"Why don't you carry matches?"

Fresno puffed complacently upon his pipe. "This," he mused, as
his host departed, "eliminates the chaperon, and that helps
some."

Still Bill Stover lost no time in breaking the news to the boys.

"There's something comin' off," he advised Willie. "We've got
another foot-runner!"

If he had hoped for an outburst of rapture on the part of the
little gun man he was disappointed, for Willie shifted his
holster, smiled evilly through his glasses, and inquired, with
ominous restraint:

"Where is he?"

Being the one man on the Flying Heart who had occasion to wear a
gun, Willie seldom smiled from a sense of humor. Here it may be
said that, deceived at first by his scholarly appearance, his
fellow-laborers had jibed at Willie's affectation of a swinging
holster, but the custom had languished abruptly. When it became
known who he was, the other ranch-hands had volubly declared that
this was a free country, where a man might exercise a wide
discretion in the choice of personal adornment; and as for them,
they avowed unanimously that the practice of packing a Colts was
one which met with their most cordial approbation. In time
Willie's six-shooter had become accepted as a part of the local
scenery, and, like the scenery, no one thought of remarking upon