"One afternoon I was in a saloon, and the barkeeper had just told me
how Shirty Smith and Op'ry Bill had had a quarrel, and how Shirty was
tearing around like a mad bull and swearing he 'd shoot Bill on sight,
when in walked Op'ry himself. He came up almost behind me, slapped me
on the shoulder with his left hand, asked me to take a drink with him,
slipped his hand down on my right arm and began feeling of it and
praising my muscle. My eye happened to fall on a broken bit of a
mirror behind the bar, and I saw that his right hand was cocking a
pistol at the back of my head. I called out loudly and angrily,
'Shirty, don't shoot him in the back!'

"Op'ry Bill was so taken aback by what he supposed to be his own danger
that he wheeled around and turned his pistol the other way. Shirty was
n't there, but I had him covered when he turned back, red hot at having
been deceived.

"Did I kill him? No, I thought I 'd give him a lecture first, as I had
him well covered, about being so ornery mean, and while I was talking
Shirty rushed in, hot on the trail, and swore he 'd let daylight
through me if I did n't give him first chance at the sneak.

"A good many of the young fellows, like me, for instance, and plenty of
the older ones, too, were utterly reckless about how much money we made
and how much we lost. Everything went at a fast and furious rate, and
it was all the same to us whether we were raking in or pouring out the
dust. It was many a year after those stirring days before I tried to
figure up how much I took out of the ground and might have got for my
mine locations if I had had a particle of thrift--such as I ought to
have had, considering my New England birth and ancestry. It footed up