admits Dan, 'speshully them big black an' red ants that has stingers
like hornets an' pinchers like bugs. Sech insecks, armed to the
teeth as they be, an' laid out to fight both ways from the middle,
is likewise too many for me. I would refoose battle with 'em
myse'f.'

"It ain't long before Captain Moon an' Curly Ben is seen confidin'
an' conferrin' with one another, an' drinkin' by themse'fs, an' no
one has to be told that Moon's makin' negotiations with Curly to
ride over an' down the agent. The idee is pecooliarly grateful to
Wolfville. It stands to win no matter how the kyards lay in the box.
If Curly fetches the agent flutterin' from his limb, thar's one
miscreant less in Arizona, if the agent gets the drop an' puts out
Curly Ben, it comes forth jest the same. It's the camp's theery
that, in all that entitles 'em to death, the case stands hoss an'
hoss between the agent an' Curly Ben.

"'An' if they both gets downed, it's a whip-saw, we win both ways;'
says Cherokee Hall, an' the rest of us files away our nose-paint in
silent assent tharwith. "It comes out later that Moon agrees to give
Curly Ben fifteen hundred dollars an' a pony, if he'll go over an'
kill off the agent. Curly Ben says the prop'sition is the
pleasantest thing he hears since he leaves the Panhandle ten years
before, an' so he accepts five hundred dollars an' the pony--the
same bein' the nacher of payments in advance--an' goes clatterin'
off up the canyon one evenin' on his mission of jestice. An' then we
hears no more of Curly Ben for about a month. No one marvels none at
this, however, as downin' any given gent is a prop'sition which in
workin' out is likely to involve delays.