The first lurid scene was the Deserted Limited held up at a tank station in
the great Mojave Desert by a lone, masked bandit who winged the dreaming
Butch in the shoulder, the latter being an express guard who resisted.
After the desperado, Two-Gun Steve, had forced the engineer to run the
train back to a siding, he had ordered Butch to vamoose. Quite naturally,
then, the collegian next found himself staggering across the arid expanse,
until at last, half dead from a burning thirst, seeking vainly for a
water-hole, the vast stretch of sandy, sagebrush-studded wastes shimmered
into a gorgeous ocean of sparkling blue waters. Then, as he collapsed on
the scorching-hot sand, helpless, the cool water so near, suddenly the
scene shifted.

In quick and vivid succession, Butch Brewster beheld a burning stockade
besieged by howling Indians, and a frontier town shot up by recklessly
riding cowboys on a jamboree. Then he became a tenderfoot, badgered by
yelling, shooting roisterers, and later a sheriff, bravely leading his
posse to a sensational battle with that same Two-Gun Steve and his gang,
entrenched in a rock-bound mountain defile.

Finally, he stood with hands above his head in company with other
passengers of the Sagebrush Stagecoach, while a huge, red-shirted Westerner
with a fierce black mustache and a six-shooter in each hand belching
bullets at Butch's dancing feet, roared out huskily: "Oh--I'm a ring-tailed
roarer (bang-bang)! I'm a rip-snortin', high-falutin', loop-the-loopin'
bad man (bang-bang)! I'm wild an' woolly, an' full o' fleas, an' hard
to curry below the knees--I'm a roarin' wild-cat, an' it's my night to howl
(bang-bang)! Yip-yip-yip-yeee!"

Big Butch, opening his eyes and starting up, gazed about him in sheer