ck, with my friend at my heels, but the porter refused him
admission to the sleeper. I was ready to get off at the first
station, but waited until the train was under way, when I dropped
off, only to find that some one else had done the same thing, and
was rolling over in the sand. I went to see who it was, and there
was my friend, considerably bruised and banged up.

"Do you live here?" I asked.

"Oh, no," he replied, "but I want my money back."

"Well, if that is what you got off for, you are a bigger fool than
I took you to be, for not one cent will you ever get of that money."

He hung to me nearly all night, until I was compelled to tell my
story to a man at the station, and get him to hitch up a horse for
me and leave it standing behind a small hill, and have another
horse ready in his barn so that he could follow me and show me the
road. A bran new twenty-dollar bill consummated this arrangement.

I fooled around with the sucker for some time; then running, I
mounted the horse and galloped off. The game worked to perfection.
The old fellow bawled out that I had stolen a horse, and the owner
mounted the other horse and pushed hard after me. When I had gone
about four miles I slackened up and let him overtake me, and we
reached another train going to Kansas City fifteen minutes before
starting time. The owner of the horses returned to town and told
the story that he had fired at me, and that I was wounded and
bleeding, and, he feared, would die. Jeffers came up to Kansas
City the next day, and was astonished to see me alive.

Several days after I came face to face on the street with my old
friend, who at once had me arrested for stealing $1,000 from him.
I went to the chief's office, and explained that I had neither
stolen a horse nor robbed any body; that I had won the money at
cards. The old fellow wanted the money back, and declared that he
was a deacon in a church. Jeffers, the capper, came in when he
heard that I was arrested, and told the chief that he had given
the deacon ten dollars to win the bet for him, so the chief, in
face of this evidence, had nothing to do but release me. The next
day a prominent member of the church was scouring Kansas City for
the good deacon, thinking he had absconded with the church funds.
I never gave up a cent, though when they have passed around the
hat I have always chipped in, and, during the last forty years,
have probably contributed to churches ten times