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 and thankin' you I couldn't get the upper hand of him till you put me on my horse and started me off."

Dr. Hall looked at Gus, queerly puzzled, not understanding whether the dry old salamander meant it for a pleasantry. There was nothing jocular in the man's voice, which was slow and deep, and altogether lugubrious. If voices were to be classified by color, thought Dr. Hall, Gus Sandiver's would be called a faded blue.

"What was your final decision, Gus?" the doctor asked.

"It was the decision of any man with as much insides—to him as a garfish," Gus replied. "You saved my neck at the risk of your own. I could see that in them wolf faces pushed up around your door."

"I don't know about that," Hall said, indecisively.

"You know better than I do what you poured on that sponge, Doc. Maybe it was hartshorn, but I didn't get a sniff of it if it was; maybe it was some kind of stuff I never heard of, and maybe it was plain water, as I suspected at the time, and suspect harder the longer I think it over."

"Just so it worked," said Hall, depreciating the trick.

"I went over that night specially hopin' to sling a chunk of lead into you, Doc."

"Well, as long as you didn't do it, I guess we can forget it," Hall proposed, laughing over it a little, although he was not especially easy in his saddle just then.

He noted that Gus was wearing his gun, and that his right hand appeared to be in condition to use it, although it was bound around the wrist with a cloth, over which a broad strap was buckled.

"I was feelin' as mean as a skunk towards you, Doc, in