Locoed Charlie an’ Scotty don’t dare go on without it, but stays an’ searches; Cold-sober Simms--who is given this yere nom-de-guerre, as Colonel Sterett terms it, because he’s the only sport in the Panhandle who don’t drink--stays with ’em to help on the hunt. At last, failin’ utter to discover the missin’ mail, Locoed Charlie an’ Old Scotty returns to Tascosa in fear an’ tremblin’, not packin’ the nerve to face McAllister, who manages for the Lee-Scott, an’ inform him of the yoonique disposition they makes of his outfit’s letters. This return to Tascosa is, after all, mere proodence, since McAllister is a mighty emotional manager, that a-way, an’ it’s as good as even money he hangs both of them culprits in that first gust of enthoosiasm which would be shore to follow any explanation they can make. So they returns; an’ because he can’t he’p himse’f none, bein’ he’s only a passenger on that buckboard, Cold-sober Simms returns with ’em. No, the mailbag is found a week later by a Lee-Scott rider, an’ for the standin’ of Locoed Charlie an’ Scotty it’s as well he does. Cold-sober is some sore at bein’ baffled in his trip to the Lee-Scott since he aims to go to work thar as a rider. To console himse’f, he turns in an’ bucks a faro game that a brace of onknown black-laigs who shows in Tascosa from Fort Elliot the day prior, has onfurled in James’ s’loon. As sometimes happens, Cold-sober plays in all brands an’ y’earmarks of luck, an’ in four hours breaks the bank. It ain’t overstrong, no sech institootion of finance in fact as Cherokee Hall’s faro game in Wolfville, an’ when Cold-sober calls the last nine-king turn for one hundred, an’ has besides a hundred on the nine, coppered, an’ another hundred open on the king, tharby reapin’ six hundred dollars as the froots of said feat, the sharp who’s deal-in’ turns up his box an’ tells Cold-sober to set in his chips to be cashed. Cold-sober sets ’em in; nine thousand five hundred dollars bein’ the roundup, an’ the dealer-sharp hands over the dinero. Then in a sperit of resentment the dealer-sharp picks up the faro-box an’ smashes it ag’in the wall. “Thar bein’ nothin’ left,” he says to his fellow black-laig, who’s settin’ in the look-out’s chair, “for you an’ me but to prance out an’ stand up a stage, we may as well dismiss that deal-box from our affairs. I knowed that box was a hoodoo ever since Black Morgan gets killed over it in Mobeetie; an’ so I tells you, but you-all wouldn’t heed.” Cold-sober is shore elated about his luck; them nine thousand odd dollars is more wealth than he ever sees; an’ how to dispose of it, now he’s got it, begins to bother Cold-sober a heap. One gent says, “Hive it in Howard’s Store!” another su’gests he leave it with old man Cohn; while still others agrees it’s Cold-sober’s dooty to blow it in.