CHAPTER XIV.
Bill Lawson's Revenge.
"This Bill Larson," said Dick, knocking the ashes from his pipe, "was _some_ in his day.

I have told you about his trappin' qualities--that there was only one man in the county that could lay over him any, an' that was ole Bob Kelly.

But Bill had some strange ways about him, sometimes, that I could not understand, an' the way he acted a'most made me think he was crazy.

Sometimes you couldn't find a more jolly feller than he was; an' then, again, he would settle down into one of his gloomy spells, an' I couldn't get a word out of him.

He would sit by the camp-fire, an' first fall to musing; then he would cover his face with his hands, an' I could see the big, scalding tears trickle through his fingers, an' his big frame would quiver and shake like a tree in a gale of wind; then he would pull out his long, heavy huntin'-knife, an' I could see that he had several notches cut in the handle.