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 dressed in tight-fitting trousers and fancy boots which must have cost him a month's wages at the least. He wore a red-and-black plaid shirt, loose-fitting in body and sleeves, with a blue silk kerchief around his neck. His hat was bigger by broad odds than any other in the house, a new one of the standard cream-white so much in vogue on the range from Texas to Montana in that day.

Bill's companions were filling their glasses again. Major Simmons turned a quick eye to him, in as plain an appeal as Bill ever read, to uphold the honor of the county of which he was a father. Bill was wondering if he could do it without making his case worse than it stood at present, when the cowboy laid hold of him and whirled him around from the bar.

"Look a-here, Buttermilk!" he said, "if you can't stand up and take a man's drink when you're out among men, I'll make you roll your hoop to hell out o' here. Put 'er down your neck, Buttermilk!"

The rest of them, railroaders and all, came crowding near to see the fun.

"Make it sassaferiller!" said a cowboy in high, piping voice meant to mimic innocence and simplicity, which all right-minded cow-chasers were supposed to despise.

"Now, boys, now, boys," Major Simmons said in a manner of go-easy and let—him-alone.

If Bill had made any progress toward a decision in the matter of taking a drink, the cowboy's order set him back at once to a firm determination that he wouldn't. He flung the fellow's hand from his shoul-