244 Sport and Life. 



pleasanter night than I did, discretion being no disturber of 

 slumbers. 



The next thing that happened was a call from three half-tipsy 

 gamblers, the " committee of the town " as the spokesman 

 announced himself. I was sitting in my shack reading my 

 accumulated correspondence, seated on an old packing case, 

 before me a larger one which I had pressed into service as a table, 

 the bundle of F 's bedding and my own thrown into one corner 

 of the " room " with our saddles, completing the furniture. The 

 upshot of the interview was the peremptory order that I should 

 leave town by the Eastbound night freight, which passed through 

 the place about midnight, or take the consequences. My curt reply 

 that I proposed to take the latter " straight," made even more 

 unpalatable by F 's loud chuckle at my indulgence in the idiom 

 that was best suited to my audience, was answered by some 

 allusion that I wouldn't be laughing twelve hours hence. As 



daylight waned F -, who went to get some canned stuff at 



Weeks's, reported that two men, friends of Sprowle, with rifles, 

 were posted as sentries in front and behind the cabin. " Look's 



like business, eh," said F , " but they don't amount to much, for 



they've got a full bottle each." The correctness of this opinion 

 speedily was seen, for the rear sentinel presently joined the one in 

 front, leaving me every opportunity, had I wished to take advantage 

 of it, to get away into the woods which began immediately behind 

 the shack. 



Towards evening one unpleasant fact came to my knowledge, 

 which, had I known it earlier, would, I think, have caused me to 

 follow my engineer's advice. It was that the monthly pay-car had 

 passed through Sandpoint that afternoon, and hence all the male 

 population in the place with the exception of Weeks were " filling 

 up " as fast as the six whiskey dens in the place could bring about 

 that happy end. Added to the local population came sundry track- 

 men and section hands, for the nearest settlement towards the west 

 was Rathdrum, forty miles off, and to the east Clark's Fork, some 

 twenty odd miles away, not a single human dwelling being found 



