Hazel started, but it was only Jim Briggs in the doorway beside her.
"I guess you ain't much used to seein' that sort of exhibition where you come from, Miss Weir," Briggs' wife put in over his shoulder. "My land, it's disgustin'—men fightin' in the street where everybody can see 'em. Thank goodness, it don't happen very often. 'Specially when Bill Wagstaff ain't around. You ain't shocked, are you, honey?"
"Why, I didn't have time to be shocked," Hazel laughed. "It was done so quickly."
"If them fellers would leave Bill alone," Briggs remarked, "there wouldn't be no fight. But he goes off like a hair-trigger gun, and he'd scrap a dozen quick as one. I'm lookin' to see his finish one uh these days."
"What a name!" Hazel observed, caught by the appellation Briggs had first used. "Is that Roaring Bill over there?"
"That's him—Roarin' Bill Wagstaff," Briggs answered. "If he takes a few drinks, you'll find out to-night how he got the name. Sings—just like a bull moose—hear him all over town. Probably whip two or three men before mornin'."
His spouse calling him at that moment, Briggs detailed no more information about Roaring Bill. And Hazel sat looking across the way with considerable interest at the specimen of a type which hitherto she had encountered in the pages of fiction—a fighting man, what the West called a "bad actor." She had, however, no wish for closer study of that particular type. The men of her world had been altogether different, and the few frontier specimens she had met at the Briggs' dinner table had not impressed her with anything except their shyness and manifest awkwardness in her presence. The West itself appealed to her, its bigness, its nearness to the absolutely primeval, but not the people she had so far met. They were not wrapped in a glamor of romance; she was altogether too keen to idealize them. They were not her kind, and while she granted their worth, they were more picturesque about their own affairs than when she came in close contact with them. Those were her first impressions. And so she looked at Roaring Bill Wagstaff, over the way, with a quite impersonal interest.
He came into Briggs' place for supper. Mrs. Briggs was her own waitress. Briggs himself sat beside Hazel. She heard him grunt, and saw a mild look of surprise flit over his countenance when Roaring Bill walked in and coolly took a seat. But not until Hazel glanced at the newcomer did she recognize him as the man who had fought in the street. He was looking straight at her when she did glance up, and the mingled astonishment and frank admiration in his clear gray eyes made Hazel drop hers quickly to her plate. Since Mr. Andrew Bush, she was beginning to hate men who looked at her that way. And she could not help seeing that many did so look.
Roaring Bill ate his supper in silence. No one spoke to him, and he addressed no one except to ask that certain dishes be passed. Among the others conversation was general. Hazel noticed that, and wondered why—wondered if Roaring Bill was taboo. She had sensed enough of the Western point of view to know that the West held nothing against a man who was quick to blows—rather admired such a one, in fact. And her conclusions were not complimentary to Mr. Bill Wagstaff. If people avoided him in that country, he must be a very hard citizen indeed. And Hazel no more than formulated this opinion than she was ashamed of it, having her own recent experience in mind. Whereupon she dismissed Bill Wagstaff from her thoughts altogether when she left the table.
Exactly three days later Hazel came into the dining-room at noon, and there received her first lesson in the truth that this world is a very small place, after all. A nattily dressed gentleman seated to one side of her place at table rose with the most polite bows and extended hand. Hazel recognized him at a glance as Mr. Howard Perkins, traveling salesman for Harrington & Bush. She had met him several times in the company offices. She was anything save joyful at the meeting, but after the first unwelcome surprise she reflected that it was scarcely strange that a link in her past life should turn up here, for she knew that in the very nature of things a firm manufacturing agricultural implements would have its men drumming up trade on the very edge of the frontier.