the big
mouth said, slow and loud, and long and savage, like the growl of a
grizzly:

"Swaller my grandmother's boots!" Then the man fell back and melted into
the crowd; and whatever romance there was in his life, whatever
sentiment he may have had, whatever poetry there was pent up in the
heart of this great Titan, it found no other expression than this.

The genteel gambler, who sat behind a table with its green cloth and
silver faro-box, forgot to throw his card, but held his arm poised in
the air till any man could have seen the Jack of Clubs, though a
thousand dollars' worth of gold-dust depended on the turn.

Yet all this soon had an end, of course, and there was a confusion of
tongues, and a noise that settled gradually over against the bar. Even
then, it was afterwards remarked, though the men really interested did
not know it at the time, that the cinnamon-headed dealer of drinks put
cayenne pepper in a gin cocktail and Scheidam schnapps in a Tom and
Jerry.

Limber Tim was there in their midst, but was a sad and a silent man.
Perhaps he had been told all about it before, and perhaps not. Tim was
not a talker, but a thinker. This to him meant the loss of his partner,
the man he loved--a divorce.

Poor Limber! he only backed up against the wall, screwed his back there,
twisted one leg in behind the other, stuck his hands in behind him, and
so stood there till he saw a man looking at him. Then he flopped over
with his face to the wall, dug up his great pencil from his great
pocket, and fell to writing on the wall, and trying to hide his face
from his fellows.

"Rather sudden, ain't it, Judge?"

"Well, not so sudden--not so sudden, considerin' this--this--this
glorious climate of Californy."

After awhile, when the monte game had asserted itself again, and things
were going on in the saloon just about as they were before the Judge
made this announcement, a tall and inquisitive man with a hatchet face
and a hump in his shoulder, and a twist in his neck, which made him look
like an interrogation point, rose up, and reaching his neck out toward
the bar, said in a sharp whisper:

"I'll bet a forty dollar hoss she's the real Nancy Williams."

The red-headed bar-keeper bristled up like a porcupine, and then put out
his broad hand as if it was an extinguisher.

CHAPTER XIV.

A WEDDING IN THE SIERRAS.

The wedding-day came. The camp had been invited to a man. There was but
one place in the camp th