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"Why, first, we'll go to the guard-house, and I'll show you a few of our picked men, who are there on duty; real dare-devils, who care no more for a blue than they do for a black-beetle; and then we'll go to the Angers gate. It's there that Lechelle will show himself; and then and then why, then we'll go home, and get some breakfast, for it will be nearly time for us to go to horse."

"And an utterly stupid people too!" he replied. "Would you believe it, they are absolutely ignorant and incapable of the slightest civilisation! Why even our Kabardians or Chechenes, robbers and ragamuffins though they be, are regular dare-devils for all that. Whereas these others have no liking for arms, and you'll never see a decent dagger on one of them! Ossetes all over!"

Upon this there entered the room he whom the coxswain had spoken of as the Midshipmite, and who I rightly conjectured to be in authority over these dare-devils. He was a young man wearing his own hair, which was bright red. His face was all covered with pimples, and his mouth was harelipped from a sword cut.

What they liked was to meet foes face to face and cut them down on their own decks. In such combats they felt at home, and were almost always successful, for there were few mariners or sailors, even in the British navy, who could stand against these brawny, glaring-eyed dare-devils, who sprang over the sides of a vessel like panthers, and fought like bulldogs.

The 'death-defyin', dare-devils that laugh at danger' ain't none too ready to ride my hoss. Maybe the price is too low for 'em. It's raised. One thousand dollars cash for any man in hearin' of me that'll ride my pet." There was a stir among the cattlemen, but still none of them moved forward toward the great horse; and as if he sensed his victory he raised and shook his ugly head and neighed.

"My friends!" cried Maria, stepping into the midst of them, and speaking in a friendly confident tone, "can I find among you half a dozen stouthearted dare-devils who are ready, if necessary, to go through fire and water?"

"My dear fellows," he had said on one occasion when holding the floor in his study, "I don't want to brag, and we do not speak about these things." The accent on the we had been wonderful. It implied membership of that great body of youthful dare-devils to whom the wiles of women present no terrors.

The place was full of foolhardy little dare-devils who trusted their fate and might never find it out. After all, that was the way to live as long as one was allowed. He turned suddenly with his whimsical smile. "I look out o' window quite a bit," he explained, "well, because of my aunt Maria." When he sat down again in the Sheraton chair Mrs. Shirley shifted her story to the plane of the smile.

We wouldn't have to go outside New York to find at least twenty-five or thirty in the same box we're in. All men who've been through trench work, air work, life-and-death work on various fronts. Men of independent means. Men to whom office work and club life and all this petty stuff, here, is like dish-water after champagne! Dare-devils, all of them, that wouldn't stop at the gates of Hell!"

The Prince of Simonetta, who visited the show, declared that he had some wild horses in his stable which no cowboy could ride. The challenge was promptly taken up by some of the dare-devils in my party. That the horses might not run amuck and injure anyone, special booths were erected in the show arena, where the trial was to be made.