LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 57 



like one possessed. Pete observed and enjoyed his struggling 

 emotion — better for him had he minded his com shelling alone ; — 

 and the more to annoy his rival, paid the most sedulous attention 

 to pretty Mary. 



Young La Bonte stood it as long as human nature, at boiling 

 heat, could endure ; but when Pete, in the exultation of his ap- 

 parent triumph, crowned his success by encircling the slender waist 

 of the girl with his arm, and snatching a sudden kiss, he jumped 

 upright from his seat, and seizing a small whisky-keg which stood 

 in the center of the corn-shellers, he hurled it at his rival, and 

 crying to him, hoarse with passion, " to follow if he was a man," 

 he left the house. 



At that time, and even now, in the remoter states of the west- 

 ern country, rifles settled even the most trivial differences between 

 the hot-blooded youths ; and of such frequent occurrence and in- 

 variably bloody termination did these encounters become, that they 

 scarcely produced sufficient excitement to draw together half-a- 

 dozen spectators. 



In the present case, however, so public was the quarrel, and so 

 well known the parties concerned, that not only the people who 

 had witnessed the affair, but all the neighborhood, thronged to the 

 scene of action, in a large field in front of the house, where the 

 preliminaries of a duel between Pete and La Bonte were beinfr 

 arranged by their respective friends. 



Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtlessness 

 was likely to occasion, was almost beside herself with grief, but 

 she knew how vain it would be to attempt to interfere. The 

 poor girl, who was most ardently attached to La Bonte, was 

 carried, swooning, into the house, where all the women congregat- 

 ed, and were locked in by old Brand, who, himself an old pioneer, 

 thought but little of bloodshed, but refused to let the "women 

 folk" witness the affi-ay. 



Preliminaries arranged, the combatants took up their respective 



