“Divide yerselves!” said the colonel, with abruptness and a great oath. “I don’t want none of it.”
“Colonel,” said Perkins, removing his own domino, and looking anxiously into the leader’s face, “be you sick? Here’s some bully brandy I found in one of the passengers’ pockets.”
“I hain’t nothin’,” replied the colonel. “I’m a-goin’, an’ I’m a-retirin’ from this bizness for ever.”
“Ain’t a-goin’ to turn evidence?” cried Cranks, grasping the pistol on the table.
“I’m a-goin’ to make a lead-mine of you ef you don’t take that back!” roared the colonel, with a bound, which caused Cranks to drop his pistol, and retire precipitately backward, apologizing as he went. “I’m goin’ to tend to my own bizness, and that’s enough to keep any man busy. Somebody lend me fifty, till I see him again?”
Perkins pressed the money into the colonel’s hand, and within two minutes the colonel was on Tipsie’s back, and galloping on in the direction the stage had taken.
He overtook it, he passed it, and still he galloped on.
The people at Mud Gulch knew the colonel well, and made it a rule never to be astonished at anything he did; but they made an exception to the rule when the colonel canvassed the principal bar-rooms for men who wished to purchase a horse; and when a gambler, who was flush, obtained Tipsie in exchange for twenty slugs—only a thousand dollars, when the colonel had always said that there wasn’t gold enough on top of the ground to buy her—Mud Gulch experienced a decided sensation.
One or two enterprising persons speedily discovered that the colonel was not in a communicative mood, so every one retired to his favorite saloon, and bet according to his own opinion of the colonel’s motives and actions.
But when the colonel, after remaining in a barber-shop for half an hour, emerged with his face clean shaven and his hair neatly trimmed and parted, betting was so wild that a cool-headed sporting man speedily made a fortune by betting against every theory that was advanced.