“Doc Millikin raises up and points out the window with his flute at the banana-steamer loading with fruit.

“‘Yank,’ says he, ’there’s a steamer that’s going to sail in the morning.  If I was you, I’d sail on it.  The Confederate Government’s done all it can for you.  There wasn’t a gun fired.  The negotiations were carried on secretly between the two nations by the purser of that steamer.  I got him to do it because I didn’t want to appear in it.  Twelve thousand dollars was paid to the officials in bribes to let you go.’

“‘Man!’ says I, sitting down hard—­’twelve thousand—­how will I ever—­who could have—­where did the money come from?’

“‘Yazoo City,’ says Doc Millikin:  ’I’ve got a little saved up there.  Two barrels full.  It looks good to these Colombians.  ’Twas Confederate money, every dollar of it.  Now do you see why you’d better leave before they try to pass some of it on an expert?’

“‘I do,’ says I.

“‘Now let’s hear you give the password,’ says Doc Millikin.

“‘Hurrah for Jeff Davis!’ says I.

“‘Correct,’ says Doc.  ’And let me tell you something:  The next tune I learn on my flute is going to be “Yankee Doodle.”  I reckon there’s some Yanks that are not so pizen.  Or, if you was me, would you try “The Red, White, and Blue"?’”

XXII

THE LONESOME ROAD

Brown as a coffee-berry, rugged, pistoled, spurred, wary, indefeasible, I saw my old friend, Deputy-Marshal Buck Caperton, stumble, with jingling rowels, into a chair in the marshal’s outer office.

And because the court-house was almost deserted at that hour, and because Buck would sometimes relate to me things that were out of print, I followed him in and tricked him into talk through knowledge of a weakness he had.  For, cigarettes rolled with sweet corn husk were as honey to Buck’s palate; and though he could finger the trigger of a forty-five with skill and suddenness, he never could learn to roll a cigarette.

It was through no fault of mine (for I rolled the cigarettes tight and smooth), but the upshot of some whim of his own, that instead of to an Odyssey of the chaparral, I listened to—­a dissertation upon matrimony!  This from Buck Caperton!  But I maintain that the cigarettes were impeccable, and crave absolution for myself.

“We just brought in Jim and Bud Granberry,” said Buck.  “Train robbing, you know.  Held up the Aransas Pass last month.  We caught ’em in the Twenty-Mile pear flat, south of the Nueces.”

“Have much trouble corralling them?” I asked, for here was the meat that my hunger for epics craved.

“Some,” said Buck; and then, during a little pause, his thoughts stampeded off the trail.  “It’s kind of queer about women,” he went on, “and the place they’re supposed to occupy in botany.  If I was asked to classify them I’d say they was a human loco weed.  Ever see a bronc that had been chewing loco?  Ride him up to a puddle of water two feet wide, and he’ll give a snort and fall back on you.  It looks as big as the Mississippi River to him.  Next trip he’d walk into a canon a thousand feet deep thinking it was a prairie-dog hole.  Same way with a married man.