"When shall I see Curly again?" asks Jim in a fright.
"At such time when he's fit to ride. Now tell yo' good-bye."
So Jim and Curly had a minute together while I helped McCalmont to get out the trunk of clothes. Then Jim rode off for the sake of decency, and I turned my back. There was arguments between McCalmont and Curly about how the female costume should be fixed, the parent wanting one side to the front, and the dutiful child insisting otherwise. When I was told to look, there was Curly grinning in surroundings of yellow wig, the same being bunched up behind like a clump of prickly pear. McCalmont rigged himself out in his preacher clothes, cinched up his sorrel horse at the tail of the buckboard, and tied his cowboy gear to the strings of the saddle. He turned to watch Jim and the robbers file past on their way to the front, then gave me his lantern.
"My friend," says he, "when you go to the home of them ladies, drive straight acrost the open range to the back door, be thar befo' midnight, and if you love yo' life, don't stray out on the waggon road between the Jim Crow Mine and Grave City. If you do you'll get killed for sure."
"What shall I do with the buckboard?"
"Lose it somewheres whar it ain't apt to be found. Turn them team hawsses loose and let them break for their home, as they shorely will."
"And when Curly is well of this wound?"
"Then Jim will join you, and you'll take them children to some safe country, so that they get mar'ied and forget this life. We planned all that befo'."
"You trust me still?"
"It looks that way, my friend, and I don't trust by halves."