“Give us a story, Frank.”

“Well,” answered Frank, after thinking a few moments, “I remember one that, I think, will interest you.  You will probably remember, Archie, that, during the last visit we made at Uncle Joe’s, we met his brother Dick, who has passed forty years of his life among the Rocky Mountains.  You will remember, also, that he and I went mink-trapping, and camped out all night, and during the evening he related to me some of his adventures, and wound up with the following story of his ‘chum,’ Bill Lawson.  I will try to give it, as nearly as possible, in his own words.

CHAPTER XIV.

Bill Lawson’s Revenge.

“This Bill Larson,” said Dick, knocking the ashes from his pipe, “was some in his day.  I have told you about his trappin’ qualities—­that there was only one man in the county that could lay over him any, an’ that was ole Bob Kelly.  But Bill had some strange ways about him, sometimes, that I could not understand, an’ the way he acted a’most made me think he was crazy.  Sometimes you couldn’t find a more jolly feller than he was; an’ then, again, he would settle down into one of his gloomy spells, an’ I couldn’t get a word out of him.  He would sit by the camp-fire, an’ first fall to musing; then he would cover his face with his hands, an’ I could see the big, scalding tears trickle through his fingers, an’ his big frame would quiver and shake like a tree in a gale of wind; then he would pull out his long, heavy huntin’-knife, an’ I could see that he had several notches cut in the handle.  He would count these over an’ over again; an’ I could see a dark scowl settle on his face, that would have made me tremble if I had not known that I was his only sworn friend, an’ he would mutter,

“’Only seven! only seven!  There ought to be eight.  There is one left.  He must not escape me.  No, no; he must die!’

“An’ then he would sheath his knife, an’ roll himself up in his blanket, an’ cry himself to sleep like a child.

“I had been with ole Bill a’most ten years—­ever since I was a boy—­but he had never told me the cause of his trouble.  I didn’t dare to ask him, for the ole man had curious ways sometimes, an’ I knowed he wouldn’t think it kind of me to go pryin’ into his affairs, an’ I knowed, too, that some day he would tell me all about it.

“One night—­we had been followin’ up a bar all day—­we camped on the side of a high mountain.  It was very cold.  The wind howled through the branches of the trees above our heads, makin’ us pull our blankets closer about us an’ draw as nigh to the fire as possible.

“Ole Bill sat, as usual, leanin’ his head on his hands, an’ lookin’ steadily into the fire.  Neither of us had spoken for more than an hour.  At len’th the ole man raised his head, an’ broke the silence by sayin’,

“‘Dick, you have allers been a good friend to me, an’ have stuck by me like a brother, through thick an’ thin, an’, I s’pose, you think it is mighty unkind in me to keep any thing from you; an’ so it is.  An’ now I’ll tell you all.’