"So I got mad at last, and used to chase him with a lariat and Yellow Fever.
"Yellow Fever was a sorrel mule that belonged to the firm. We called him Yellow Fever because he was so fatal.
"Well, when Yellow Fever and me got after Katooter with the lariat, we most always gathered him in.—[Bless my soul, how I'm stringing this yarn out.]
"Well, to make a long story short, Katooter rallied after a while, and during the spell his chilblains was convalescing, and some more new skin growing on his system where he had barked it off running through the sage-brush, and falling into old deserted prospect holes. I had an offer of $50,000 for my third in the Feverish Hornet, and sold.
"Then I went down to Truckee and bought a little house of an old railroad man down there, and grubstaked myself for the winter, and allowed I'd lay off till the snow left the range in the spring.
"One night, about half after 12, I judge, I heard somebody step along to the window of my boudoir. Hearing it at that time of night, I reckoned that something crooked was going on, so I slid out of bed and got my Great Blood Searcher and Liver Purifier, with the new style of center fire and cartridge ejector, and slid up to the window, calculating to shove a tonic into whoever it might be that was picnicking around my claim.
"I looked out so as to get a good idea of where I wanted to sink on him, and then I thought before I mangled him I'd ask him if he had any choice about which part of his vitals he wanted to preserve, so I sang out to him: