“All right, pardner!” says he.  “It’s your own funeral.  My orders was to halt every one going through; but I ain’t a whole company, so you can have it your own way.  Only, if your friends have to take you home in a coal-scuttle, don’t blame me.  Pass, friend!”

So I went through the officers’ quarters forty miles an hour, letting out a string of yells you might have heard to the coast, just to show my respect for the United States army.

Now this has always been my luck:  Whenever I made a band-wagon play, somebody’s sure to strike me for my licence.  Or else the team goes into the ditch a mile further on, and I come out about as happy as a small yaller dog at a bob-cat’s caucus.

Some fellers can run in a rhinecaboo that ’d make the hair stand up on a buffeler robe, and get away with it just like a mice; but that ain’t me.  If I sing a little mite too high in the cellar, down comes the roof a-top of me.  So it was this day.  Old Johnny Hardluck socked it to me, same as usual.

Gosh a’mighty!  The liquor died in me after a while, and I went sound asleep in the saddle, and woke up with a jar—­to find myself right in the middle of old Frosthead’s gang; the drums “boom-blipping” and those forty-odd red tigers “hyah-hayahing” in a style that made my skin get up and walk all over me with cold feet.

How in blazes I’d managed to slip through those Injuns I don’t know.  ’Twould have been a wonderful piece of scouting if I’d meant it.  You can ’most always do any darn thing you don’t want to do.  Well, there I was, and, oh Doctor! but wasn’t I in a lovely mess!  That war-song put a crimp into me that Jack Frost himself couldn’t take out.

It was as dark as dark by this time.  The moon just stuck one eye over the edge of the prairie, and the rest of the sky was covered with cloud.  A little light came from the Injuns’ camp-fire, but not enough to ride by, and, besides, I didn’t know which way I ought to go.

Says I to myself, “Billy Sanders, you are the champion all-around, old-fashioned fool of the district.  You are a jackass from the country where ears less’n three foot long are curiosities.  You sassed that poor swatty that wanted to keep you out of this, tooting your bazoo like a man peddling soap; but now it’s up to you.  What are you going to do about it?” and I didn’t get any answer, neither.

Well, it was no use asking myself conundrums out there in the dark when time was so scarce.  So I wraps my hankercher around.  Laddy’s nose to keep him from talking horse to the Injun ponies, and prepared to sneak to where I’d rather be.

Laddy was the quickest thing on legs in that part of the country—­out of a mighty spry little Pinto mare by our thoroughbred Kentucky horse—­and I knew if I could get to the open them Injuns wouldn’t have much of a chance to take out my stopper and examine my works—­not much.  A half-mile start, and I could show the whole Sioux nation how I wore my hair.