With creditors, women, robbers, and everything dangerous, you want to be chuck full of deportment, smooth as old Honeypott, and a whole lot tactful. Anything distractful or screeching disturbs one's peace of mind, and sends one's aplomb to blazes, just when a bear trap may happen at any moment. I traveled for all I was worth to put that widow behind me, and compose my mind.
Which her wolf howls was plumb deplorable. It wasn't her limb. Indeed, she wanted excuses for a new one ever since she seen that table limb in my barn. It was her husband, Whiskers, departing, desperate to get away from her. And I don't blame him. She was an irreverent detail anyhow, diminishing gradual into the night, for if I let them robbers once get out of hearing, they couldn't be tracked till morning. The worst of it was I'd no smell dog; my Mick being sick with a cold and hot fermentations, had his nose out of action. No, the only thing was to get clear of the widow's concert, and keep in hearing while the outlaws traveled. I was laying a trail of torn paper, mostly unpaid bills, so that the boys could find which way I'd gone.
Maybe I'd gone a mile before remorse gnawed Whiskers because he'd abandoned the widow. He paused, and as I came surging along, he lammed me over the head with a gun.
Yes, I was captured. They got my gun, too, and marched me along between them. Mr. Bull, he yapped like a coyote, full of glory's if he'd captured me himself. What with being clubbed, and not feeling good just then, I didn't seem to be much interested, although I put up a struggle wherever the ground was muddy, leaving plenty tracks down to the ferry, so that the boys would know which way I'd been dragged.
Old man Brown was away, but as I'd left the scow on the near bank, the robbers were able to cross, and put the Fraser between me and rescue. That ought to have cheered them up, since it gave them a start of several hours toward safety, but instead of skinning out of British Columbia, as I advised them with powerful strong talk, they'd got to stop for breakfast on old Brown's beans and sow-belly, cussing most plenteous because he wasn't there to cook hot biscuits.
After breakfast they wasted an hour dressing his paw for old Whiskers, and wondering whether they'd waste one of my cartridges on me, or keep them all for my friends. On that I divulged a lot of etiquette out of my book. I told these misbegotten offspring they'd been brung up all wrong, or they'd have enough deportment to make tracks. "Now," says I, "in the land of the free and the home of the brave you been appreciated, whereas if you linger here till sunup you'll be shot."
That made poor Whiskers still more suspicious, wondering what sort of bear traps guileful Smith was projecting. "Wants to get us up on the bench," says he, "that means ware traps. We'll stay right here, boys, for daylight, when we'll be able to see ourselves, how to save them cattle."
"We'd better kill the prisoner," Bull argues, and this reminds me of his ancient friendship.
"Shut your fool head," says Whiskers. "His friends would rather us go free than see him killed before their eyes. You've no more brains than a poached owl."
"You're dead right, Whiskers!" says I. "Hair on you!"