n favor of this yere lynchin' like a
landslide. But, all the same, thar's a bet we overlooks. It's up to us
not only to be jest, but to be gen'rous. This yere murderer, who's
done blotted out the only real artist I ever meets except myse'f, has
a wife down to the hotel. As incident to these festiv'ties she's goin'
to be a widow. Is it for the manhood an' civic virchoo of Bernilillo
to leave a widow of its own construction broke an' without a dollar? I
hears the incensed echoes from the Black Range roarin' back in
scornful accents "No!" Sech bein' the sityooation, as preelim'nary to
this yere hangin' I moves we takes up a collection for that widow.
Yere's a fifty to 'nitiate the play'--at this p'int the Planter throws
a fifty-dollar bill into his hat--'an' as I passes among you I wants
every sport to come across, lib'ral an' free, an' prove to the world
lookin' on that Bernilillo is the band of onbelted philanthropists
which mankind's allers believed.

"Hat in hand, same as if it's a contreebution box an' he's passin' the
platter in church, the Planter begins goin' in an' out through the
multitood like a meadowlark through standin' grass. That is, he
starts to go in an' out; but, at the first motion, that entire
lynchin' party exhales like mist on the mornin' mountains. It's the
same as flappin' a blanket at a bunch of cattle. Every profligate of
'em, at the su'gestion he contreebute to the widow, gets stampeded,
an' thar's nobody left but the Planter, the professor, an' me.

"'Which I shore knows how to tech them ground-hawgs on the raw,' says
the Planter, as he onlooses the professor. 'If I was to have p'inted a
gun at 'em now, they'd've give me a battle. But bein' to the last man
jack a bunch of onmitigated misers, a threat leveled at their
bankrolls sets 'em to hidin' out like quail!'

"The professor?

"The instant he's laig-free, an' without so much as pausin' to
congrachoolate his preeserver on the power of his eloquence, he
vanishes into the night. He's headin' towards Vegas as he's lost to
sight, an' I learns later from Russ Kishler he makes that meetropolis
more or less used up. No; he don't have no wife. That flight of fancy
is flung off by the Planter simply as furnishin' 'atmosphere.'

"Wolfville never gets honored but once by the notice of a hypnotist.
This yere party don't proclaim himse'f as sech, but bills his little
game as that of a 'magnetic healer,' an' allows in words a foot high
that he's out