"Not much!" came the reply at last, while the speaker gathered up the cards and began dealing. "If this place is good enough for me, I reckon it's good enough for a blasted Sissy of your description!" No one would do Mr. Christie the injustice to suppose that his remark was unembellished by more forcible expressions than are hereby recorded. Yet, somehow, the worst of them lacked the sting that Simon managed to get into his reply, as he said, in a suppressed voice: "This place ain't good enough, as far's that goes, for the meanest skunk God ever created! But it'll do for what we've got to settle between us." "Have a seat, Mister?" A sick-looking girl, with blazing cheeks, had placed a chair for him. "Have a----" The words died on her lips before the solemn, reproachful look the professor turned upon her. "And Jinny looked smart As a cranberry tart!" sang the discordant voice from the stage, which nobody thought of listening to. "It's the Lame Gulch Professor," the black-haired man remarked, taking a look at his cards, before turning to his glass for refreshment. "Damn the Lame Gulch Professor!" Christie retorted, by way of acknowledging the introduction. Then Simon spoke again. "Mr. Christie, you've got the prettiest and smartest little girl in Lame Gulch," he declared, laying down his proposition in a tone of extreme deliberation; "and you hit her over the head last night, and 't ain't the first time neither." "Is that the latest news you've got to give us?" asked Christie, passing his hand caressingly over his pistol, which lay like a lap-dog on his knees. "Better let that alone," said the black-haired gambler, persuasively. "The professor's ben good to my kids." The threat was so very covert that the sensitive Christie did not feel himself called upon to recognize it as such. "_He_ ain't no target," Christie declared, with unutterable contempt. "I'd as soon shoot a door-mat!" whereupon he proceeded, in a disengaged manner, to empty the contents of the black bottle into a glass, flinging the bottle under the table, with a praiseworthy regard for appearances. Simon breathed deep and hard, and again there was an exasperating tremor in his low-pitched voice, which drawled more than usual, as he said: "No; 't ain't the latest news! What I specially come to tell you was, that if you ever lay hands on that child agin, I'll shoot you deader 'n any door-mat you ever wiped your great cowardly boots on!"