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With stoical resolutions almost immediately upset, they gathered closely in about the miner and his tiny companion, crowding the red-headed Keno away from his place of honor next to the child. The quaint little pilgrim, in his old, fur cap and long, "man's" trousers, looked at the men in a grave way of doubt and questioning.
The Paymaster was dead, and Keno was dead; and their eight hundred dollars was gone. All the profits from the miners which they had counted upon so confidently had disappeared in a single day; and now her mother would have to pawn her diamonds again in order to get out of town. Virginia paced up and down, debating the situation and seeking some possible escape, but every door was closed.
One of the generals was not over twenty-three years of age, but this war furnished younger generals than he, men who won their rank by sheer hard service on great battlefields. The majority of the men were playing faro, roulette or keno, and the others sat in softly upholstered chairs and talked.
So I made a bold front and told him what I wanted to do, and he gave me $300 in cash, saying at the same time, "Pay me when you are able, as I like to help a young man who tries to help himself." I bought the keno set, and had $50 left, which paid all my debts and started me in business.
I gave him the trifle you desired-to-morrow I will nail him at the Keno crib." With this the Judge and the Justice each take an affectionate leave of the frail girl, and, as it is now past one o'clock in the morning, an hour much profaned in Charleston, take their departure. Armed with a revolver Mullholland has taken up his position in the street, where he awaits the coming of his adversaries.
"I guess you're right after all, Bel." "Sure, am I! You say you've got the newspapers fixed." "Sewed up tight." "Keno! Our programme's complete. You and Mr. Pierce and the Mayor see Merritt and get him. Call the meeting for next week. Make some good-natured, diplomatic feller chairman. Send out the call to about three hundred of your solidest men.
A terrible moment of silence ensued. Then Jim said, "Was it all the hair-oil I had?" "Every drop," said Keno. "Wal," drawled the miner, sagely, "don't take on too hard. Into each picnic some rain must fall." "But the boys won't eat it," answered Keno, inconsolably. "You don't know," replied Jim. "You never can tell what people will eat on Christmas till the follerin' day.
The two were in the midst of appreciating the charms of her ladyship when the cabin door was abruptly opened and in came a coatless, fat, little, red-headed man, puffing like a bellows and pulling down his shirtsleeves with a great expenditure of energy, only to have them immediately crawl back to his elbows. "Hullo, Keno," drawled the lanky Jim. "I thought you was mad and gone away and died."
Then he secured the faithful Keno, and, without another word to Bill Terrill, who had moved away whistling defiantly, he tramped homeward, in a rather gloomy mood. Doctor Kane, the kindly physician from Oakvale, was just coming down the path from the Kenyon farmhouse as Ralph rode into the yard.
The paper in manuscript and in proof was read and passed by the editors, Messrs. Conrad Keno and Leonard A. Jones, Esquires. The words of commendation are not mine, and it is manifest that any change made by me would place the responsibility upon me for what might remain. Hence I reprint the paper with only two or three changes where I have observed errors in statements of facts.
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