For some tranquil weeks, The Reformer blithely went his way without giving any one sufficient cause to try to kill him. Perhaps the widely advertised fact that he had at last yielded to the protective use of firearms deterred the less courageous spirits from taking a chance, while others hoped that this was evidence that he was becoming tolerant to the exigencies of his environment. Ring had come to Murdock from the highly moral and quiet surroundings of a mid-Western town and mid-Western university, imbued with the idea that his mission in life rested in making a mining camp model itself on the same lines, and--the mining camp couldn’t see it. His indomitable courage had saved him from ridicule, his increasing love for the town had gained him respect, and almost imperceptibly he had begun to wield considerable influence in all ordinary matters not too intimately associated with his ideas of reform. Even Placer City, Murdock’s rival, admitted this, and Placer City was farther away than it looked. The camps were visible to each other, and on a clear day the residents of one could be observed by those of the other with a pair of field glasses. Because of an enormous cañon, however, that separated them to make way for the river bed, necessitating a day’s journey for one to visit the other, intercourse was of the most meager for all save the most energetic and determined, who could shorten the time to five or six hours by taking a perilous trail down one steep side and up the other. * * * * * Ring found the way to Placer City, and Mr. Ring was energetic. He also discovered that there was no adequate job-printing plant in Placer City, and that it offered a rich field for his efforts. Mr. Ring was not one to spare effort. “That’s one thing that maybe accounts for his sort of taming himself down lately,” observed Fosdike to his friend Circumlocutory Smith. “He sort of works off a lot of surplus steam by making a trip once or twice a week to Placer, and every time he does twelve hours grueling work climbing down one side and up the other, to say nothing of a few miles extra walking drumming up printing jobs after he gets there, it makes him less combative and reformative here at home. Now if business would get good enough over there so he’d move his whole blamed outfit across the gulch and stay there, it’d be mighty big relief to Murdock.” “I ain’t so sure about that,” the miner objected. “I think he’s doing a heap of good for this camp and----” “Oh, I forgot you was chock-full of admiration for him,” Fosdike interrupted. “Also that he’d been such an all-fired good friend and backer, and so on, of yours.”