Wherewith, the draught had done its duty, and the old gentleman was
enjoying the first rest he had known since I came to heal him. He is
enjoying it yet, for he was as dead as a monogram.
As there was a good deal of scandal about my killing a sprospective
father-in-law, I had to live it down by not marrying Maud--who has
lived single, as a rule, ever since. All this epigastric tercentenary
might have been avoided if she had only allowed a good deal of margin
for my probable condition when she splanned her little practicable
joke.
"Why didn't they hang me?"--- Waiter, bring me a brandy spunch.--Well,
that is the most didactic question! But if you must know--they did.
* * * * *
JIM BECKWOURTH'S POND.
Not long after _that_ (said old Jim Beckwourth, beginning a new story)
there was a party of about a dozen of us down in the Powder River
country, after buffalo. It was the _worst_ place! Just think of the
most barren and sterile spot you ever saw, or ever will see. Now take
that spot and double it: that is where _we_ were. One day, about noon,
we halted near a sickly little _arroyo_, that was just damp enough to
have deluded some feeble bunches of bonnet-wire into setting up as
grass along its banks.
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