Two days after we met a line of ore-wagons drug by mules. When we was twenty foot away the cow-puncher and the first driver give a holler, and in ten seconds they was shakin' hands and poundin' each other on the back, sayin', "Why, you damned old this and that!" When a lull come, the cow-puncher says, "Jack, let me present my friends!" so the driver he shook hands with us and says, "Any friend of Billy's on your meal ticket! Where you crowd of sand skinners headed for?" So, after some talk, he understood. "You want a town," says he. "Well," p'inting with the butt of his whip, "eighteen miles over yonder you'll find your place, if you're looking to make the sidewalks stand perpendicular; and twenty mile over there, if you want to find some of the nicest people outdoors. Pretty girls there, bet cher life. Chip Jackson filled me full of lead two months ago to get his name up--reg'lar kid trick; wanted to get a rep as the man that put out Jack Hunter; he didn't put me out no more'n you see at present, but the folk over at Cactus used me white. Nussed me. Gee! A dream, gents, a dream! Real girls, with clothes that whispers like wind in the grass, 'Here I come! Here I come!' "I got the prettiest, slimmest, black-eyed one marked down for me. I wanted her right off, but she said she couldn't consider it, and cried a little; so I cuddled her up and ca'med her down and said I'd do the considerin'. That's a great place--you fellers have seen enough rough house, why don't you shuck down that way?" "I play her wide open," says Aggy, "from pretty little kittens in white to chawin' the ear off my fellow-man; but, to speak honest and straightforward, we ain't got the sinews of war to start a campaign in such a town, as I'd like to." "Broke!" hoots Hunter. "Well, that don't go a minute! Here!" says he, "glue your optics to that." He chucked out a specimen peppered with yaller. "That's my mine. I'm just thinkin' of taking a half interest in the mint. You can pick her to go twenty thousand to the ton--help yourselves, gents." He began sortin' rock. "Oh, here!" says he, "wait!" Then he called his men--Greasers--and spoke to 'em firm in Spanish, that they was to bring their turkeys and empty their pockets. They rolled their eyes and talked about saints. "G'wan," says Jack, "if you fellers didn't know that I knew you were pinchin' me for at least two hundred a trip you wouldn't respect me. Come, shake your jeans, or I'll strip you clean when it comes you're between me and my friends." So, mournin' and groanin', they unloaded about fifty pounds of the loveliest rock you ever see. There was a piece shaped like a cross that Ag picked out for himself, but the Greaser that owned it hollered loud, and Ag give it back to him. "With that in his clothes," says Aggy, "he can steal religiously--I wouldn't take that comfort from the poor soul for anything."