e up. But thar's something comin' to the public, Doc; so I
yereby leaves word that next week, or next month, or mebby later, if
doubts is expressed of my fate, I'm still flutterin' about the scenery
some'ers an' am a long ways short of dead. An' as I fades from sight,
Doc, I'll take a chance an' say that the clause in the Constitootion
which allows that all gents is free an' equal wasn't meant to incloode
no married man.' An' with these croode bluffs Rucker chases forth for
the Floridas.

"No, the camp don't do nothin'; the word gets passed 'round that old
Rucker's gone prospectin' an' that he will recur in our midst whenever
thar's a reg'lar roll-call. As for Missis Rucker, personal, from all
we can jedge by lookin' on--for thar's shore none of us who's that
locoed we ups an' asks--I don't reckon now she ever notices that
Rucker's escaped.

"Yere's how it is the time when Faro Nell, her heart bleedin' for the
sufferin's of dumb an' he'pless brutes, employs Dan Boggs in errants of
mercy an' Dan's efforts to do good gets ill-advised. Not that Dan is
easily brought so he regyards his play as erroneous; Enright has to
rebooke Dan outright in set terms an' assoome airs of severity before
ever Dan allows he entertains a doubt.

"'Suppose I does retire that Greaser's hand from cirk'lation?' says
Dan, sort o' dispootatious with Enright an' Doc Peets, who's both
engaged in p'intin' out Dan's faults. 'Mexicans ain't got no more need
for hands than squinch owls has for hymn books. They won't work; they
never uses them members except for dealin' monte or clawin' a guitar.
I regyards a Mexican's hands that a-way, when considered as feachers in
his makeup, as sooperfluous.'

"'Dan, you shore is the most perverse sport!' says Enright, makin' a
gesture of impatience an' at the same time refillin' his glass in hopes
of a ca'mer frame. 'This ain't so much a question of hands as it's a
question of taste. Nell's requests is right, an' you're bound to go
about the rescoo of said chicken as the victim of crooelties. Where
you-all falls down is on a system. The method you invokes is
impertinent. Don't you say so, Doc?'

"'Which I shore does,' says Peets. 'Dan's conduct is absolootely
oncouth.'

"Dan lays the basis for these strictures in the follow-in' fashion:
It's a _fieste_ with the Mexicans--one of the noomerous saint's days
they gives way to when every Greaser onbuckles an' devotes himse'f to
merriments--an' over in