“‘Now,’ says Aggy, ‘have you got a gun?’

“‘I have that,’ says the man.  ’My dad used to be a duck-hunter on Chesapeake bay.  When you say “gun,” I’ll show you a gun.’  He dove in under his bunk and fetched out what I should say was a number one bore shot gun, with barrels six foot long.

“‘Gentlemen,’ says he, holding the gun up and patting it lovingly, ’if you ram a quarter-pound of powder in each one of them barrels, and a handful of buck-shot on top of that, you’ve got an argument that couldn’t be upset by the Supreme Court.  I’ll guarantee that when you point her anywheres within ten feet of a man not over a hundred yards away, and let her do her duty, all the talent that that man’s fambly could employ couldn’t gather enough of him to recognise him by, and you won’t be in bed more’n long enough to heal a busted shoulder.’

“’I hope it ain’t going to be my painful line of performance to pull the trigger,’ says Aggy.  ’I think the sight of her would have weight with most people.  When’s the stage due back?’

“‘Day after to-morrow, about noon.’

“’That gives us lots of time to stake, and to salt claims that can’t show cause their own selves,’ says Aggy.  ’I think we’re all right.’

“The next day we worked like the Old Harry.  We had everything fixed up right by nightfall, and there was nothing to do but dig and wait.

“Curious folks we all are, ain’t we?  I should have said my own self that if I’d found gold by the bucketful, I’d be more interested in that, than I would be in getting even with a mut that had done me dirt, but it wasn’t so.  Perhaps it was because I hadn’t paid much attention to money all my life, and I had paid the strictest attention to the way other people used me.  Living where there’s so few folks accounts for that, I suppose.

“Getting even on our esteemed friend the stage driver was right in your Uncle Reddy’s line, and Aggy and our new pard White seemed to take kindly to it, also.

“If ever you saw three faces filled with innocent glee, it was when we heard the wheels of that stage coming—­why, the night before I was woke up by somebody laughing.  There was Aggy sound asleep, sitting up hugging himself in the moonlight.

“‘Oh, my!  Oh, MY!’ says he.  ’It’s the only ford for four thousand miles!’

“We planted a sign in the middle of the road with this wording on it in big letters, made with the black end of a stick.

    NOTICE!!

  THIS AND ADJOINING CLAIMS ARE THE
  PROPERTY OF AGAMEMNON G. JONES,
  RED SAUNDERS, JOHN HENRY WHITE,
  ET AL.

  TRESPASSING DONE AT YOUR OWN
  RISK.  OWNERS WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE
  FOR THE REMAINS.

“There was a stretch of about a mile on the level before us.  When the stage come in plain sight Aggy proceeds to load up ’Old Moral Suasion,’ as he called her, so that the folks could see there was no attempt at deception.  They come pretty fairly slow after that.  At fifty yards, Ag hollers ‘Halt!’ The team sat right down on their tails.