and dropped from
their saddles and still did not wake up, and some went clean daft for
want of sleep, and fighting steady all around the clock too, fair and
square over into Kansas! And there was the night they buried eight
hundred!"

In all this Daniel might have said "We," but reportorial modesty
forbade.

"And," he went on, gaining momentum, "I don't reckon you'll be
forgetting Arkansas, and the ague and rattlesnakes? And how the
small-pox swooped down on that camp of cane shacks? And how the quinine
gave out, and--and the _tobacco_? Lawd!--And how those boys forgot
how to sew patches, their rags being so far gone! And how they made
bridles out of bark, and coffee out of corn! And how they kneaded dough
in old rubber blankets and cooked it on rocks! Well, Jack, there they
were, in Arkansas like that, and the War was over at last, and Missouri
was just a waiting for 'em. And then, to think that they had to face
square around another way entirely! Din, you'll just try to imagine that
there devil breed facing any other way except to'ds home!"

"Don't, Shanks, you----"

"Devils? They were the wildest things that are. It's a mighty good thing
they didn't go back. Think of their neighbors across the Kansas line,
getting ready for 'em with every sort of legal persecution under the
sun, and carpet-bag judges to help! Outlaw decrees? Well, I reckon those
decrees will make a few outlaws, all right, and there'll be
unsurrendered Johnny Rebs ten years from now. Shelby's boys had the look
of it. Your own Jackson county regiment would have flared into
desperadoes at sight of a United States marshal. They were all in just
that sort o' mood, as they turned their backs on Missouri. And after
four years, too! But there, it's a stiff wind that has no turning, so
cheer up! _They_ did, as soon as that deluge got done with and they
were headed for Mexico, one thousand of 'em. Soldiers mus'n't repine,
you know. For them, Fate arrays herself in April's capricious sunshine."

Driscoll had to smile. "Careful, there, Dan, don't stampede."

"I ain't, but if now 'I hold my tongue I shall give up the ghost,' and I
want to tell you first that Texas is a handsome state. We--they--were
considerable interested all the way through it."

"But, Meagre Shanks, where'd you leave 'em?"

"Back in Monterey, drinking champagne with Fat Jenny. Alas, 'who can
stay the bottles of heaven?'"

"Fat--who's she?"

"Now you wait. They've got heaps to do