It was a long time before Circumlocutory Smith forgot that ride in the only semicomfortable conveyance that could be obtained, a disused stagecoach that swayed and swung as if its springs and leathers had become limber through long neglect, and whose woodwork creaked dismally, like the bones of an aged man driven to painful effort. Smith sat and watched the crusader, who lay motionless on the floor of the vehicle, the young man who had once been his enemy, whom he had once before saved from a mob, and for whom he had a strange affection. “Right or wrong--always brave!” Smith thought admiringly. “Too brave. Foolishly brave. Never cared about the odds or how they came, one or a hundred, with fists, clubs or guns. All the same to Ring! And--always ready to fight for what he thought was right! Be a pity if he’s got his by being kicked to death by a mob of boneheads, not one of whom had the courage to go after him single-handed. Wonder what it was all about?” * * * * * This curiosity grew within him until, when they stopped the horses pulling the stage, he got out and changed places with Jim who had been sitting beside the driver. “You got any idea what started all that fuss back there?” Smith asked the man, when they were once more on the road. “Reckon I have,” the driver returned. “I heard most of it, and seen most of it--out of my haymow winder.” “Well?” demanded the miner. “Looky here. I ain’t lookin’ for no trouble with you, and somehow it seems you’re a friend of his, although why the hell you should be, beats me! But---- He got too damn fresh. He’s taken to comin’ over to Placer from Murdock lately, to try to drum up business. And he got a lot of it, too, folks say. Then he gets a nettle in his brain blankets that Placer City’s a wicked place, and he comes out in his Murdock rag and has a whole column tellin’ how rotten things are run over in our town, and among other things he hits ‘undesirable tenants’ in certain houses in Placer City. He hops the mayor for it and says the mayor owns the houses. That was the mayor you fixed up with a busted nose, a few front teeth knocked out, a pair of black eyes and a tin ear. Humph! And the way it started!” He grunted and, when urged to proceed, said, half turning in his seat: “You see, it was this way. Ring stood for all the mayor had to say to him and what one or two others had to offer until the mayor says: “‘You got a hell of a right to talk, you or any other Murdock man, when you’ve got a thing like that Pearl Brown runnin’ your most decent dump--a place like that Alamo.’ “Then the mayor called this Pearl Brown person a name or two, but hadn’t got through when this Ring--the red-headed, cantankerous cuss!--yells: