olk, porters, and waiters.

"This way, sir,--follow me," said a smart fellow in a waiter's dress;
and I handed him my bundle and stepped on shore.

CHAPTER XX. THE LOG-HUT AT BRAZOS

I was all impatience to see my prize: and scarcely had I entered the inn
than I passed out into the stable-yard, now crowded with many of those
equestrian-looking figures I had seen on board the steamer.

"Butcher's mare here still, Georgie?" said a huge fellow, with high
boots of red-brown leather, and a sheepskin capote belted round him with
a red sash.

"Yes, Master Seth, there she stands. You'll be getting a bargain of her,
one of these days."

"If I had her up at Austin next week for the fair, she 'd bring a few
hundred dollars."

"You 'd never think of selling a beast like that at Austin, Seth?" said
a bystander.

"Why not? Do you fancy I 'll bring her into the States, and see her
claimed in every town of the Union? Why, man, she's been stolen once
a month, that mare has, since she was a two-year-old. I knew an old
general up in the Maine frontier had her last year; and he rid her
away from a 'stump meeting' in Vermont, in change of his own
mule,--blind,--and never know'd the differ till he was nigh home. I
sold her twice, myself, in one week. Scott of Muckleburg stained her
off fore-leg white, and sold her back, as a new one, to the fellow who
returned her for lameness; and she can pretend lameness, she can."

A roar of very unbelieving laughter followed this sally, but Seth
resumed,--

"Well, I'll lay fifty dollars with any gentleman here that she comes out
of the stable dead lame, or all sound, just as I bid her."

Nobody seemed to fancy this wager; and Seth, satisfied with having
established his veracity, went on,--

"You 've but to touch the coronet of the off-foot with the point of your
bowie,--a mere touch, not draw blood,--and see if she won't come out
limping on the toe, all as one as a dead breakdown in the coffin joint;
rub her a bit then with your hand,--she 's all right again! It was
Wrecksley of Ohio taught her the trick; he used to lame her that way,
and buy her in, wherever he found her."

"Who's won her this time?" cried another.

"I have, gentlemen," said I, slapping my boot with my cane, and affecting
a very knowing air as I spoke. The company turned round and surveyed me
some seconds in deep silence.

"You an't a-goin' to ride her, young 'un?" said one, half
contemptuously.

"No, he an't;