against the wall. "Kick me, somebody, and finish me off."

"I don't see any weapons here," said Brace gravely, examining the
ground.

"They're inside," said Shuttleworth with tremulous haste. "We began it
in there--just like hogs, you know! Didn't we, Saunders?" bitterly.

"You bet," said Saunders faintly. "Reg'lar swine."

Parks looked graver still, and as he passed a handkerchief around the
wounded man's thigh, said: "But I don't see where you got your pistols,
and how you got out here."

"Clinched, you know; sorter rolled over out here--and--and--oh, d--n
it--don't talk!"

"He means," said Shuttleworth still feebly, "that we--we--grabbed
ANOTHER MAN'S six-shooter and--and--he that is--and they--he--he and
me grabbed each other, and--don't you see--?" but here, becoming more
involved and much weaker, he discreetly fainted away.

And that was all Buckeye ever knew of the affair! For they refused
to speak of it again, and Dr. Duchesne gravely forbade any further
interrogation. Both men's revolvers were found undischarged in their
holsters, hanging in their respective cabins. The balls which were
afterwards extracted from the two men singularly disappeared; Dr.
Duchesne asserting with a grim smile that they had swallowed them.*

* It was a frontier superstition that the ball extracted