to cheerfulness and good-humour, became set to the guise of gloomy
melancholy. Thus, while the frontier admired his deeds, and his
prowess was celebrated in print and by word of mouth in many
camp-fires in the valley of the Bravo, his heart was sick within him.
Only himself knew of the horrible tightening of the chest, the dry
mouth, the weakening of the spine, the agony of the strung nerves--the
never-failing symptoms of his shameful malady.

One mere boy in his company was wont to enter a fray with a leg
perched flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging
from his lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever
invention. Buckley would have given a year's pay to attain that
devil-may-care method. Once the debonair youth said to him: "Buck,
you go into a scrap like it was a funeral. Not," he added, with a
complimentary wave of his tin cup, "but what it generally is."

Buckley's conscience was of the New England order with Western
adjustments, and he continued to get his rebellious body into as many
difficulties as possible; wherefore, on that sultry afternoon he chose
to drive his own protesting limbs to investigation of that sudden
alarm that had startled the peace and dignity of the State.

Two squares down the street stood the Top Notch Saloon. Here Buckley
came upon signs of recent upheaval. A few curious spectators pressed
about its front entrance, grinding beneath their heels the fragments
of a plate-glass window. Inside, Buckley found Bud Dawson utterly
ignoring a bullet wound in his shoulder, while he feelingly wept at
having to explain why he failed to drop the "blamed masquerooter," who
shot him. At the entrance of the ranger Bud turned appealingly to him
for confirmation of the devastation he might have dealt.