"Ef yew gentlemen will egskews me, I'll make my proposition, an' we'll perceed to bizness. But fust I'd like t' give yew a leetle of my auttybiography, so's yew'll understand the sityewation."
With many quaint oaths and ingenious expletives, he told how he had served as a private in a Vermont infantry regiment in the Civil War, had been wounded and taken prisoner. After the war he had drifted into the cavalry and been engaged in Indian wars in the Dakotas and Montana. He was with Benteen's companies when Custer and his three hundred were massacred by the Sioux under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Then he had turned miner, and after much experience in the Black Hills, as well as in Montana and Idaho, had drifted to Formosa and had been engaged in developing gold workings but a little distance from where they sat when the war broke out.
"An' naow, gentlemen, I'm a general of brigade in the service of His Imperial Majesty of China, gettin' 's much dust in a month 's I could in a year of minin'. An' thet's why I am fur the time bein' a dewtiful subject of His Imperial Bigness.
"Mebbe yew'll b'lieve me, I hev seen sum fightin'. An' I ain't partiklar ef I see sum more. An' I hev idears whar t' plant an army, an' haow t' plan a defence or lay a trap. But this bizness of drillin' Chinks so's they'll walk t'gether, an' shoot t'gether, and dew what they're told without all talkin' at once like the sisters at a meetin'-house sewin'-bee, an' all gettin' tied up into a gol-durned tarnation tangle, thet's what knocks the spots off yewrs trewly.
"Naow, gentlemen, my proposition is thet the sergeant here jest step over with me to General Liew, an' take service with him till the end of the war. The general was mighty pleased with thet ar ambulance corpse of yourn. He'd make you a kurnel, second in command of a brigade. An' the spondoolix! Lots of it! Got it to burn! More'n a candidate for congress at election time! Money don't count with him no haow. Ef yew lick these ar Chinks into fightin' shape, I'll plan the campaign an' we'll whale those parley-voos into the sea in no time. Then we'll get a concession an' the gold mine. Naow, what dew yew think of thet?"
"That sounds pretty good, sergeant," said Sinclair. "It looks like a chance for you.
"Thet's what I call a putty payin' proposition. Will yew take it?"
"Thank you, sir; I think not."
Leatherbottom opened his small, light-blue eyes as wide as the cavernous depths of their sockets would allow, removed the pipe from his mouth, and spat far out into the river:
"Naow will yew tell me haow it is thet yew will not take on a payin' proposition like thet? Dew yew forget the spondoolix?"