out of
my daylight, you dog-robber, or I'll walk the little horse around
your neck like a three-ringed circus. Come, pull your freight!"

It seems that this swatty had been chucked out of the third story
of Frenchy's dance emporium by Bronc. Thompson, which threw a great
respect for our profesh into him. Consequently he wasn't fresh
like most soldiers, but answers me as polite as a tin-horn gambler
on pay-day.

Says he: "I just wanted to tell you that old Frosthead and forty
braves are some'ers between here and your outfit, with their war
paint on and blood in their eyes, cayoodling and whoopin' fit to
beat hell with the blower on, and if you get tangled up with them,
I reckon they'll give you a hair-cut and shampoo, to say nothing of
other trimmings. They say they're after the Crows, but it's a
ten-dollar bill against a last year's bird's-nest that they'll take
on any kind of trouble that comes along. Their hearts is mighty
bad, they state, and when an Injun's heart gets spoiled, the
disease is d--d catching. You'd better stop awhile."

"Now, cuss old Frosthead, and you too!" says I. "If he comes
crow-hopping on my reservation; I'll kick his pantalettes on top of
his scalp-lock."

"All right, pardner!" says he. "It's your own funeral. My orders
was to halt every one going through; but I ain't a whole company,
so you can have it your own way. Only, if your friends have to
take you home in a coal-scuttle, don't blame me. Pass, friend!"

So I went through the officers' quarters forty miles an hour,
letting out a string of yells you might have heard to the coast,
just to show my respect for the United States army.

Now this has always been my luck: Whenever I made a band-wagon
play, somebody's sure to strike me for my licence. Or else the
team goes into the ditch a mile further on, and I come out about as
happy as a small yaller dog at a bob-cat's caucus.

Some fellers can run in a rhinecaboo that 'd make the hair stand up
on a buffeler robe, and get away with it just like a mice; but that
ain't me. If I sing a little mite too high in the cellar, down
comes the roof a-top of me. So it was this day. Old Johnny
Hardluck socked it to me, same as usual.

Gosh a'mighty! The liquor died in me after a while, and I went
sound asleep in the saddle, and woke up with a jar--to find myself
right in the middle of old Frosthead's gang; the drums
"_boom_-blipping" and those forty-odd red tigers "hyah-hayahing" i