It must have been one of the few perfect moments in the life of Billy.
"You may rely upon William Durgin to the bitter end," said he, with a quiet dignity. "But there is work yet ahead for me to-night.
"I got to regain my hotel unobserved. My life is not safe a moment with my every step dogged by the hired assassins of that infamous scoundrel."
"If death or disaster come to you, Billy, you shall not be unavenged. We swear it here on this spot. Swear, Cal!"
"Say," Billy called back to us, after adjusting his beard, "if anything comes of this,—rewards or anything,—first thing I'm goin' a' do—git me a good forty-four Colts. You can't stop a man with this here little twenty-two, an it's only a one-shot at that. I'd be in a nice hole sometime, wouldn't I, with my back up against a wall an six or seven of 'em comin' for me an' nothin' but this in my jeans?"
"Point that the other way, Billy—we 'll see about a bigger one later. We can't do anything to-night. And sell your life as dearly as possible if you have to sell it."
I fell asleep that night on a conviction that our taste for barren reality is our chief error. If we could only believe forever, what a good world it could be "a world of fine fabling," indeed! Also I wondered what J. Rodney Potts might have to apprehend from the leaven of fact in the fabling of Billy Durgin.
