"Mighty likely now," continued my friend, following a profound pause which was comfortably filled with peach and honey; "it's mighty likely now, comin' down to folks, that the most ornery party I ever knows is Curly Ben. This yere Ben is killed, final; clowned by old Captain Moon. Thar's a strange circumstance attendin', as the papers say, the obliteration of this Curly Ben, an' it makes a heap of an impression on me at the time. It shows how the instinct to do things, that a bent is allers carryin' 'round in his mind, gets sort o' located in his nerves mebby, an' he'll do 'em without his intellects ridin' herd on the play--do 'em like Curly Ben does, after his light is out complete. "This yere is what I'm trailin' up to: When Captain Moon fetches Curly Ben that time, Curly is playin' kyards. He's jest dealin', when, onbeknown to him, Moon comes Injunin' up from the r'ar surreptitious, an' drills Curly Ben through the head; an' the bullet bein' a '45 Colt's--for Moon ain't toyin' with Curly an' means business--goes plumb through an' emerges from onder Curly Ben's off eye. For that matter, it breaks the arm of a party who's playin' opp'site to Curly, an' who is skinnin' his pasteboards at the time, thinkin' nothin' of war. Which the queer part is this: Curly, as I states--an' he never knows what hits him, an' is as dead as Santa Anna in a moment--is dealin' the kyards. He's got the deck in his hands. An' yet, when the public picks Curly off the floor, he's pulled his two guns, an' has got one cocked. Now what do you--all deem of that for the workin' of a left-over impulse when a gent is dead? "But, as I remarks yeretofore, Curly Ben is the most ornery person I ever overtakes, an' the feelin's of the camp is in nowise laid waste when Moon adds him to the list that time in the Red Light bar. It's this a-way: "It's about a month before, when Captain Moon an' his nephy, with two 8-mule teams and four big three-an'-a-half Bain wagons, two lead an' two trail they be, comes freightin' out of Silver City with their eyes on Wolfville. It's the fourth night out, an' they're camped near a Injun agency. About midnight a half dozen of the bucks comes scoutin' 'round their camp, allowin' to a moral certainty they'll see what's loose an' little enough for 'em to pull. The aborigines makes the error of goin' up the wind from Moon's mules, which is grazin' about with hobbles on, an' them sagacious anamiles actooally has fits. It's a fact, if you want to see a mule go plumb into the air an' remain, jest let him get a good, ample, onmistakable smell of a Injun! It simply onhinges his reason; he ain't no more responsible than a cimmaron sheep. No, it ain't that the savage is out to do anything oncommon to the mule; it's merely one of the mule's illoosions, as I've told you once before. Jest the same, if them Injuns is comin' to braid his tail an' braid it tight, that mule couldn't feel more frantic.