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“Well, it were just so with Peg-leg–though I never knew it. Just by accident I’d laid holt of him where he was tender; an’ when he felt that leg go–say, lemme tell you, he was some excited. He forgits all about Clarence, and he lines out for me, a-clawin’ the air. Lucky he’d left his gun in the other room.

“Well, sir, y’ought to have seen him, a-hoppin’ on one foot, and banging agin the furniture, jes’ naturally black in the face with rage, an’ doin’ his darnedest to lay his hands on me, roarin’ all the whiles like a steer with a kinked tail.

“Well, I’m skeered, and I remarks that same without shame. I’m skeered. I don’t want to come to no grapples with Peg-leg in his wrath, an’ I knows that so long as he can’t git his leg he can’t take after me very fast. Bud’s saloon backs right up agin the bluff over the river. So what do I do but heave that same wooden leg through one o’ the back windows, an’ down she goes (as I thought) mebbe seventy feet into the canon o’ the Colorado? And then, mister man, I skins out–fast.

“I takes me headlong flight by way o’ the back room and on-root pitches Peg-leg’s gun over into the canon, too, an’ then whips around the corner of the saloon an’ fetches out ag’in by the street in front. With his gun gone an’ his leg gone, Peg-leg–so long’s y’ain’t within arm’s reach–is as harmless as a horned toad. So I kinda hangs ’round the neighbourhood jes’ to see what-all mout turn up.

“Peg-leg, after hoppin’ back to find that his gun was gone, to look for his leg, comes out by the front door, hoppin’ from one chair to another, an’ seein’ me standin’ there across the street makes remarks; an’ he informs me that because of this same little turn-up this mornin’ I ain’t never goin’ to live to grow hair on my face. His observations are that vigorous an’ p’inted that I sure begin to see it that way, too, and I says to myself:

“‘Now you, Bunt McBride, you’ve cut it out for yourself good and hard, an’ the rest o’ your life ain’t goin’ to be free from nervousness. Either y’ought to ‘a’ let this here hell-roarin’ maverick alone or else you should ‘a’ put him clean out o’ business when you had holt o’ his shootin’-iron. An’ I ain’t a bit happy.’ And then jes’ at this stage o’ the proceedings occurs what youse ‘ud call a diversion.

“It seemed that that wood stump didn’t go clean to the river as I first figured, but stuck three-fourths the way down. An’ a-course there’s a fool half-breed kid who’s got to chase after it, thinkin’ to do Peg-leg a good turn.

“I don’t know nothin’ about this, but jes’ stand there talkin’ back to Peg-leg, an’ pre-tendin’ I ain’t got no misgivings, when I sees this kid comin’ a-cavoortin’ an’ a-cayoodlin’ down the street with the leg in his hands, hollerin’ out:

“‘Here’s your leg, Mister Peg-leg! I went an’ got it for you, Mister Peg-leg!’

“It ain’t so likely that Peg-leg could ‘a’ caught me even if he’d had his leg, but I wa’n’t takin’ no chances. An’ as Peg-leg starts for the kid I start, too–with my heart knockin’ agin my front teeth, you can bet.

“I never knew how fast a man could hop till that mornin’, an’, lookin’ at Peg-leg with the tail o’ my eye as I ran, it seemed to me as how he was a-goin’ over the ground like a ole he-kangaroo. But somehow he gets off his balance and comes down all of a smash like a rickety table, an’ I reaches the kid first an’ takes the leg away from him.

“I guess Peg-leg must ‘a’ begun to lay it out by then that I held a straight flush to his ace high, for he sits down on the edge of the sidewalk an’, being some winded, too, he just glares. Then byme-by he says: