"No, Billy is the best sort of a fellow, but he won't let any one hobble him. When he first went to the Dumb-bell Ranch, as the Circle-bar Circle is called, they took him for a kid and tried to run over him. He kicked them, then fired them, and they don't like him."
"Did you see him look around the room?"
"Yes, he has every man who is likely to make trouble for him spotted and located. But we won't wait long enough to see the trouble. I never did like trouble myself."
"Well, for a chap who gets into it as often as you do—"
"What's the trouble now, over there?" interrupted Ted, looking at the door.
Around the entrance to the hall was a crowd of young town fellows led by a youth named Wiley Creviss, the son of the local banker, a dissipated and reckless young man, and a crowd of cow-punchers.
They were shoving some one here and there, making a punching bag of him, at the same time laughing uproariously.
Just then Ted saw the head of Jack Slate in the mix-up.
"Excuse me," said Ted, turning to Stella. "Ben, take care of the ladies until I return."
He strode across the floor toward the door.