I turned to my friend. He was gently fingering a gun. With a cold, steely eye, the three-card-monte man stood, a pistol in his hand, with one end lying on the bar, casually pointing my way. In front of me the “barkeep” had risen with another. I looked behind for help, and all the men from the train had silently melted away. Leaving the twenty on the bar, I turned and walked slowly out of the place, not daring to increase my pace by one second until I reached the train. I told my story to the conductor, and he said if I had carried off any winnings these men would have followed me to the ends of the earth and taken it from me. If I had been killed, they would have hitched my body to a horse and dragged it out into the sagebrush, leaving the coyotes to do the rest. As an unpleasant sequel to this, I read in one of the first papers I picked up in San Francisco an account of two brothers from Vermont who got in with the same men. The first lost all of his money and borrowed all of his brother’s, finally getting into a row with the gamblers, and was shot dead. The other brother escaped and somehow got to the train, going on to Salt Lake City, where he telegraphed home for more money. Watching his time, he went back to the saloon, shot the “barkeep” and capper dead, and left the three-card-monte man dying on the floor. I carried a pistol on this trip, but up to this time I had had no chance to use it. However, since I had looked down the barrels of several myself, I was beginning to feel very brave. That romantic idea of “avenging one’s honor or that of one’s women” had quite got into my blood. The train broke down at Winnemucca, in a country covered with six feet of snow. A crowd of us had been having a good time amid much good-natured talking and chaffing, when I saw one of the trainmen, evidently drunk, sitting beside a woman passenger, with his arms about her, kissing her violently. Her husband was standing beside the seat, protesting, with no effect. Instantly I was at the head of a crowd that took the offender by the neck and threw him off the train. Without my counting the cost, I became the hero of the hour. But all was not finished. Our intoxicated friend came around under the window and raged threateningly until there was nothing for me to do but go out to meet him. Drawing my pistol, I strode on to the platform. The minute he saw me his hand went to his pocket and drew out his gun, but I had him covered.