Bob Hampton of Placer

For a long, breathless moment Hampton stared incredulously at his

questioner, crushing his cigar between his teeth. Twice he started to

speak, but literally choked back the bitter words burning his lips,

while an uncontrollable admiration for the other's boldness began to

overcome his first fierce anger.

"By God!" he exclaimed at last, rising to his feet and pointing toward

the door. "I have shot men for less. Go, before I forget your cloth.

You little impudent fool! See here--I saved that girl from death, or

worse; I plucked her from the very mouth of hell; I like her; she 's

got sand; so far as I know there is not a single soul for her to turn

to for help in all this wide world. And you, you miserable, snivelling

hypocrite, you little creeping Presbyterian parson, you want me to

shake her! What sort of a wild beast do you suppose I am?"

Wynkoop had taken one hasty step backward, impelled to it by the fierce

anger blazing from those stern gray eyes. But now he paused, and, for

the only time on record, discovered the conventional language of polite

society inadequate to express his needs.

"I think," he said, scarcely realizing his own words, "you are a damned

fool."

Into Hampton's eyes there leaped a light upon which other men had

looked before they died,--the strange mad gleam one sometimes sees in

fighting animals, or amid the fierce charges of war. His hand swept

instinctively backward, closing upon the butt of a revolver beneath his

coat, and for one second he who had dared such utterance looked on

death. Then the hard lines about the man's mouth softened, the fingers

clutching the weapon relaxed, and Hampton laid one opened hand upon the

minister's shrinking shoulder.

"Sit down," he said, his voice unsteady from so sudden a reaction.

"Perhaps--perhaps I don't exactly understand."

For a full minute they sat thus looking at each other through the fast

dimming light, like two prize-fighters meeting for the first time

within the ring, and taking mental stock before beginning their

physical argument. Hampton, with a touch of his old audacity of

manner, was first to break the silence.

"So you think I am a damned fool. Well, we are in pretty fair accord

as to that fact, although no one before has ever ventured to state it

quite so clearly in my presence. Perhaps you will kindly explain?"

The preacher wet his dry lips with his tongue, forgetting himself when

his thoughts began to crystallize into expression.