“Let up, Bill,” said a voice, coaxingly, as one might to soothe a wild beast.  “Don’t—­”

“Drop that pistol!” said another voice, which Keith recognized as Dave Dennison’s.

The desperado half glanced at the latter as he shot a volley of oaths at him.  That glance saved Keith.  He ducked out of the line of aim and sprang upon his assailant at the same time, seizing the pistol as he went, and turning it up just as Bluffy pulled the trigger.  The ball went into the remote corner of the ceiling, and the desperado was carried off his feet by Keith’s rush.

The only sounds heard in the room were the shuffling of the feet of the two wrestlers and the oaths of the enraged Bluffy.  Keith had not uttered a word.  He fought like a bulldog, without noise.  His effort was, while he still gripped the pistol, to bring his two hands together behind his opponent’s back.  A sudden relaxation of the latter’s grip as he made another desperate effort to release his pistol favored Keith, and, bringing his hands together, he lifted his antagonist from his feet, and by a dexterous twist whirled him over his shoulder and dashed him with all his might, full length flat on his back, upon the floor.  It was an old trick learned in his boyish days and practised on the Dennisons, and Gordon had by it ended many a contest, but never one more completely than this.  A buzz of applause came from the bystanders, and more than one, with sudden friendliness, called to him to get Bluffy’s pistol, which had fallen on the floor.  But Keith had no need to do so, for just then a stoutly built young fellow snatched it up.  It was Dave Dennison, who had come in just as the row began.  He had been following up Bluffy.  The desperado, however, was too much shaken to have used it immediately, and when, still stunned and breathless, he rose to his feet, the crowd was too much against him to have allowed him to renew the attack, even had he then desired it.

As for Keith, he found himself suddenly the object of universal attention, and he might, had he been able to distribute himself, have slept in half the shacks in the camp.

The only remark Dave made on the event was characteristic: 

“Don’t let him git the drop on you again.”

The next morning Keith found himself, in some sort, famous.  “Tacklin’ Bill Bluffy without a gun and cleanin’ him up,” as one of his new friends expressed it, was no mean feat, and Keith was not insensible to the applause it brought him.  He would have enjoyed it more, perhaps, had not every man, without exception, who spoke of it given him the same advice Dave had given—­to look out for Bluffy.  To have to kill a man or be killed oneself is not the pleasantest introduction to one’s new home; yet this appeared to Keith the dilemma in which he was placed, and as, if either had to die, he devoutly hoped it would not be himself, he stuck a pistol in his pocket and walked out the next morning