This was the amazing sight that stopped Pinkey in his tracks as effectively as a bullet.
Wallie heard his step and asked plaintively but without turning:
Pinkey threw the shells from Boise Bill's rifle and removed the cartridges from his six-shooter. Handing the latter back to him he said laconically:
"Drift! And don't you take the beef-herd gait, neither."
The malevolent look Boise Bill sent over his shoulder was wasted on Wallie who was picking out of the ashes and dusting the ham for which he had stood ready to shed his blood.
The modest herring had been the foundation of the great Canby fortune. Small and unpretentious, the herring had swum in the icy waters of the Maine coast until transformed into a French sardine by Canby, Sr. It had brought wealth and renown to the shrewd old Yankee, who was alleged to have smelled of herring even in his coffin, but the Canby family were not given to boasting of the source of their income to strangers, and by the time Canby, Jr., was graduated from Harvard they were fairly well deodorized.
In the East many things had conspired to make the young Canby the misanthrope and recluse he had come to be in Wyoming, where he was fully aided and abetted in his desire for seclusion by his neighbours, who disliked him so thoroughly that they went out of their way to avoid speaking to him.
Having been graduated without distinction, he concentrated his efforts upon an attempt to become one of a New England coterie that politely but firmly refused to do more than admit his existence.
In pursuance of his ambition he built a castle-like residence and specialized in orchids and roses, purchased a yacht, became an exhibitor at the Horse Show. Society praised his roses, but their admiration did not extend to Canby; he went on solitary cruises, in his floating palace and the Horse Show, which had proved an open sesame to others, in his case was a failure.
Finally he married a girl who had the _entrée_ to the circle he coveted, but his wife received invitations which did not include her husband. The divorce court ended the arrangement, and Canby had the privilege of paying a king's ransom in alimony into one of Boston's first families.
Petty, unscrupulous, overbearing, Canby never attributed his failure to the proper cause, which was his unpleasant personality, but regarded it as a conspiracy on the part of Society to defeat him in his ambition and accordingly came to hate it.