ing drinks
free-handed. Both were already pretty drunk, but they knew me as soon as
I entered the door, and surged toward me hands out.

"Well! well! well!" cried McNally delightedly. "And here's himself! And
who'd have thought of seeing you here! I made sure you were in the
valley and out of the country long since. And you're just in time! Make
a name for it? Better call it whiskey straight. Drink to us, my boy!
Come, join my friends! We're all friends here! Come on, and here's to
luck, the best luck ever! We've got two horse-loads of gold out
there--nothing but gold--and it all came from our old diggings. You
ought to have stayed. We had no trouble. Bagsby was an old fool!" All
the time he was dragging me along by the arm toward the crowd at the
bar. Barry maintained an air of owlish gravity.

"Where's Missouri Jones?" I inquired; but I might as well have asked the
stone mountains. McNally chattered on, excited, his blue eyes dancing,
bragging over and over about his two horse-loads of gold.

The crowd took his whiskey, laughed with him, and tried shrewdly to pump
him as to the location of his diggings. McNally gave them no
satisfaction there; but even when most hilarious retained enough sense
to put them off the track.

As will be imagined, I was most uneasy about the whole proceeding, and
tried quietly to draw the two men off.

"No, sir!" cried McNally, "not any! Jes' struck town, and am goin' to
have a _time_!" in which determination he was cheered by all the
bystanders. I did not know where to turn; Johnny was away on one of his
trips, and Danny Randall was not to be found. Finally inspiration served
me.

"Come down first and see Yank," I urged. "Poor old Yank is crippled and
can't move."

That melted them at once. They untied their long-suffering animals, and
we staggered off down the trail.

On the way down I tried, but in vain, to arouse them to a sense of
danger.

"You've let everybody in town know you have a lot of dust," I pointed
out.

McNally merely laughed recklessly.

"Good boys!" he cried; "wouldn't harm a fly!" and I could veer him to no
other point of view. Barry agreed to everything, very solemn and very
owlish.

We descended on Yank like a storm. I will say that McNally at any time
was irresistible and irrepressible, but especially so in his cups. We
laughed ourselves sick that afternoon. The Morenas were enchanted. Under
instructions, and amply supplied with dust, Morena went to to