" I says, "I ain't a doctor."

"Stay where you are, then. _I_ GOT YOU COVERED."

"I am staying," I says, "don't shoot."

"Who are yo'?"

"A feller," I says, kind of sensing his gun through the darkness as I
spoke, "who has found your OLD DEAD HOSS in the road."

He didn't answer fur several minutes. Then he says, using the words DEAD
HOSS as Bud had said he would.

"A DEAD HOSS is fitten fo' nothing but to skin."

"Well," I says, using the words fur the third time, as instructed, "it
is a DEAD HOSS all right."

I hearn the window shut and purty soon the front door opened.

"Come up here," he says. I come.

"Who rode that hoss yo' been talking about?" he asts.

"One of the SILENT BRIGADE," I tells him, as Bud had told me to say. I
give him the grip Bud had showed me with his good hand.

"Come on in," he says.

He shut the door behind us and lighted a lamp agin. And we looked each
other over. He was a scrawny little feller, with little gray eyes set
near together, and some sandy-complected whiskers on his chin. I told
him about Bud, and what his fix was.

"Damn it--oh, damn it all," he says, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "I
don't see how on AIRTH I kin do it. My wife's jest had a baby. Do yo'
hear that?"

And I did hear a sound like kittens mewing, somewheres up stairs.
Beauregard, he grinned and rubbed his nose some more, and looked at me
like he thought that mewing noise was the smartest sound that ever was
made.

"Boy," he says, grinning, "bo'n five hours ago. I've done named him
Burley--after the tobaccer association, yo' know. Yes, SIR, Burley
Peoples is his name--and he shore kin squall, the derned little cuss!"

"Yes," I says, "you better stay with Burley. Lend me a rig of some sort
and I'll take Bud home."

So we went out to Beauregard's stable with a lantern and hitched up one
of his hosses to a light road wagon. He went into the house and come
back agin with a mattress fur Bud to lie on, and a part of a bottle of
whiskey. And I drove back to that lumber pile. I guess I nearly killed
Bud getting him into there. But he wasn't bleeding much from his hip--it
was his arm was giving him fits.

We went slow, and the dawn broke with us four miles out of town. It was
broad daylight, and early morning noises stirring everywheres, when we
drove up in front of an old farmhouse, with big brick chimbleys built on
the outside of it, a couple of miles farther on.

CHAPTER XIV

As I drove