The stranger paid no attention to his greeting. He was surveying Wallie in his riding breeches and puttees with an expression that was at once amused and insolent.
"Looks like you aimed to camp a spell, from your lay-out," he observed, finally.
"Yes, I am here permanently." Wallie wondered if the stranger could see that his hand was trembling as he stirred the gravy.
"Indeed! How you got that figgered?" asked the man, mockingly.
Wallie replied with dignity: "This is my homestead; I filed on it this morning."
"Looks like you'd a-found out if it was open to entry before you went to all that trouble." Boise Bill shuffled his feet so that a cloud of the light wood-ashes rose and settled in the gravy.
Wallie frowned but picked them out patiently.
"I did," he answered, moving the pan.
"Then somebody's lied to you, fer I filed on this ground and I ain't abandoned it."
"You've never done any work on it, and Mr. Tucker has my filing fees and application so I cannot see that there is any argument about it."
Wallie was very polite and conciliatory.
"You'll find that filin' is one thing and holdin' is another in this man's country." Quite deliberately he scuffled up another cloud of cinders.
"I will appreciate it," said Wallie, sharply, "if you won't kick ashes in my gravy!"
"And I will appreciate it," Boise Bill mocked him, "if you'll git your junk together and move off my land in about twenty minutes."
"I refuse to be intimidated," said Wallie, paling. "I shall begin a contest suit if necessary."
"I allus fight first and contest afterward." Boise Bill lifted his huge foot and kicked over first the pan of ham and then the gravy. Wallie stood for a second staring at the tragedy. Then his nerves jumped and he shook in a passion which seemed to blind and choke him.
Boise Bill had drawn his six-shooter and Wallie was looking into the barrel of it. His homestead, his life, was in jeopardy, but this seemed nothing at all compared to the fact that the ruffian, with deliberate malice, had kicked over his supper!
"Have I got to try a chunk o' lead on you?" Boise Bill snarled at him.
For answer Wallie stooped swiftly and gripped the long handle of the frying-pan. He swung it with all his strength as he would have swung a tennis racket. Knocking the six-shooter from Boise Bill's hand he jumped across the fire at him. Scarcely conscious of what he was doing in the frenzy of rage that consumed him, Wallie whipped his little pearl-handled pistol from his breeches pocket and as Boise Bill opened his mouth in an exclamation of astonishment, Wallie shoved it down his throat, yelling shrilly that if he moved an eye-lash he would pull the trigger!