me to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways;
then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in--that 'll
throw the dogs off the scent."

They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our towhead,
and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away
off, shouting. We heard them come along towards the crick, but
couldn't see them; they seemed to stop and fool around awhile; then,
as we got further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly
hear them at all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us
and struck the river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the
towhead and hid in the cottonwoods and was safe.

One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head
and very gray whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a
greasy blue woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed
into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses--no, he only had one. He
had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung
over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking
carpet-bags.

The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. After
breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come
out was that these chaps didn't know one another.

"What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap.

"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the
teeth--and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with
it--but I stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just
in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side
of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you
to get off. So I told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would
scatter out _with_ you. That's the whole yarn--what's yourn?"

"Well, I'd ben a-runnin' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a
week, and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was
makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, I _tell_ you, and takin' as
much as five or six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and
niggers free--and business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or
another a little report got around last night that I had a way of
puttin' in my time with a private jug on the sly. A nigger rousted me
out this mornin', and told me the people was getherin' on the quiet
with their dogs and horses, and they'd be along pretty soon and give
me 'b