Page:AH Lewis--Wolfville.djvu/192

156 to me none,' says Cherokee. 'Which I remarks this yere phenomenon with pleasure. Mail-bags packs more grief than joy, an' I ain't honin' for no hand in the game whatever. It's fifteen years since I buys a stamp or gets a letter, an' all thirst tharfor is assuaged complete.'

"'Fifteen years is shore a long time,' says Enright, sorter to himse'f, an' then we-alls hops into our letters ag'in. Finally Cherokee breaks in once more.

"'I ain't aimin' to invest Wolfville in no sooperstitious fears,' says Cherokee, 'an' I merely chronicles as a current event how I was settin' into a little poker last night, an' three times straight I picks up "the hand the dead man held," jacks up on eights, an' it wins every time.'

"'Who lose to it?' asks Dan Boggs.

"'Why,' says Cherokee, 'it's every time that old longhorn as comes in from Tucson back some two weeks ago.'

"'That settles it,' says Boggs, mighty decided. 'You can bet your saddle an' throw the pony in, Death is fixin' his sights for him right now. It's shorely a warnin', an' I'm plumb glad it ain't none of the boys; that's all.'

"You see this yere stranger who Cherokee alloods at comes over from Tucson a little while before. He has long white ha'r an' beard, an', jedgin' from the rings on his horns, he's mebby a-comin' sixty. He seems like he's plenty of