“Can't throw any of the licker overboard!” said the smuggler, with settled emphasis. “But thar's them confounded books—thar goes!” and for the next ten minutes the lightening of the cargo went on: But the whisky was not touched, and the only articles that remained in the wagon beside it were consigned to the gamblers and other sporting men of Deadwood.
“Two hundred pounds lighter, my long-eared pards!” ejaculated Timon, over whose florid face the evidence of his exertion was pouring. “Now a last pull at my straw-coloured bird, an' then I'll say ho! for the sun-dance, or ho! for Deadwood. I can't make up my mind.”
Old Tanglefoot's hands flew eagerly to the demijohn encased in a network of split willows, and he was in the act of lifting the often-touched nozzle to his lips, when a human voice made him start.
“I say, stranger, ain't ye losin' a right smart bit o' yer cargo?”
The demijohn almost dropped from Tanglefoot's hands, and he retreated from the boyish countenance which, full of health and good-humour, appeared at the rear end of the wagon.
The next moment, with his hand on the butt of his “navy,” Timon Moss glided across the kegs toward the boy.
“Say, what's yer name?” he asked gruffly.
“I guess it's Gopher Gad, an' I'm not afraid of anybody in the Cheyenne country.”
“Ain't, eh?” hissed Timon, “Wal, the reason is because you've never met old Tanglefoot before. Do ye ever go to Deadwood?”
“Been there once,” answered the boy, who showed signs of retreating from the basilisk-eyes of the whisky-smuggler.