“You must have used up a ton of lead, Doc,” observed Mr. Masterson one afternoon, being in a mood of fine philosophy; “and, considering your years in the West, it beats the marvellous. It would look as though you simply shot your way out of one battle into another. How did you come to do it?” “It used to worry me,” gasped Mr. Holiday, “to think that I must die, and, to take my mind off my troubles, I mixed up with everything that came along. It was the only way in which I could forget myself.” California Gulch was present at the funeral. They buried Mr. Holiday beneath a clump of cedars high up on the mountain side, and Red Jack draped the Four Flush bar in mourning. “We’re going to miss him,” he remarked, with a lugubrious sigh, to Mr. Masterson, when, after the services, the latter came in for his evening drink. “We’ll shorely miss him from our midst! An’ when I think on his c’reer, sort o’ run over it hittin’ the lofty places, I’m here to observe that he was the vividest invalid, an’ the busiest, with which I ever crossed up. He certainly was an in-dee-fat-ig-a-ble sick man; an’ that goes!” CHAPTER XV HOW MR. HICKOK WENT INTO CHEYENNE Mr. Masterson had sent for him, and within two days after his arrival Mr. Hickok was established in the best society of Cheyenne. This, when one reflects upon the particular exclusiveness of Cheyenne’s first circles, should talk loudly in Mr. Hickok’s favor. It was something of which any gentleman might be proud. Not a saloon denied him credit; that hotel which he honoured with his custom was as his home; his word was good for a dozen stacks of blues at any faro table in the camp. And this, mind you, in days when Cheyenne’s confidence came forward slowly, and the Cheyenne hand was not outstretched to every paltry individual who got off the stage. Two weeks prior to these exaltations, Mr. Hickok, then of Kansas City, might have been seen walking in that part of Main Street known as Battle Row. For one of his optimism, Mr. Hickok’s mood showed blue and dull. One could tell this by the brooding eye, and the droop which invested his moustache with a mournfulness not properly its own. Moreover, there was further evidence to prove the low spirits of Mr. Hickok. His hair, long as the hair of a woman, which in lighter moments fell in a blond cataract about his broad shoulders, was knotted away beneath his hat.