you to
bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that's forever trying to
befriend you and keep you out of trouble!"

"Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot! If there's got to be bloodshed--"

"Do you hear that, gentlemen? Do you hear him talk about bloodshed? So
it's blood you want, is it, you ravin' desperado! You'd made up your
mind to murder somebody this mornin'--I knowed it perfectly well. I'm
the man, am I? It's me you're goin' to murder, is it? But you can't do
it 'thout I get one chance first, you thievin' black-hearted,
white-livered son of a nigger! Draw your weepon!"

With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber over
benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape.
In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glass
door, and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord's wife suddenly
appeared in the doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair of
scissors! Her fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eye
she stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. The
astonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed.
She backed him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then,
while the wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another
tongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before,
perhaps! As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause
shook the house, and every man ordered "drinks for the crowd" in one and
the same breath.

The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was over, and
the Arkansas domination broken for good. During the rest of the season
of island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state of
permanent humiliation, never mixing in any quarrel or uttering a boast,
and never resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantly
leveled at him, and that man was "Arkansas."

By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, but
the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was no
possibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was still too high for an
entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next to
insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc., and so
we made an effort to get away. In the midst of a heavy snow-storm we
embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horses
after us by their halters. The Prussian, Oll