The bar-keeper looked at Sandy a long time, as if some great question was battling in his mind. At last, in a husky and hurried voice, he said, as he looked out through the door, and over his shoulder, as if he feared the very logs of the house might betray him: "Them's Danites." "What in hell do they want at the Forks?" The sledge-hammer fist fell on the counter like a thunder-bolt. "Shoo!" The red, bristled head of the bar-keeper reached over toward Sandy. The bar-keeper's hand reached out and took Sandy by the loose blue-shirt bosom, and drew him close up to the red head. Then again looking toward the door, and then back over his shoulder, as if he suspected that his own bottles might hear him, he said, in a sharp hissing whisper, "Shoo! They want Nancy Williams!" Sandy's mind at once turned to the Widow. He dared not trust the bar-keeper. In truth, no man dared trust his best friend where this most terrible and secret order was concerned. He did not answer this man, but silently, and as unconcerned as possible, turned away and went back to his cabin. CHAPTER VII. THAT BOY. As before remarked, the boy poet, Little Billie Piper, sly and timid as he was with the men, was about the first to make friends with this first woman in this wild Eden. Men noted this as they did all things that in any way touched the life or affairs of the Widow, and made their observations accordingly. "Thim's a bad lot," said the Irishman, as he rested his elbow on the counter, and held his glass poised in the air; "thim's a bad lot fur the woman, as writes poetry." Then the son of Erin winked at the row of men by his side--winked right and left--lifted his glass, shut both his eyes, and swallowed his "tarantula juice," as they called it in the mines. Then this man wiped his broad mouth on his red sleeve, hitched up the broad belt that supported his duck breeches, and said, with another wink: "Jist think of Bryan; that fellow, Lord O'Bryan. Why, gints, I tell yez he was pizen on the six." But the Parson, the great rival of Sandy for the Widow's affections, took a deeper interest in this than that of an idle gossip. It was with a lofty sort of derision in his tone and manner, that he now always spoke of the strange little poet, as "That Boy." The Parson regarded him with bitter envy, as he oftentimes, at dusk and alone, saw him enter the Widow's cabin. At such times the Parson would usually stride up and down the trail, and swear to himself till he fairly tore the bark from the trees. On one occasion, the boy returning to his own cabin at an earlier hour than usual, was met in the trail, where it ran around the spur of the mountain, on a high bluff, by the infuriated Parson. Little Billie, as was his custom, gave him the trail, all of the trail, and stood quite aside on the lower hill-side, to let him pass.