Then Carondelet Joe, calmly confident in the influence of his wonderful pants, led all odds in betting.  But one evening, when Joe had managed to get himself in the front row and directly before the little teacher, that lady turned her head several times and showed signs of discomfort.  When it finally struck the latter that the human breath might, perhaps, waft toward a lady perfumes more agreeable than those of mixed drinks, he abruptly quitted the school and the camp.

Flush, the poker champion, carried with him to the singing-school that astounding impudence which had long been the terror and admiration of the camp.  But a quality which had always seemed exactly the thing when applied to poker seemed to the boys barely endurable when displayed toward Miss Brown.

One afternoon, Flush indiscreetly indulged in some triumphant and rather slighting remarks about the little teacher.  Within fifteen minutes, Flush’s final earthly home had been excavated, and an amateur undertaker was making his coffin.

An untimely proposal by a good-looking young Mexican, and his prompt rejection, left the race between Toledo and a Frenchman named Lecomte.  It also left Miss Brown considerably frightened, for until now she had imagined nothing more serious than the rude admiration which had so delighted her at first.

But now, who knew but some one else would be ridiculous?  Poor little Miss Brown suffered acutely at the thought of giving pain, and determined to be more demure than ever.

But alas! even her agitation seemed to make her more charming to her two remaining lovers.

Had the boys at the saloon comprehended in the least the cause of Miss Brown’s uneasiness, they would have promptly put both Lecomte and Toledo out of the camp, or out of the world.  But to their good-natured, conceited minds it meant only that she was confused, and unable to decide, and unlimited betting was done, to be settled upon the retirement of either of the contestants.

And while patriotic feeling influenced the odds rather in Toledo’s favor, it was fairly admitted that the Frenchman was a formidable rival.

To all the grace of manner, and the knowledge of women that seems to run in Gallic blood, he was a man of tolerable education and excellent taste.  Besides, Miss Brown was so totally different from French women, that every development of her character afforded him an entirely new sensation, and doubled his devotion.

Toledo stood his ground manfully, though the boys considered it a very bad sign when he stopped drinking, and spent hours in pacing the ground in front of his hut, with his hands behind him, and his eyes fixed on the ground.

Finally, when he was seen one day to throw away his faithful old pipe, heavy betters hastened to “hedge” as well as they might.

Besides, as one of the boys truthfully observed, “He couldn’t begin to wag a jaw along with that Frenchman.”