THE MAN UNDERNEATH
and alkali; he related small and painful experiences with prickly pear in the spirit of no tender-foot.
"Now I know what you meant when you said that there were more men in the West than in any place you ever 'struck.'"
He wrote 'struck,' for he never used slang in England. But I noticed that he said that Silas Northrop was clear grit all through without any inverted commas. Northrop and he were working together, and in order not to alarm Colonel Briggs, "Willett isn't my name just now. It's Thompson. Write to me, care of Silas Northrop, Arizona House."
His letter gave me a touch of "Western fever." If I hadn't been hobbled and picketed by circumstances I would have come out to him and taken a hand in the deal. For I liked Jack very much. He was a "clever" boy. And in the vernacular of the United States "clever" means "kindly."
Silas Northrop's new partner wrote to me almost every week, and I could see the scales of civilisation dropping away from him. He soon came to the conclusion that the law
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