sometimes he sang, with maudlin mournfulness:

"’Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie.’
The words came low and mournfully
From the cold, pale lips of a youth who lay
On his dying couch at the close of day."

The fat lady reminded him that he was a gentleman and that he was driving
ladies; she threatened him with her son on Sweetwater, who began, in the
maternal chronicles, by being six feet in his stockings, and who steadily
grew, as the scale of threats increased, till he reached the altitude of
six feet four, growing hourly in height and fierceness.

But Chugg gave no heed, and once he sang the "Ballad of the Mule-Skinner,"
with what seemed to both terrified passengers an awful warning of their
overthrow:

"As I was going down the road,
With a tired team and a heavy load,
I cracked my whip and the leaders sprung—
The fifth chain broke, and the wheelers hung,
The off-horse stepped on the wagon tongue—"

This harrowing ballad was repeated with accompanying Delsarte at intervals
during the afternoon, but as Mary and the fat lady managed to escape
without accident, they began to feel that they bore charmed lives.

At sundown they came to the road-ranch of Johnnie Dax, bearing Leander’s
compliments as a secret despatch. The outward aspect of the place was
certainly an awful warning to trustful bachelors who make acquaintances