“So the Hotel-man set ’em up, and that made one drink.  Then Jones said he’d never let a drink suffer from lonesomeness yet when he had the price, and that made two drinks.  I had to uphold the honour of the ranch, and that made three drinks.  Hotel-man said it was up-sticks now, and he meant to pay his just debts like an honest man, and that made four drinks, then Jones said—­well, by this time I see I needn’t have hurried breakfast so much.  More people came in.  I woke up the next morning in the same old bedroom.  Every breakfast Aggy and me got ready to pull for the mines, and every morning I woke up in the bedroom.  I should like to draw a veil over the next two weeks, but it would have to be a pretty strong veil to hold it.  I tried to keep level with Aggy, but he’d spend three dollars to my one, and the consequence of that was that we went broke within fifteen minutes of each other.

“Well, sir, we were a mournful pair to draw to that day.  We sat there and cussed and said, ’Now, why didn’t we do this, that, and t’other thing instead of blowing our hard earned dough?’—­till bimeby we just dripped melancholy, you might say.  Howsomever, we weren’t booked for a dull time just yet.  That afternoon there was a great popping of whips like an Injun skirmish and into town comes a bull train half-a-mile long.  Twelve yoke of bulls to the team; lead, swing, and trail waggons for each, as big as houses on wheels.  You don’t see the like of that in this country.  Down the street they come, the dust flying, whips cracking and the lads hollering ‘Whoa haw, Mary—­up there!  Wherp! whoa haw.’

“And those fellers had picked up dry throats, walking in the dust.  Also, they had a month’s wages aching in their pockets.  We hadn’t much mor’n got the thump of their arrival out of our ears, when who comes roaring into town but the Bengal Tiger gang, and they had four months’ wages.  Owner of the mine got on a bender and paid everybody off by mistake.  You can hardly imagine how this livened up things.  There ain’t nobody less likely to play lame-duck than me, but there was no dodging the hospitality.  The only idea prevailing was to be rid of the money as soon as possible.  The effects showed right off.  You could hear one man telling the folks for their own good that he was the Old Missouri River, and when he felt like swelling his banks, it was time for parties who couldn’t swim to hunt the high ground; whilst the gentleman on the next corner let us know that he was a locomotive carrying three hundred pounds of steam with the gauge still climbing and the blower on.  When he whistled three times, he said, any intelligent man would know that there was danger around.