I think the onlookers must have smiled to hear me, for, though so far I had got the better, the match was an absurd one. But my foe was a man of a bad spirit; without rising he flung his hand round to his hip. I had a quick glimpse of the girl clasping her hands and heard the gasp of her breath and her voice: "Stop that now—none of that!" But another voice, very complacent and with a mocking, boyish ring, broke in: "Throw up your hands, you son of a dog!" And then I ceased to be the centre of interest and my brain cleared, for Apache Kid was sitting at his table, his chair pushed back a little way, his legs wide apart as he leant forward, his left hand on the left knee, his right forearm lying negligently on the right leg—and loosely in his hand was a revolver pointed at the gentleman on the floor. The other two were looking on from under their brows, the stage-driver sitting beaming on the scene. The girl swung round on Apache with an infinite relief discernible in her face and gesture. The cook who had come from the rear of the room, having seen the business through the wicket window from his pantry, I suppose, cried out: "Make him take out his gun and hand it over, sir." Apache did not turn at the voice, but, "You hear that piece of advice?" said he. "Well, I ’m not going to take it. You can keep your little toy in your hip-pocket. Do you know why? Because you can do no harm here with it. Before you could get your hand an inch to it my Colt’s bullet would have let all the wind sighing out of your contemptible carcass." Then he gave a laugh, a chuckling, quiet, hearty laugh in his throat, hardly opening his lips and added: "In the language of the country, sir, I would advise you to shake a leg—to get up and get—hike—before I plug you." And up rose the man, a commercial traveller (as the girl told me afterwards when trying to thank me—for what I cannot say, as I told her at the time), or a "drummer," as the name is, who had been there since yesterday’s Baker-bound stage arrived, drinking at the bar and making himself disagreeable in the dining-room. He looked a sorry figure as he shuffled from the chamber. I turned to Apache Kid and began: "You saved my life, A——" but his frown reminded me that we were strangers;—"sir," I ended, "and I have to thank you." "That’s all right, sir; that’s all right, sir. Don’t mention it," said Apache Kid, throwing his revolver back into its holster. That was the end of the drummer; we saw him no more that night, and when we came down in the morning we were told he had gone on to Baker City with the stage which went west earlier by an hour than the one toward the railway, the one we were to continue in—part of its journey.