"I settled with Smith and made him sign everything up to a hog-tight contract. Then he started in to abuse me till I got tired and told him I'd just got back from Ohio and a thing or two I saw there. Then he suddenly belted me and, against all rules of the game, kicked me when I was down, and left me, threatening to come back and finish me. That's what you saved me from." "Champers, my old buggy is like a rocking chair. Let me take you home with me for a few days while you are wearing patches on your head," Horace Carey suggested. Darley Champers stared at his helper in surprise. Then he said slowly: "Say, Doc, I've hated you a good many years for doin' just such tricks for folks. It was my cussedness made me do it, I reckon. I'd like to get out of town a little while. That joint of Wyker's has seen more'n one fellow laid out, and some of 'em went down Big Wolf later, and some of 'em fell into Little Wolf and never come out. It's a hole, I tell you. And Smith is a devil tonight." On the homeward way Dr. Carey said quietly: "By the way, Champers, I saw you at Cloverdale, Ohio, last week." Champers did not start nor seem surprised as he replied: "Yes, I seen you, but I didn't want to speak to nobody right then." "No?" Dr. Carey questioned. "No. I've got hold enough of Smith now to make him afraid of me if I'd turn loose. I'd a made money by doin' it, too. Good clean money. That's why he's gettin' good and drunk to beat me up again tonight, maybe." "Well, why don't you tighten up on him? Why let a scoundrel like that run free?" Carey inquired. "Because it might drag Leigh Shirley's name into the muss. And I'm no devourer of widders and orphans; I'm a humane man, and I'll let Smith run till his tether snaps and he falls over the precipice and breaks his neck for hisself. Besides I'm not sure now whether he's a agent, representin' some principal, or the principal representin' hisself. And in that case I'd have to deal the cards different for him, and them he'd do harm to." "You are a humane man, Champers," Carey declared. "I think I've hated you, too, a good many years. These gray hairs of ours ought to make us better behaved now. But, even if you do let Smith run, that 'blind tiger' of Wyker's must go out of business. I'll start John Jacobs after that hole one of these days. He holds the balance of power on public sentiment out here. He'll clear it out. His hatred of saloons is like Smith's hatred of Shirley, only it's a righteous indignation. I've heard John's father was a drunkard and his mother followed her husband into a saloon in Cincinnati to persuade him out and was killed by a drunken tough. Anyhow, John will break up that game of Wyker's one of these times. See if he doesn't." Darley Champers slowly shifted his huge frame into an easier posture as he replied: