"The chuckle-headed old idiart."
"Lookee here!"
An old forty-niner rose half way up, felt that his spine was not very reliable, and so spread out his two great hands on the two shoulders of his boon companion, and peered down in his face till their two beards, white as foam, almost flowed together.
"Let's run 'im out!"
At these words an old crippled man suddenly started up from his place back in the corner, and tottered forward to where the three old heads were huddled together.
"Run out Billie! Little Billie Piper, that never gits any older, never has a beard! that come here, that come—when did little Billie Piper come? Gintlemen, you listen to me. When you run out little Billie Piper, by God, you run him out over my bones!" And here the Gopher thundered his two fists down on to the pine-board table, and turning on his heel tottered out and up the hill-side to his cabin.
CHAPTER XXVII.
BILLIE PIPER AND DEBOON.
It is more than possible that we, in America, did once have a real Bourbon amongst us. If a Bonaparte could come and wed with us, and cast his fortune with us, why certainly a very heir to the crown of France might come and spend his life with us, live and die unknown. I don't know that we ever had any kings, or sons of kings, or daughters of kings, or any thing of the kind with us in the little Eden of the Sierras, but I do know that we had some odd men there, and some great men too, men that deserved to be kings, whatever they may have been.