When Brydges’ chief indulged in explosives that necessitated the repair of furniture the next day, the handy man always stood strictly and silently at attention.  He knew the meaning of the stage thunder:  it was the trick of the Indian medicine man, who fires guns to bring down rain.  Bat knew that the fulminations were of a piece with all the other orders to do and not to do, an effort to get results while diverting the thunderbolt from the rain maker’s head; for by one of those strange contingencies that Shakespeare defines as an opportunity of evil, when the handy man had gone to the ‘Herald,’ the news editor chanced to be out.  Bat crossed to the ‘Independent’s’ office.  It lacked but half an hour of the time to lock up the press, and on condition that the story should be “a scoop,” Bat was sent out to the composing room to dictate straight to the printer, standing over the linotype machine.

What was “the story” that he dictated?  If you know where to look, you can see its prototype seven times a week.  It was written jocularly; oh, it was exceedingly funny with all sorts of veiled references to naughtiness that couldn’t be printed, pretty naughtiness, you understand, the kind you wink at, as was to be expected from a little beauty, a brunette, chic, etc. (I forget how many French words Bat tucked in:  he had to look ’em up in the French-English appendix to Webster’s Dictionary as the proof came off the galley), the well known daughter of the richest sheep rancher in the Valley.  “The story” was headed:  “Pretty Scandal in Peaceful Valley.”  Bat played “the human interest” feature for all it was worth; also the trick of suspended interest.  It began by informing the public that a pretty scandal was disturbing a certain Valley not a hundred miles from the Rim Rocks, the essential details of which could not be given, would probably never be printed, for obvious reasons.  Then followed a solid paragraph of nonsense verse inserted as prose; about a Ranger-man, Ranger-man, running away, ’Cause pa-pah, dear pa-pah comes home for to-day; But his Lincoln green coatie the Ranger forgot; And pa-pah, dear pa-pah came home raging hot; The Ranger-man, Ranger-man was still on the run, For pa-pah, dear pa-pah was out with a gun, He’d heaved up his war club and jangled his spear, And swore by my halidom what doth that coat here, etc., etc.  Any school boy could have trolled off yards of the same drivelling cleverness; and Eleanor’s innocent telephone call was, of course, lugged in.

There followed a garbled account of poor Calamity’s errant days among the miners of the Black Hills.  The account had no reference to her heroism in the early mining days, when she roved in man’s attire over the hills to rescue wounded miners from the Sioux.  It set forth only her blazoning sins; evidently on the assumption that carrion is preferable to meat.  And then tucked ingeniously into this account was veiled mention of a rich sheepman, too well known to