"Peace, friends, peace!" says Aggy, standin' up his hull height and with his noble chest fillin' his black coat; his black whiskers expandin' in pride—a hootin', tootin' son-of-a-gun to look at. And when he said "peace," the earth shook.
The crowd stopped. "Think!" says Aggy. "Attempt the impossible! Think! Remember that paralytic is on a parlour car, flying swiftly toward the setting sun. I see the picture of that lonely railroad train whooping ties across the prairie. What is the use of throwing yourselves into a violent perspiration in a mad chase of a thing that no longer exists? The paralytic is no more; thy Faith Hath Made Him Whole." Aggy sank his voice to a beautiful whisper.
"Well, you got stuck yourself," pipes up old Grandpa Hope. "He, he, he, he shelled you too!"
"I admit it," says Ag, "and yet it is not quite what it seems. I borrowed Slit-Eyed Jenkins's two gilded nickels to get in this game. I further admit that the Government never should have left the word 'cents' off these nickels, to tempt poor but not bigoted men; further, I'll say that if Jenkins had brightened them up he might have passed them for $3.89. But Jenkins puts a thief within his stomach that steals away his business ability, so that when I asked for them nickels he merely replied: 'Take the damned Yankee skin-tricks away, with my thanks.'
"I have noted in my travels that the person to pass immoral money on us is the agent whose mind is absorbed in selling you a diamond ring, that nothing but his desire to get rid of would drive him to sell; so in this case I dropped them nickels into the grateful and quiverin' hand of that paralytic, drew my man and—here we are," says Ag.
It was the first time I ever saw a gang of full-grown men blush at the same time.
Nobody had nothin' to say except Ag, who threw the lapel of his coat back and addressed the meeting.
"Gentlemen," says he, "as I have mentioned before, our paralysed friend has fled, departed, skinned out, screwed his nut far, far from here. Don't blaspheme in the very face of the Almighty by trying to be more ridiculous than you already are. If you arrive warm and distracted, the few remaining inhabitants of Lost Dog will hold the dead moral on you the rest of your days. Cool off and wipe the word 'map' from your minds; turn from the villainies of man to the stark forces of nature; see where Squaw Creek has forced her remorseless and semi-fluid way through the mighty rampart of these Gumbo hills."
"I wish you would hush," said a puncher. "Leggo, Ag!"
"Here's where you get the worth of your money," says Ag. "You wouldn't play poker with me, would you? Of course not. I might get your money. In fact, I think I should, myself. But you would turn over ten fine large bones to a paralytic who made pencil sketches of a scene in the Alps and put the sign of the price on 'em—one sawbuck, or ten plunks? There is the sawbuck," says Aggy, tappin' his map. "But where are the plunks? Go to! There are no plunks. We kick the dust of Dog-town from our hind legs. Flee cheerily, one-time neighbours, to where a red cross fifty miles in length lies exposed to the sunlight, and then dig; dig for wealth beyond the dreams of avarice; dream of scow-loads of gold floating on a canal of champagne. Don't forget to dig, because that will give you a muscle like a Government mule. And here's where we dig—out. Ta-ta, fellow-citizens, I never expected to get you so foul!"