248 Spvrt and Life. 



be done, for the next second Sprowle stood before my seat. None 

 of the passengers were seated near me, and Sprowle's burly frame 

 screened the movement of his hands from them. His eyes, no 

 longer those of a sane being, were rilled with such intense 

 malevolence as haunts me to this day. 



My tongue almost clove to the roof of my mouth when replying 

 a husky " Yes " to his peremptory query " You're going to 

 Rathdrum to swear out a warrant against me ? " Trying to be as 

 calm as I could, I did not even rise from my seat, though keeping 

 my eyes steadily fixed upon his. The next thing I knew was that the 

 muzzle of Sprowle's cocked -45 Colt, a big frontier six-shooter with 

 which I had shot many a foolhen (timber grouse) and duck for the 

 pot during the preceding summer, was within 4in. of my forehead. 

 " You wont do it, for that'll stop you right here if you don't step 

 off the train with me at Algoma," the next stopping place, some 

 few miles ahead. " Some few miles ahead," how easily one writes 

 those words, but what an eternity they seemed to me while the 

 train was bumping and swaying on the execrably laid road-bed, so 

 that Sprowle had to steady himself with his left hand to keep his 

 legs. Every moment might be my last one, for the deadly muzzle 

 continued to be held between my eyes. The nervous twitching of 

 the fingers near the trigger betrayed, it seemed to me, the tiger in 

 that man's heart; they were but the premonitory flickers of the 

 animal's tail before he makes his leap. 



Long, desperately long miles they seemed. On the train 

 rushed, jerking and jolting all the more in consequence of its 

 accelerated speed. To get off at Algoma, a wretched siding, 

 where the station shed was the only building, and the two railway 

 officials the only inhabitants, would be madness, for it would have 

 enabled Sprowle to do away with me on the quiet, the presence of 

 witnesses being, I knew full well, the only thing that deterred him 

 from doing so there and then. To say I would not get off the 

 train might precipitate the action of those twitching fingers at the 

 trigger, and to argue with him was, I felt, as useless as it would 

 have been dangerous to call for help. Silence was therefore my 



