A quart whiskey flask, nearly empty, stood on the ground in the light of the fire round which the men were seated. As he approached they all looked up and nodded and muttered careless greetings. It seemed to suggest a movement on the part of Dan Willis, a tall man of thirty-five or thirty-six years of age, who wore long, matted hair and had bushy eyebrows and a sweeping mustache, for, taking up the flask, he rose and dropped it into his coat-pocket and spoke to the two men who sat on either side of Abe Johnson. “Come on,” he growled, “I want to talk to you. I don't care whether you join us or not, Abe.” “Well, I'm out of it,” replied Johnson. “I've talked to you fellows till I'm sick. You are too darned full to have any sense.” Willis and the two men walked off together and stood behind one of the wagons. Their voices, muffled by the effects of whiskey, came back to the ears of the remaining two. “Goin' out home to-night, Abe?” Baker asked, carelessly. “I want to, but I don't like to leave that damned fool here in the condition he's in. He'll either commit murder or git his blasted head shot off.” “That's exactly what _I_ was thinking about,” said Pole, sitting down on the ground carelessly and drawing his knees up in the embrace of his strong arms. “Look here, Abe, me'n you hain't to say quite as intimate as own brothers born of the same mammy, but I hain't got nothin' agin you of a personal nature.” “Oh, I reckon that's all right,” the other said, stroking his round, smooth-shaven face with a dogged sweep of his brawny hand. “That's all right, Pole.” “Well, my family knowed yore family long through the war,” Abe. “My daddy was with yourn at the front, an' our mothers swapped sugar an' coffee in them hard times, an', Abe, I'm here to tell you I sorter hate to see an unsuspectin' neighbor like you walk blind into serious trouble, great big trouble, Abe--trouble of the sort that would make a man's wife an' childern lie awake many and many a night.” “What the hell you mean?” Johnson asked, picking up his ears. “Why, it's this here devilment that's brewin' betwixt Dan an' Carson Dwight.” [Illustration: 0031] “Well, what's that got to do with _me?_” Johnson asked, in surly surprise. “Well, it's jest this, Abe,” Pole leaned back till his feet rose from the ground, and he twisted his neck as his eyes followed the three men who, with their heads close together, had moved a little farther away. “Maybe you don't know it, Abe, but I used to be in the government revenue service, and in one way and another that's neither here nor there I sometimes drop onto underground information, an' I want to give you a valuable tip. I want to start you to thinkin'. You'll admit, I reckon, that if them two men meet to-night thar will be apt to be blood shed.” Johnson stared over the camp-fire sullenly. “If Carson Dwight hain't had the sense to git out o' town thar will be, an' plenty of it,” he said, with a dry chuckle.