"It's shore too late now; I'm in, an' I can't stop. To make things
more complex, as the water cuts off the tenderfoot's yell like
puffin' out a candle, a little old black mule, which is my off-
p'inter, loses his feet an' goes down. I pours the leather into the
team the harder, an' the others soars into their collars an' drug my
black p'inter with 'em; only he's onder water. Of course I allows
both the black p'inter an' the Colonel's shorely due to drown a
whole lot.
"We gets across, the seven other mules an' me; an' the second he's
skated out on the sand on his side, the drowned mule gets up an'
sings as triumphant as I ever hears. Swimmin' onder the river don't
wear on him a bit.
"Then I goes scoutin' for the Colonel, but he's vanished complete.
Nacherally, I takes him for a dead-an'-gone gent; an' figgers if
some eddy or counter-current don't get him, or he don't go aground
on no sand-bar, his fellow-men will fish him out some'ers between me
an' New Orleans, an' plant him an' hold services over him.
"Bein' as I can't be of no use where it's a clean-sweep play like
this, I dismisses the Colonel from my mind. After hobblin' an'
throwin' loose my team, I lugs out the grub-box all sorrowful an'
goes into camp.
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