“The lad never begged his pardon nor nothin’.  His fist just shot out and landed on the nigh corner of Wilmer’s jaw, clean and fair, and ‘Single Out’ done as pretty a headspin as I ever see—­considering that it was executed in a cuspidore.  ’Twas my first insight into the amenities of football.  I’d like to see a whole game of it.  They say it lasts an hour and a half.  Of all the cordial, why-how-do-you-do mule kicks handed down in rhyme and story, that wallop was the adopted daddy.

“When he struck, I took the end of the bar like a steeplechaser, for I seen ‘Curly’ grab at the drawer, and I have aversions to witnessing gun plays from the front end.  The tenderfoot riz up in his chair, and snatchin’ a stack of reds in his off mit, dashed ’em into ‘Curly’s’ face just as he pulled trigger.  It spoiled his aim, and the boy was on to him like a mountain lion, follerin’ over the table, along the line of least resistance.

“It was like takin’ a candy sucker from a baby.  ‘Curly’ let go of that ‘six’ like he was plumb tired of it, and the kid welted him over the ear just oncet.  Then he turned on the room; and right there my heart went out to him.  He took in the line up at a sweep of his lamps: 

“‘Any of you gentlemen got ideas on the subject?’ he says, and his eyes danced like waves in the sunshine.

“It was all that finished and genteel that I speaks up without thinkin’, ‘You for me pardner!’

“Just as I said it, there come a swish and flash as if a kag of black powder had changed its state of bein’.  I s’pose everybody yelled and dodged except the picture man.  He says, ’Thank you, gents; very pretty tableau.’

“It was the first flash-light I ever see, and all I recall now is a panorama of starin’ eyeballs and gaping mouths.  When it seen it wasn’t torpedoed, the population begin crawlin’ out from under chairs and tables.  Men hopped out like toads in a rain.

“I crossed the boy’s trail later that evening; found him watchin’ a dance at the Gold Belt.  The photografter was there, too, and when he’d got his dog-house fixed, he says: 

“’Everybody take pardners, and whoop her up.  I want this picture for the Weekly.  Get busy, you, there!” We all joined in to help things; the orchestra hit the rough spots, and we went highfalutin’ down the centre, to show the English race how our joy pained us, and that life in the Klondyke had the Newport whirl, looking like society in a Siwash village.  He got another good picture.

“Inside of a week, Morrow and I had joined up.  We leased a claim and had our cabin done, waiting for snow to fall so’s to sled our grub out to the creek.  He took to me like I did to him, and he was an educated lad, too.  Somehow, though, it hadn’t gone to his head, leaving his hands useless, like knowledge usually does.

“One day, just before the last boat pulled down river, Mr. Struthers, the picture man, come to us—­R.  Alonzo Struthers, of London and ‘Frisco, he was—­and showin’ us a picture, he says: