Neither did we
want to let them off scot-free. They'd made us altogether too much
trouble for that! Bert here suggested a very simple way out. I went
down to Spanish Gulch and told the boys the whole story from start to
finish. Well, it isn't hard to handle a Western crowd if you go at it
right. The boys always thought you had good stuff in you since you rode
the horse and smashed Leary's face that night. It would have been easy
to have cooked up all kinds of trouble for our precious gang, but I
managed to get the boys in a frivolous mood, so they merely came up and
had fun."
"I should say they did!" Bert interjected. "They dragged the crowd out
of the shaft--and they were a tough-looking proposition, I can tell
you!--and stood them up in a row. They shaved half of Davidson's head
and half his beard, on opposite sides. They left tufts of hair all over
Arthur. They made a six-pointed star on the top of Slayton's crown.
Then they put the men's clothes on wrong side before, and tied them
facing the rear on three scrubby little burros. Then the whole outfit
was started toward Deadwood. The boys took them as far as Blue Lead,
where they delivered them over to the gang there, with instructions to
pass them along.
Pages:
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235