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"It was all right," replied Snivel; "I looked at it. Ther sign that Cap Roche made on a barrel-head is there. Yer kin bet that it'll stay there, too. Young Wild West might take a notion ter knock it down; but if he does we'll see to it that it's put up ag'in, or another jest like it." When they had covered about a mile they slowed down a little and began to look behind them very often.
I sank down suddenly in gasps of unregenerate laughter, for the barrel-head was a tight fit, and as Jimmie endeavoured to climb out, the barrel climbed too, giving him a strange hoop-skirt effect, which went but sadly with the derby hat. Jimmie grinned sheepishly as the Angel extricated him, and placed a strong board on the barrel for him to stand upon in safety.
"What do you think of that?" he asked, holding the barrel-head so his companions could read it. "I reckon we know where the material to make the sign came from now." "Great gimlets!" exclaimed Cheyenne Charlie. "If you hadn't seen Roche go inter ther cave last night you would know now that he was connected with ther outlaws. This is what I calls great!"
My voice was lost in the awful din, and the barricade held me fast. Above me, standing on a barrel-head, was Baptiste, yelling like a demon. In vain I called to him. My fingers could just reach his foot, and he heeded not at all my touch. Slowly Idaho was dragging his almost unconscious victim toward the knife.
Grouped about the stove, upon counter, barrel-head, and up-ended goods box, were the same decaying remnants of the moldering town's vanishing population. The thick, cloudy glass with its sticky edges still circulated for the common good, and above the heads of the unkempt men the air reeked gray with the fumes of rank tobacco. Only the man who entered had changed.
By then it was pretty well on in the night and I remember how the moon rose just as we had it fairly well dried out and dropped astern rose as big as a barrel-head and threw a yellow light over it, and then went out of sight, for a breeze was on us. And "Oh, Lord! that thousand-barrel school!" groaned everybody.
This little lady had her Saratoga trunk, which was the chief article of furniture; yet, by means of a rug on the ground-floor, a few candle-boxes covered with red cotton calico for seats, a table improvised out of a barrel-head, and a fireplace and chimney excavated in the back wall or bank, she had transformed her "hole in the ground" into a most attractive home for her young warrior husband; and she entertained me with a supper consisting of the best of coffee, fried ham, cakes, and jellies from the commissary, which made on my mind an impression more lasting than have any one of the hundreds of magnificent banquets I have since attended in the palaces and mansions of our own and foreign lands.
This little lady had her Saratoga trunk, which was the chief article of furniture; yet, by means of a rug on the ground-floor, a few candle-boxes covered with red cotton calico for seats, a table improvised out of a barrel-head, and a fireplace and chimney excavated in the back wall or bank, she had transformed her "hole in the ground" into a most attractive home for her young warrior husband; and she entertained me with a supper consisting of the best of coffee, fried ham, cakes, and jellies from the commissary, which made on my mind an impression more lasting than have any one of the hundreds of magnificent banquets I have since attended in the palaces and mansions of our own and foreign lands.
Presently, in groups or singly, came old and middle-aged gentlemen, and with the last our friend Schmidt, who wandered off to a corner and sat on a barrel-head watching the effects of the mingling of daylight and candlelight, and amused in his quiet way at the scene and the intense interest of the chief actors in it, which, like other things he did not comprehend, had for him the charm of oddness.
Every light at sea or on shore, in cottage window or at masthead or in lighthouse or on lightship a twinkling diamond point. A moon, apparently as big as a barrel-head, hung up in the east and below it a carpet of cold fire, of dancing, spangled silver spread upon the ocean. The sound of the surf, distant, soothing; and for the rest quiet and the fragrance of the summer woods and fields.
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