y responded the boy, crossing over.

"I tuk him from a scoundrelly Crow thet I overhauled on a fork of the
Yellerstone. He gin me a long pedigree, that is, afore I kilt the
skunk. He made out as how his people hed tuk the boy from the
Kimanches, who hed brought him from somewhar down the Grande. I know'd
it wur all bamboozle. The boy's white--American white. Who ever seed a
yeller-hided Mexikin with them eyes and ha'r? Jack, this hyur's Cap'n
Haller. If yur kin iver save his life by givin' yur own, yur must do
it, de ye hear?"

"I will," said the boy resolutely.

"Come, Lincoln," I interposed, "these conditions are not necessary. You
remember I was in your debt."

"Ain't worth mentioning Cap; let bygones be bygones!"

"But what brought you to New Orleans? or, more particularly, how came
you into this scrape?"

"Wal, Cap'n, bein' as the last question is the most partickler, I'll gin
yur the answer to it fust. I hed jest twelve dollars in my pouch, an' I
tuk a idee inter my head thet I mout as well double it. So I stepped
into a shanty whar they wur a-playin' craps. After bettin' a good
spell, I won somewhar about a hundred dollars. Not likin' the sign I
seed about, I tuk Jack and put out. Wal, jest as I was kummin' roun'
this hyur corner, four fellers--them ye seed--run out and jumped me,
like so many catamounts. I tuk them for the same chaps I hed seed
parley vooin' at the craps-table; an' tho't they wur only jokin', till
one of them gin me a sockdolloger over the head, an' fired a pistol. I
then drewed my bowie, an' the skrimmage begun; an' thet's all I know
about it, cap'n, more'n yurself.

"Let's see if it's all up with this'n," continued the hunter, stooping.
"I'deed, yes," he drawled out; "dead as a buck. Thunder! ye've gin it
him atween the eyes, plum. He _is_ one of the fellers, es my name's Bob
Linkin. I kud sw'ar to them mowstaches among a million."

At this moment a patrol of night gendarmes came up; and Lincoln, and
Jack, and myself were carried off to the calaboose, where we spent the
remainder of the night. In the morning we were brought before the
recorder; but I had taken the precaution to send for some friends, who
introduced me to his worship in a proper manner. As my story
corroborated Lincoln's, and his mine, and "Jack's" substantiated both;
and as the comrades of the dead Creole did not appear, and he himself
was identified by the police as a notorious robber, the recorde