When
Mr. Cassidy had returned from exercising the animal and himself over
two miles of rocky hillside in the vain endeavor to give it his
opinion of burros and sundry chastisements, he was requested, as owner
of the beast, to give his counsel as to the best way of securing
eighteen breakfasts.
Remembering that the animal was headed north when
he last saw it and that it was too old to eat, anyway, he suggested a
plan which had worked successfully at other times for other ends,
namely, poker. Mr. McAllister, an expert at the great American game,
volunteered his service in accordance with the spirit of the occasion
and, half an hour later, he and Mr. Cassidy drifted into Pell's poker
parlors, which were located in the rear of a Chinese laundry, where
they gathered unto themselves the wherewithal for the required
breakfasts. An hour spent in the card room of the "Hurrah" convinced
its proprietor that they had wasted their talents for the past six
weeks in digging for gold. The proof of this permitted the departure
of the outfits with their customary elan.
At Santa Fe the various individuals had gone their respective ways,
to reassemble at the ranch in the near future, and for several days
they had been drifting south in groups of twos and threes and, like
chaff upon a stream, had eddied into Alkaline, where Mr. Peters had
found them arduously engaged in postponing the final journey.
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