.'

"'Fair enough,' says Bull, 'an' here's my hand on it.'

"We had a smart passage o' fifteen days, and in that time me an'
Bull McGinty plays just one hundred and eighteen games. We had to
quit in the middle o' the last, with the score fifty-eight games
to fifty-nine in Bull's favour, in order to let go the anchor at
Santa Maria del Pilar. While we was up on deck, what do you
suppose Pinky goes and does? She slips down to the cabin and
fudges my peg three holes ahead. It seems that Bull, who talked
the island lingo, has been braggin' to her an' tellin' her what
we've been up to. The minute we have the anchor down, me an' Bull
returns to the game. It's nip an' tuck to the finish an' I win by
one point, Bull dyin' in the last hole, which makes the thing a
draw.

"Says I to Bull McGinty: 'Bull, we can't both have her.'

"Says Bull to me: 'I hereby declare this tournament no contest,
an' move that we sell the lady with the rest o' the herd, an' no
hard feelin's between shipmates.'

"Nothin' could be fairer than that an' I tells Bull I'm willin'.
So we sold Pinky for $200 Mex to Don Luiz Miguel y Orena, an'
sailed away for another flock o' blackbirds.

"We had busy times for the next six months until we found
ourselves back at Santa Maria del Pilar with another cargo of
savages. But all that time I'd been feelin' a little sneaky on
account o' sellin' Pinky, an' as soon as we dropped anchor I had
the boys pull me ashore, an' I chartered a white mule an' shapes
my course for the hacienda of this Don Luiz Miguel y Orena. I was
minded to see how Pinky was gettin' on.

"It was comin' on dusk when I rides into Orena's place, an' all
th' hands was just in from the fields. The labour shacks was
built in a kind of square along with the warehouses, an' in the
centre o' this square was a snubbin' post, with bull rings, an'
hangin' to this snubbin' post, with her hands triced up to the
bull rings, was Pinky Poui-Slam-Bang with a little Colorado claro
man standing off swingin' a rope's end on poor little Pinky's
bare back.

"I'm not what you'd call a patient man, McGuffey, an' bein' o'
th' sea and not used to ridin' horses, not to speak o' white
mules, I was sore in more ways than one. I luffs up alongside o'
this dry land bo'sum an' punches once. Then I jumps off my white
mule, takes the swab by the heels, an' chucks him over the
warehouse into a cactus bush. Don Orena was there an' he makes
objections to me gettin' fresh