Wild Bill ate his supper that evening because it was his custom to do so. He had no inclination for it, and it gave him no enjoyment. He treated the matter much as he would have treated the stoking of a stove on a winter's night. So long as he was filled up he cared little for the class of the fuel. Birdie waited on him with an attention and care such as she never bestowed upon any other boarder at the store, and the look in her bright eyes as she forestalled his wishes, compared with the air with which she executed the harshly delivered orders of the rest of the men, was quite sufficient to enlighten the casual onlooker as to the state of her romantic heart. But her blandishments were quite lost upon our hero. He treated her with much the same sort of indifference he might have displayed towards one of the camp dogs. To-night, particularly, nothing she could do or say seemed to give him the least satisfaction. He ignored her as he ignored all the rest of the boarders, and devoured his meal in absolute silence--in so far as any speech went--wrapt in an impenetrable moroseness which had a damping effect upon the entire company. Truth to tell, he was obsessed with his thoughts and feelings against the man James. With every passing day his resentment against him piled up, till now he could think of nothing much else but a possible way to dislodge him from the pinnacle of his local notoriety, and so rid the district of the threat of his presence. How much of this feeling was purely personal, inspired by the natural antagonism of a strong, even violent, nature against a man whose very existence was an everlasting challenge to him, and how far it was the result of an unadmitted sympathy for Scipio, it would have been impossible to tell in a man like Wild Bill. Reason was not in such things with him. He never sought reasons where his feelings were concerned. James must go. And so his whole mind and force was given up to a search for adequate means to accomplish his purpose. The problem was not easy. And when things were not easy to him, Bill's temper invariably suffered. Besides, scheming was never pleasant to him. He was so essentially a man of action. An open battle appealed to him as nothing else in the world appealed to him. Force of arms--that was his conception of the settlement of human differences. He admitted to himself that the events of the day had stirred his "bile." He felt that he must hit out to ease himself, and the one direction to hit out in which would have given him any satisfaction was not yet available. So he brooded on, a smoldering volcano which his acquaintances avoided with a care inspired by past experience. But his mood was bound to find an outlet somehow. It is always so. If the opportunity does not come naturally, ill-temper will make one. It was this way with the gambler. A devilish impulse caught him just as supper was nearing its finish.