"Then Aggy argues the case with me, and when Aggy started to argue, you might just as well 'moo' and chase yourself into the corral, because he'd get you, sure. Why, that man could sit in the cabin and make roses bloom right in the middle of the floor; whilst he was singing his little song you could see 'em and smell 'em; he could talk a snowbank off a high divide in the middle of February. Never see anybody with such a medicine tongue, and in a big man it was all the stranger. 'Now,' he winds up, 'as for cheating that feller, you ought to know me better, Red—why, I'll give him my note!'
"So, anyhow, I done it. Up the street we went, steer bawling and buck-jumping, my hair a-flying, and me as busy as the little bee you read about keeping that steer underneath me, 'stead of on top of me, where he'd ruther be, and after us the whole town, whoopin', yellin', crackin' off six-shooters, and carryin' on wild.
"Then we had twenty-five dollars and was as good as anybody. But it didn't last long. The tin-horns come out after pay-day, like hop-toads after a rain. 'Twould puzzle the Government at Washington to know where they hang out in the meantime. There was one lad had a face on him with about as much expression as a hotel punkin pie. He run an arrow game, and he talked right straight along in a voice that had no more bends in it than a billiard cue.
"'Here's where you get your three for one any child may do it no chance to lose make your bets while the arrow of fortune swings all gents accommodated in amounts from two-bits to double-eagles and bets paid on the nail,' says he.
"'Red,' says Aggy, 'I can double our pile right here—let me have the money. I know this game.' You'd hardly believe it, but I dug up. 'Double-or-quits?' says he to the dealer.
"'Let her go,' says the dealer; the arrow swung around. 'Quits,' says the dealer, and raked in my dough. It was all over in one second.
"I grabbed Aggy by the shoulder and took him in the corner for a private talk. 'I thought you knew this game?' says I.
"'I do,' says he. 'That's the way it always happens.' And once more in my life I experienced the peculiar feeling of being altogether at a loss for words.
"'Aggy,' says I at last, 'I've got a good notion to lay two violent hands on you, and wind you up like an eight-day clock, but rather than make hard feelings between friends, I'll refrain. Besides you are a funny cuss, that's sure. One thing, boy, you can mark down. We leave here to-morrow morning.'
"'All right,' says Ag. 'This sporting life is the very devil. I like out doors as well as the next man, when I get there.'