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 crowd laughs and moves closer. I snatched a very comfortin'-lookin' ax off the counter and was heftin' it, when the Kid come through. His face has went as red as Désirée's did, and then it gets fightin' white. He measures the big guy with his blazin' eye, then checks up that measurement with a straight left. The big fellow's lowered head come up with a jerk in time to keep a date with the right hook which had once made Kid Roberts a world's champion. Plock! Down goes Mister Big Boy with a crash which shook the store, and I guess if they hadn't swept him up he'd be lyin' there yet. When me and Kid Roberts walked out through a lane of dazed-lookin' lumberjacks five minutes later, the Kid's prey was still gettin' first aid from disgusted friends.

Well the next day we get routed out of the bunk house at the horrible hour of five in the mornin', and the camp boss sends us out in the woods with a crew. It was colder than Zero's home town, so it's a case of work snappy or turn into a icicle. Kid Roberts throws himself into the job of toughenin' up his long idle muscles with a gusto, but it was different here! After three or four hours of choppin' and sawin' I was satisfied that lumber-jackin' was all wrong.

When I moan to Kid Roberts he laughs at me, sayin' that he's takin' as much punishment as I am and likewise it was me which choosed the lumber camp in the first place. His advice to me is to take it and shut up. This fails to comfort me to any great extent and many's the time I wished we had picked a cream-puff factory or the like as trainin' quarters. Be-