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“Hosses! Sure!” I yells, jumpin’ up. “You bet you! Why, hosses is where I live! What hosses do you want?”

“All hosses,” says he, calm as a faro dealer.

“What?” says I. “Elucidate, my bucko. I don’t take no such blanket order. Spread your cards.”

“I mean just that,” says he. “I want you to buy all the hosses in this camp, and in the mountains. Every one.”

“Whew!” I whistles. “That’s a large order. But I’m your meat.”

“Come with me, then,” says he. I hadn’t but just got up, but I went with him to his little old poison factory. Of course, I hadn’t had no breakfast; but he staked me to a Kentucky breakfast. What’s a Kentucky breakfast? Why, a Kentucky breakfast is a three-pound steak, a bottle of whisky, and a setter dog. What’s the dog for? Why, to eat the steak, of course.

We come to an agreement. I was to get two-fifty a head commission. So I started out. There wasn’t many hosses in that country, and what there was the owners hadn’t much use for unless it was to work a whim. I picked up about a hundred head quick enough, and reported to Dutchy.

“How about burros and mules?” I asks Dutchy.

“They goes,” says he. “Mules same as hosses; burros four bits a head to you.”

At the end of a week I had a remuda of probably two hundred animals. We kept them over the hills in some “parks,” as these sots call meadows in that country. I rode into town and told Dutchy.

“Got them all?” he asks.

“All but a cross-eyed buckskin that’s mean, and the bay mare that Noah bred to.”

“Get them,” says he.

“The bandits want too much,” I explains.

“Get them anyway,” says he.

I went away and got them. It was scand’lous; such prices.

When I hit Cyanide again I ran into scenes of wild excitement. The whole passel of them was on that one street of their’n, talkin’ sixteen ounces to the pound. In the middle was Dutchy, drunk as a soldier-just plain foolish drunk.

“Good Lord!” thinks I to myself, “he ain’t celebratin’ gettin’ that bunch of buzzards, is he?”

But I found he wasn’t that bad. When he caught sight of me, he fell on me drivellin’.

“Look there!” he weeps, showin’ me a letter.

I was the last to come in; so I kept that letter–here she is. I’ll read her.

Dear Dutchy:–I suppose you thought I’d flew the coop, but I haven’t and this is to prove it. Pack up your outfit and hit the trail. I’ve made the biggest free gold strike you ever see. I’m sending you specimens. There’s tons just like it, tons and tons. I got all the claims I can hold myself; but there’s heaps more. I’ve writ to Johnny and Ed at Denver to come on. Don’t give this away. Make tracks. Come in to Buck Canon in the Whetstones and oblige.

Yours truly,
Henry Smith

Somebody showed me a handful of white rock with yeller streaks in it. His eyes was bulgin’ until you could have hung your hat on them. That O’Toole party was walkin’ around, wettin’ his lips with his tongue and swearin’ soft.

“God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!” says he. “And the fool had to get drunk and give it away!”

The excitement was just started, but it didn’t last long. The crowd got the same notion at the same time, and it just melted. Me and Dutchy was left alone.

I went home. Pretty soon a fellow named Jimmy Tack come around a little out of breath.

“Say, you know that buckskin you bought off’n me?” says he, “I want to buy him back.”