hrough the whole list of characters;--I
say, for a man who _writes_ the pages you skim over, it is a mighty
different piece of business. Why, if I _do_ tell all I know about some
things that have come to my cognizance, I shall make you open your eyes
and spread your pupils, as if you had been to the Eye Infirmary, and the
doctors there had anointed your lids with the extract of belladonna.
Mark what I tell you! I have happened to become intimately acquainted
with circumstances of a very extraordinary nature,--not, perhaps,
without precedent, but such as very few have been called upon to
witness. Suppose that I should see fit to tell these in connection with
the story of which they form a part? I may render myself obnoxious to
persons whom it is not safe to offend,--persons that won't come out in
the public prints, perhaps, but will poke incendiary letters under your
doors,--that won't step up to you in broad daylight, and lug a Colt out
of their pocket, or draw a bowie-knife from their back, where they had
carried it under their coat, but who will dog you about to do you a
mischief unseen,--who will carry air-guns in the shape of canes, and
hang round the place where you get your provisions, and practise with
long-range rifles out in the lonely fields,--rifles that crack no louder
than a parlor-pistol, but spit a bit of lead out of their mouths half a
mile and more, so that you wait as you do for the sound of the man's axe
who is chopping on the other side of the river, to see the fellow you
have "saved" clap his hand to his breast and stagger over. It makes me
nervous to think of such things. I don't want to be suspicious of every
queer taste in my coffee, and to shiver if I see a little powdered white
sugar on the upper crust of my pastry. I don't want, every time I hear a
door bang, to think it is a ragged slug from an unseen gun-barrel.

If Dick V---- was _not_ killed on the Pampas, as they have always said
he was, I should never sleep easy after telling my story. For such a
fellow as he was would certainly see through all the disguises I could
cover up a real-life story with, and then----. He has learned the use of
the lasso too well for me to want to trust my neck anywhere within a rod
of him, if there were light enough for him to see, and nothing between
us, and nobody near.

And besides, there were a good many opinions handled by some of these
people I should have to talk about. Now, of course, a magazine like t