He was not a “bad man” of the really dangerous type, the true man-killer type, but he was an objectionable creature, a would-be bad man, a bully who for the moment was having things all his own way.  As soon as he saw me he hailed me as “Four eyes,” in reference to my spectacles, and said, “Four eyes is going to treat.”  I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice.  He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language.  He was foolish to stand so near, and, moreover, his heels were close together, so that his position was unstable.  Accordingly, in response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, “Well, if I’ve got to, I’ve got to,” and rose, looking past him.

As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right.  He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to shoot at me.  When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head.  It was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees; but he was senseless.  I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in a shed.  I got dinner as soon as possible, sitting in a corner of the dining-room away from the windows, and then went upstairs to bed where it was dark so that there would be no chance of any one shooting at me from the outside.  However, nothing happened.  When my assailant came to, he went down to the station and left on a freight.

As I have said, most of the men of my regiment were just such men as those I knew in the ranch country; indeed, some of my ranch friends were in the regiment—­Fred Herrig, the forest ranger, for instance, in whose company I shot my biggest mountain ram.  After the regiment was disbanded the careers of certain of the men were diversified by odd incidents.  Our relations were of the friendliest, and, as they explained, they felt “as if I was a father” to them.  The manifestations of this feeling were sometimes less attractive than the phrase sounded, as it was chiefly used by the few who were behaving like very bad children indeed.  The great majority of the men when the regiment disbanded took up the business of their lives where they had dropped it a few months previously, and these men merely tried to help me or help one another as the occasion arose; no man ever had more cause to be proud of his regiment than I had of mine, both in war and in peace.  But there was a minority among them who in certain ways were unsuited for a life of peaceful regularity, although often enough they had been first-class soldiers.