scoops and leaps, and old Charlie, dangling on the end of the reins,
flying along in seven-league jumps behind her. As soon as he caught his
breath sufficiently for renewed directions, the cavalcade returned to
the grandstand and operations were repeated.

Charlie had been a sailor before he came to California, and he plowed
(?) each furrow with a collection of forceful admonitions, delivered in
a voice of thunder, from a different language. It was all the same to
Lizzie! She loathed plowing just as thoroughly in wildcat Spanish, as
she did in Dutch or Cingalese, and she did not hesitate to prove it.

Jim Hutch and Jimmie Greeley drifted down to Rattlesnake at sundown and
joined the laughter-weakened group perched upon Charlie's snake fence.

"The man grows more daft every year. 'Tis strange, what charms the Widow
Schmitt." Old Jimmie merely growled in his beard. "Charlie, mon," he
called, "the mare is warm and weary, and so's yoursel'. Come on to town
for a bit."

Charlie stayed overlong at the miners' haunts in Rattlesnake and it was
very late when he started back to his cabin, carrying in one limp, hot
hand a jug which he guarded zealously from harm during his unsteady
progress.

The men still sat over the card tables when the first daylight crept
over the mountains. Jimmie Greeley was raking in a jackpot, grinning
fiendishly at the dour Jim Hutch when they heard heavy, running feet
outside. The door crashed open and a frightened, half-grown lad shouted:

"Where's the sheriff? Charlie Price has been hung!"