumbered around like a clumsy driver trying to back a wagon into a barn door. He went back to the barn to see if the horse might have dodged into a stall and passed his notice, a throbbing in his temples, a sinking dull feeling of melancholy bearing down on him like a sodden load.

It was a terrible thing to have to kill a man, even a vicious, mean-grained villain who was out to have your life. It pulled down on a man's heart; it saddened him, it made the sun smoky and the day obscure.

After another fruitless search of the barn, Bill ranged along the back shanties, thinking the fool creature might have run into an open door somewhere. No sign of him there, nothing standing open to invite a vagrant horse. Bill went up one side of town and down the other, his trouble increasing at every step. He skirmished among the outlying scattered small houses, inquiring of frowsled women who appeared in the doors, or of sluggardly men who hoed and weeded in anemic small gardens, or stripped lean cows in dooryard lots.

Nobody had seen a horse, but they all picked up with lively interest when they recognized the notorious Bill

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 Dunham with his infallible pistol hanging on his hip. Some of the men trailed along with him, eager to do a service to such a notable character; women lingered in doors to look after him, dumbly awed by the passing of a man whose name was so terrible, as they simply and confidently believed, in the ears of cattlemen that he could walk through a hundred of them without ever throwing hand to his gun.

Dunham must have put in nearly an hour tearing around looking for that blamed horse. The fool thing had disappeared as completely as if a seam had split in the prairie and enveloped it. Bill came poling out on the railroad fully convinced that the horse had not accomplished such a complete disappearance unaided.

Somebody had grabbed that horse when it left the corral, and either ridden it off or hidden it in some shed. But that belief hardly would warrant him in going around demanding stable owners to show him what horses they were harboring that morning. Trouble would attend such a proceeding, and he was a man who had trouble enough on his hands for one day.

He headed back to the livery barn to see if the owner had returned, thinking he'd be in a hell of a fix if he couldn't find that horse. His new slicker, his coat, his blankets, grub, rifle and ammunition were on the horse, which was at once his ticket and his conveyance to a point far distant from the troubled atmosphere of Pawnee Bend.

Bill stood on the station platform, almost where he had stood on the day of his first arrival in Pawnee Bend, looking up the street, thirtking resentfully of the

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 trick somebody had turned on him, vaguely conscious of the strange quietude of the town. The street was deserted; there was not a boot-heel thumping the board sidewalks its entire length. The hitching-racks were empty, but that was to be expected so early in the day. A woman was coming out of the butcher shop, turning toward the railroad, the sole person abroad in the length of that sunny street.

It looked like a trifling, unsubstantial place, Bill thought, spread out like a spatter of something dropped in a dusty road. A mean looking town, as ugly as botch carpenters could build it and hot sun could warp it out of shape; a place a man ought to be happier for leaving than living in, not one thing about it that even success could endear.

The woman was coming over that way, her dress blowing in the wind that always set in about eight o'clock. The sun flashed on a ring she wore on the hand that held her package of meat, and she came along nimbly, bending a little to shield her eyes from the sun. The agent's wife, he recognized her, a young, comely woman whom he had seen helping her husband at the telegraph keys.

She looked pale and agitated, Dunham thought, as she hurried across the rails, coming to the platform where it sloped wedge-like to the ground, a few yards from where he stood. Her eyes were big and frightened as she came up to him, and Dunham turned away, feeling a debasing sweep of shame for the notoriety of his name that made a woman afraid to pass him by.

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