I tumbled out of my bath into bed, stayed there an hour, got up, dressed in immaculate flannels and started in on the proofs. A reporter from the _Gazette_ called up about noon to say he had been lying in ambush for me ever since the Livingston papers had warned him of my departure. Could he come over for a story? I couldn't very well refuse that, but took the precaution of throwing my "Indian Police" uniform in the closet before he arrived. Then I made a special point of telling him I always wore flannels and duck on my river trips--sort of survival of my South Sea yatching days. If he would only put that in, I reckoned, it would effectually drag a red herring across any suspicions that might be aroused by a reading of the story in the minds of my late subjects. He forgot it as a matter of fact, but it wasn't that that did the harm. It was just hard luck--_Joss_, as the sailors say. The next day was the Fourth of July, a holiday, but a very obliging express agent, who came down town and opened up his office to let me get out a sleeping bag, made it unnecessary to hang on another night in Billings. The _Gazette_ story brought no demonstrations--that is, of a hostile nature. Calls from scouting secretaries searching for a fatted calf to butcher for club holidays were the only ripples on the surface. Still with my fingers crossed, I ordered a closed taxi for the run down to my boat. It would have been a perfectly clean get-away had not _Joss_ decreed that I should leave my package at the railway station to be picked up as I went by. Returning to the taxi from the check-room a man was waiting for me outside of the door. [Illustration: © _L. A. Huffman_ HERD, POWDER RIVER VALLEY] [Illustration: © _L. A. Huffman_ SHEEP BY THE WATER, BIG POWDER RIVER] "My name is Allstein," he began; but I had observed that before he opened his hard-set jaw. Without waiting for him to go on I made one wild, despairing bid to keep my honour white. I feel to this day that it deserved to have succeeded. "Came in on the brake-beams, going out on shank's mare," I chirruped blithely, and forthwith (to the very evident perturbation of the taxi-driver) started as if off for Miles City on foot. Some will say my reasoning was quixotic, but this was the way of it at any rate: I cared no whit if hardware-drummer Allstein believed I was a hobo, just as long as he continued to believe I was an ex-sparring partner of Jack Dempsey. And what he must be prevented from knowing at any cost was that, far from being even the hammiest of ham-and-sparring partners, I was what the _Gazette_ cub had characterized as a "daring novelist seeking material for new book by running rapids of Yellowstone."