"Of course," said the wild ass easily. "If they could lay me up for a month or two----" "Lay up, nothing!" retorted Starbuck. "Lay you down, about six feet underground, is what I mean!" "Pshaw!" exclaimed the one whose fears ran in a far different channel from any that could be dug by mere corporation violence. "This is America, in the twentieth century. We don't kill our business competitors nowadays." "Don't we?" snorted Starbuck. "That will be all right, too. We'll suppose, just for the sake of argument, that my respected and respectable daddy-in-law, or whatever other silk-hatted old money-bags happens to be paying Crawford Stanton's salary _and_ commission, wouldn't send out an order to have you killed off. Maybe Stanton, himself, wouldn't stand for it if you'd put it that barefaced. But daddy-in-law, and Stanton, and all the others, hire blacklegs and sharpers and gunmen and thugs. And every once in a while somebody takes a wink for a nod--and _bang!_ goes a gun." "Well, what's the answer?" said Smith. "Tote an arsenal, yourself, and be ready to shoot first and ask questions afterward. That's the only way you can live peaceably with such men as Jake Boogerfield and Lanterby and Pete Simms." Smith got out of his chair and took a turn up and down the length of the room. When he came back to stand before Starbuck, he said: "I did that, Billy. I've been carrying a gun for a week and more; not for these ditch pirates, but for somebody else. The other night, when I was out at Hillcrest, Corona happened to see it. I'm not going to tell you what she said, but when I came back to town the next morning, I chucked the gun into a desk drawer. And I hope I'm going to be man enough not to wear it again." Starbuck dropped the subject abruptly and looked at his watch. "You liked to have done it, pulling me off up here," he remarked. "I'm due to be at the train to meet Mrs. Billy, and I've got just about three minutes. So long." Smith changed his street clothes leisurely after Starbuck had gone, and made ready to go down to the café dinner, turning over in his mind, meanwhile, the problem whose solution he had tried to extract from his late visitor. The workable answer was still as far off and as unattainable as ever when he went down-stairs and stopped at the desk to toss his room-key to the clerk. The hotel register was lying open on the counter, and from force of habit he ran his eye down the list of late arrivals. At the end of the list, in sprawling characters upon which the ink was yet fresh, he read his sentence, and for the first time in his life knew the meaning of panic fear. The newest entry was: "Josiah Richlander and daughter, Chicago."