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sweeps away the coat with his left hand and plucks a silver dollar from the lower pocket in his fancy vest. Bill was famous for his sartorial tastes, as well as his personal cleanliness. “I will stake you to a bath, shave, and a trim.”
    I didn’t persist with my story but right away says, “Thank you kindly. I wonder if you would mind if I get something to eat with some of the money?”
    Wild Bill slowly blinks those sore-looking eyes and goes again into the vest pocket with two left fingers and finds me another dollar. This one felt funny, and I looked and saw it was knicked at one edge, but I guess it was still good, and I thanked him again.
    “After a plate of bread and beans, you’ll have enough left to pick up a shirt and pants where they sell used clothes, down the street. Then burn what you’re wearing now.”
    He turns and moves away, though not with the assured stride of old. Also he stayed on the walk, instead of the middle of the street, which he had once been famous for using so he could scan the area for possible bushwhackers and also keep a certain distance between him and them who might fire on him from ambush. But one thing I was sure about: namely, that when he played poker he still sat with his back to a wall.
    I had no reason not to act on his suggestion, having some pride in my appearance when I could afford as much, and I returned to my brother’s barrel-home so clean-washed and -shaved I bet I’d have to identify myself to him all over again. I was wearing a pair of canvas pants in reasonably good condition and almost clean along with a flannel shirt that was wore through at the elbows but had no discernible odor. These with the other goods heaped in the tent of the old-clothes dealer had been sold by gold-rushers who had run out of funds, either because they never panned any dust or lost it all gambling. Imagine what the original owners had got for a pants and shirt that cost me seventy cents altogether. That dealer throwed in a beat-up old hat with so greasy a sweatband I tore it away.
    I had enough left for coffee and two orders of beans and bread, the second of which I made sandwiches from and brung them back for my brother Bill. Even so, believe me when I say prices was greatly inflated at Deadwood, as at all gold towns.
    When I got to the hogshead, no Bill was in evidence, his yellow dog being there all alone and lonely. It never snarled at me this time, knowing me now, but sank its head real low and whimpered.
    The one order given me by Wild Bill I had not obeyed was to burn the pants and shirt I took off, for they belonged to my brother and was balled under my arm at the moment.
    “Dammit,” I says now to the dog, “where has he gone in his underwear?” The answer I got was another whine. After the kindly face and big brown eyes, what was most noticeable on this animal was his prominent ribs, all of which you could count at a distance. “I’m going to look for him. While you’re waiting, eat yourself one of these bean sandwiches.” Now that was a real sacrifice, for it had been all I could do to save some food for Bill, being still famished myself, but I took this here dog as part of my family responsibility, and he was likely to be more reliable than my brother.
    He swallowed that sandwich in one and a half bites, living for the instant as a dog does, and in expectation of more, but I put the other sandwich in the pocket of my pants, which as always was too roomy for me, cinched at the waist with a length of rope and folded up at the cuffs, and went out along the street, trying each of the saloons, of which already at that time there must of been two dozen or more within a mile and a half. As time went on, somebody told me at a later day, the number rose to seventy-six. Some of them I looked into had a bar consisting of a wooden plank supported by a barrel at either end, a bottle or two, and tin cups you’d never see washed out between drinkers if you watched all day. They