ts were all I wanted. The sea-breeze had restored me
to my wonted clearness, and I now saw that "'38" meant that I had won a
free passage to Texas, a horse and a rifle when I got there; so far, the
"exchange of coats" was "with a difference." It was with an unspeakable
satisfaction that I learned I was the only passenger on board the
"Christobal." The other "gentlemen" of the expedition had either already
set out or abandoned the project, so that I had not to undergo any
unpleasant scrutiny into my past life, or any impertinent inquiry
regarding my future.

Old Kit Turrel, the skipper, did not play the grand inquisitor on me.
His life had been for the most part passed in making the voyage to and
from New Orleans and Galveston, where he had doubtless seen sufficient
of character to have satisfied a glutton in eccentricity. There was not
a runaway rogue or abandoned vagabond that had left the coast for years
back, with whose history he was not familiar. You had but to give him a
name, and out came the catalogue of his misdeeds on the instant.

These revelations had a prodigious interest for me. They opened the book
of human adventure at the very chapter I wanted. It was putting a keen
edge upon the razor to give _me_ the "last fashions in knavery,"--not
to speak of the greater advantage of learning the success attendant on
each, since "Kit" could tell precisely how it fared with every one who
had passed through his hands.

He enlightened me also as to these Texan expeditions, which, to use his
own phrase, had never been anything better than "almighty swindles,"
planted to catch young flats from the north country, the Southerns being
all too "crank" to be done.

"And is there no expedition in reality?" said I, with all the horror
of a man who had been seduced from home, and family, and friends, under
false pretences.

"There do be a dash now and then into the Camanche trail when buffaloes
are plenty, or to bring down a stray buck or so. Mayhap, too, they cut
off an Injian fellow or two, if he linger too late in the fall; and
then they come back with wonderful stories of storming villages, and
destroying war-parties, and the rest of it; but we knows better. Most of
'em 'ere chaps are more used to picklocks than rifles, and can handle a
'jemmy' better than a 'bowie-knife.'"

"And in the present case, what kind of fellows are they?"

He rolled a tobacco quid from side to side of his mouth, and seemed to
hesitate wheth