Laughing at the humor of the situation, Whispering Smith, his eyes beaming with good-nature, put the finger and thumb of his right hand into his waistcoat pocket, drew out a package of cigarette paper, and, bantering his captors innocently the while, tore out a sheet and put the packet back. Folding the paper in his two hands, he declared he believed his tobacco was in his saddle-pocket, and asked leave to step across the street to get it. The trick was too transparent, and leave was refused with scorn and some hard words. Whispering Smith begged the men in front of him in turn for tobacco. They cursed him and shook their heads. For an instant he looked troubled. Still appealing to them with his eyes, he tapped lightly the lower outside pockets of his coat with his fingers, shifting the cigarette paper from hand to hand as he hunted. The outside pockets seemed empty. But as he tapped the inside breast pocket on the left side of the coat--the three men, lynx-eyed, watching--his face brightened. "Stop!" said he, his voice sinking to a relieved whisper as his hand rested lightly on the treasure. "There's the tobacco. I suppose one of you will give me a match?" All that the three before him could ever afterward recollect--and for several years afterward they cudgelled their brains pretty thoroughly about that moment--was that Whispering Smith took hold of the left lapel of his coat to take the tobacco out of the breast pocket. An excuse to take that lapel in his left hand was, in fact, all that Whispering Smith needed to put not alone the three men before him but all Oroville at his mercy. The play of his right hand in crossing the corduroy waistcoat to pull his revolver from its scabbard and throw it into their faces was all too quick for better eyes than theirs. They saw only the muzzle of the heavy Colt's playing like a snake's tongue under their surprised noses, with the good-natured smile still behind it. "Or will one of you roll a cigarette?" asked Whispering Smith, without a break between the two questions. "I don't smoke. Now don't make faces; go right ahead. Do anything you want to with your hands. I wouldn't ask a man to keep his hands or feet still on a hot day like this," he insisted, the revolver playing all the time. "You won't draw? You won't fight? Pshaw! Then disengage your hands gently from your guns. You fellows really ought not to attempt to pull a gun in Oroville, and I will tell you why--there's a reason for it." He looked confidential as he put his head forward to whisper among the crestfallen faces. "At this altitude it is too fast work. I know you now," he went on as they continued to wilt. "You are Fatty Filber," he said to the thin chap. "Don't work your mouth like that at me; don't do it. You seem surprised. Really, have you the asthma? Get over it, because you are wanted in Pound County for horse-stealing. Why, hang it, Fatty, you're good for ten years, and of course, since you have