Page:Options (1909).djvu/71

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THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL
 

play casino. After five days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a toot on Broadway. When I caught big casino I felt as excited as if I had made a million in Trinity. And when H. O. loosened up a little and told the story about the lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes.

“That showed what a comparative thing life is. A man may see so much that he’d be bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire or Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell, and you’ll see him splitting his ribs laughing at ‘Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,’ or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.

“By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a total eclipse of sheep.

“‘Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,’ says he, ‘about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was shot through the shoulder, and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it’s said that only one man did the job.’

“‘Seems to me I do,’ says I. ‘But such things happen so often they don’t linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they over-

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