"_Colby_!" yelled Lefty Dawson, as the others stared foolishly. "_Colby_! Why, that’s three hundred miles south of here! An’ you let us make fools of ourselves for _three_ days! I ’ll bust you open!" and he arose to carry out his threat. "Where ’d you git them trophies?" shouted Dad angrily. "Them was genuine!" Jimmy slipped through the door as Dawson leaped and he fled at top speed to the corral, mounted in one bound and dashed off a short distance. "Why, I got them trophies in a poker game from that same Pawnee scout, you Mosshead! He could n’t play th’ game no better ’n you fellers. An’ th’ blood is snake’s blood, fresh put on. You _will_ drive me out of town, hey?" he jeered, and, wheeling, forthwith rode for his life. Back in the store Bill knocked aside the rifle barrel that Carter shoved through a loop hole. "A joke ’s a joke, Carter," he said sternly. "You don’t aim to hit him, but you might," and Carter, surprised at the strength of the twist, grinned, muttered something and went to the door without his rifle, which Bill suddenly recognized. It was the weapon that had made up Jimmy’s "trophies"! "Blame his hide!" spluttered Lefty, not knowing whether to shoot or laugh. A queer noise behind him made him turn, a movement imitated by the rest. They saw Bill rolling over and over on the floor in an agony of mirth. One by one the enraged garrison caught the infection and one by one lay down on the floor and wept. Lefty, propping himself against the sugar barrel, swayed to and fro, senselessly gasping. "They _allus_ are raidin’ down Colby way! Blame my hide, _oh_, blame my hide! Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! They _allus_ are raidin’ down _Colby_ way!" "Three days, an’ Hank _on_ th’ roof!" gurgled George Bruce. "_Three_ days, by Scott!" "Hank on th’ roof," sobbed Carter, "settin’ on splinters an hot rosim! Whee-hee-hee! Three-hee-hee days hatchin’ pine knots an’ rosim!" "Gimme a drink! Gimme a drink!" whispered Dad, doubled up in a corner. "Gimme a ho-ho-ho!" he roared in a fresh paroxysm of mirth. "Lefty an’ George settin’ up nights watchin’ th’ shadders! Ho-ho-ho!" "An’ Carter boardin’ us _free_!" yelled Baldy; Martin. "Oh, my G—d! He’ll never get over it!" "Yessir!" squeaked Dad. "_Free_; an’ scared we ’d let ’em burn his store. ’Better stand ’em off in my place,’ he says. ’It’s full of grub,’ he says. He-he-he!" "An’ did you see Hank squattin’ on th’ roof like a horned toad waitin’ for his dinner?" shouted Dickinson. "I’m goin’ to die! I’m goin’ to die!" he sobbed. "No sich luck!" snorted Hank belligerently. "I ’ll skin him alive! Yessir; _alive_!" Carter paused in his calculations of his loss in food and tobacco. "Better let him alone, Hank," he warned earnestly. "Anyhow, we pestered him nigh to death las’ time, an’ he ’s shore come back at us. Better let him alone!"