"Which I don't reckon thar's the slightest doubt but the Major's a bigger sot than Old Monte, though the same is in dispoote; Cherokee Hall an' Boggs a-holdin' he is; an' Doc Peets an' Tutt playin' the other end; Enright an' Jack Moore, ondecided.
"Peets confides in me of an' concernin' the Major that thar's a time—an' no further up the trail than five years—when the Major is shore-'nough a Major; bein' quartermaster or some sech bluff in the army.
"But one day Uncle Sam comes along an' wants to cash in; an' thar this yere crazy-hoss Major is with ten times as many chips out as he's got bank-roll to meet, an' it all fatigues the gov'ment to that extent the Major's cashiered, an' told to vamos the army for good.
"I allers allows it's whiskey an' kyards gets the Major's roll that time. Peets says he sees him 'way back once over some'ers near the Mohave Desert—Wingate, mebby—an' whiskey an' poker has the Major roped; one by the horns, the other by the hoofs; an' they jest throws him an' drug him, an' drug him an' throws him, alternate. The Major never shakes loose from the loops of them vices; none whatever.
"An' that's mighty likely, jest as I says, how the Major finds himse'f cashiered an' afoot; an' nothin' but disgrace to get rid of an' whiskey to get, to fill the future with.
"So it comes when I trails up on the Major he's a drunkard complete, hangin' 'round with a tin-horn an' a handful of dice, tryin' to get Mexicans or Chinamen to go ag'in 'em for any small thing they names.
"It's on account of this yere drunkard the Major that the Deef Woman comes stagin' it in with Old Monte one day. Got a papoose with her, the Deef Woman has, a boy comin' three, an' it's my firm belief, which this view is common an' frequent with all Wolfville, as how the Deef Woman's the Major's wife.
"It ain't no cinch play that this female's deef, neither; which it's allers plain she hears the most feeblesome yelp of that infant, all the way from the dance-hall to the O. K. House, an' that means across the camp complete.
"Boggs puts it up she merely gives it out she's deef that a-way to cut off debate with the camp, an' decline all confidences goin' an' comin'.
"Thar's no reason to say the Deef Woman's the Major's wife, more'n she tumbles into camp as onlooked for as Old Monte sober, an' it's easy to note she s'prises an' dismays the Major a lot, even drunk an' soaked with nose paint as he shorely is.