“Ef you want to be a damn fool that’s your own look out,” interrupted Cheetim, with a snarl, “but it won’t keep me from doin’ what I’m goin’ to do. Ef you’re fool enough to kill yourself afterward, you can.” “You didn’t let me finish,” said Wichita. “I’ll kill myself, all right, but I’ll kill you first.” The men were entering the room; and Cheetim stood, hesitating, knowing the girl meant what she said. He was a coward, and he had not had quite enough whiskey to bolster up his courage to the point of his desires. “Oh, well,” he said, “we won’t quarrel this a-way on our honeymoon. You jest go in the other room there, dearie, an’ make yourself to home; an’ we’ll talk things over later. Git me a piece of rope, one o’ you fellers. I ain’t goin’ to take no chances of my bride vamoosin’.” In the small back room of the shack they tied Wichita’s wrists and ankles securely and left her seated on an old bench, the only furniture that the room boasted. Out in the front room the men were making preparations to cook some of the food they had brought with them, but most of their time was devoted to drinking and boasting. Cheetim drank with a purpose. He wanted to arrive, as quickly as possible, at a state of synthetic courage that would permit him to ignore the moral supremacy of the girl in the back room. He knew that he was physically more powerful, and so he could not understand why he feared her. Cheetim had never heard of such a thing as an inferiority complex, and so he did not know that that was what he suffered from in an aggravated form whenever he faced the level gaze and caustic tongue of Wichita Billings. The more Cheetim drank the louder and more boastful he became. Wichita could hear him narrating the revolting details of numerous crimes that he had committed. “Yo shua ah some bad hombre, ‘Dirty’,” eulogized one of his party. “Oh, I don’t claim to be no bad man,” replied Cheetim, modestly. “What I says is thet I has brains, an’ I use ’em. Look how I fooled ‘Smooth’—sent him off on a wild goose chase an’ then swipes his girl while he’s gone.” They all laughed uproariously. “An’ he better not get funny about it neither, even ef he don’t like it. I kin use my brains fer other things besides gettin’ me my women. Ol’ man Billings larnt thet. He kicked me out oncet; an’ I suppose he thought I was afraid of him, but I was jest waitin’. I waited a long time, but I got him.” “You got him? You did not. He was kilt by Injuns,” contradicted one. “Injuns, Hell!” ejaculated Cheetim. “Thar’s where I used my brains. I killed Billings, but I was cute enough to scalp him. I——” Drunk as he was, he realized that he had gone too far, had admitted too much. He looked wickedly about the room. “What I’ve told you is among friends,” he said. “Ef any of you fellers ever feels like you’d like to join Billings all you got to do is blab what I jest told you. Savvy?”