"Then Blacklock cuts loose from his running mate, and plays a lone hand
through Arizona and Nevada, up as far as Reno again, and there he stacks
up against a kid--a little tenderfoot kid so new he ain't cracked the
green paint off him--and _skins_ him. And the kid, being foolish and
impulsive-like, pulls out a peashooter. It was a _twenty-two_," said
Bunt, solemnly. "Yes, the kid was just that pore, pathetic kind to carry
a dinky twenty-two, and with the tears runnin' down his cheeks begins to
talk tall. Now what does that Cockeye do? Why, that pore kid that he had
skinned couldn't 'a' hurt him with his pore little bric-a-brac. Does
Cock-eye take his little parlour ornament away from him, and spank him,
and tell him to go home? No, he never. The kid's little tin pop-shooter
explodes right in his hand before he can crook his forefinger twice, and
while he's a-wondering what-all has happened Cock-eye gets his two guns
on him, slow and deliberate like, mind you, and throws forty-eights into
him till he ain't worth shooting at no more. Murders him like the
mud-eating, horse-thieving snake of a Greaser that he is; but being
within the law, the kid drawing on him first, he don't stretch hemp the
way he should.

"Well, fin'ly this Blacklock blows into a mining-camp in Placer County,
California, where I'm chuck-tending on the night-shift. This here camp
is maybe four miles across the divide from Iowa Hill, and it sure is
named a cu-roos name, which it is Why-not. They is a barn contiguous,
where the mine horses are kep', and, blame me! if there ain't a
weathercock on top of that same--a golden trotting-horse--_upside down_.
When the stranger an' pilgrim comes in, says he first off: 'Why'n snakes
they got that weathercock horse upside down--why?' says he. 'Why-not,'
says you, and the drinks is on the pilgrim.

"That all went very lovely till some gesabe opens up a placer drift on