Afterwards to the bully who lay on the sand sobbing with rage and pain, he gave curt orders. “You’ll go back to town and not show up at the wagon to-night. To-morrow you’ll tell Mrs. Dodson you had a fight. You’ll not tell her who with or what it was about. If you ever lay a hand on her again or on Vicky, I’ll break every bone in your body. Understand?” The beaten man gulped out what might be taken for an assent. Scot turned away, sick at heart. Already he questioned the wisdom of what he had done. CHAPTER VIII SCOT OFFERS HEALTH HINTS A Washoe zephyr was playing impish tricks in Virginia City. It screamed down the side of Mt. Davidson in a gale of laughter, filling the air with the white powder of alkali dust. It snatched hats from unwary heads and sent them flying into the cleft cañon below which led through the hills to the sage desert. It swooped up a dog on A Street and dropped the yelping cur down the chimney of a shack on B Street. Boards were ripped from fences and sucked straight into the air for fifty feet. A basket of duck eggs took premature flight from a farmer’s wagon, sailed through the window of a barber shop, and gave a customer in the chair a free egg shampoo. The wind came in ribald gusts, tremendous, filled with jeering howls. About Virginia City there have been many disputes, but nobody who lived there in the ’sixties ever denied that it was the windiest spot on earth. The town slanted like a steep roof, each street a terrace. During the zephyrs all sorts of possessions came rolling downhill like tumbleweeds. They ranged in size from a spool of thread to the roof of a house. Scot McClintock, working his way along B Street, took refuge in a hurdy-gurdy[7] near Union. The noise of a piano, of fiddles, of stamping feet, filled the hall. The place was flooded with light from kerosene lamps set in candelabras with crystal pendants. At one side of the room was the inevitable bar. ----- [7] An unusual feature of Virginia City was the hurdy-gurdy house. In the early days it was quite respectable, at least from the Western point of view. The girls were generally Germans. Their business was to dance with the miners and to lead them afterwards to the bar for a drink. Most of the girls saved their money to send home to their parents overseas. Serious-minded young women, they often married well and happily. Later, these houses degenerated.—W. M. R. ----- A blonde young woman of Teutonic descent joined Scot. “Would you like to dance, Mr. McClintock?” she asked deferentially. “Not to-night, thank you,” he answered with the grave respect he gave all women. His glance swept the hall, was arrested at a small group near the farther end of the bar. The central figure of it was a huge rough-bearded man with long hair flowing to his shoulders. He wore an army overcoat, dusty boots, and Mexican spurs.