When so important a personage as a barkeeper indulged publicly in an idea, the inhabitants of Challenge Hill, like good Californians everywhere, considered themselves in duty bound to give it grave consideration; so, for a few days, certain industrious professional gentlemen, who won money of the colonel, carefully weighed some of the brightest pieces and tested them with acids, and tasted them and sawed them in two, and retried them and melted them up, and had the lumps assayed.
The result was a complete vindication of the colonel, and a loss of considerable custom to the indiscreet barkeeper.
The colonel was as good-natured a man as had ever been known at Challenge Hill, but, being mortal, the colonel had his occasional times of despondency, and one of them occurred after a series of races, in which he had staked his all on his own bay mare Tipsie, and had lost.
Looking reproachfully at his beloved animal failed to heal the aching void of his pockets, and drinking deeply, swearing eloquently and glaring defiantly at all mankind, were equally unproductive of coin.
The boys at the saloon sympathized most feelingly with the colonel; they were unceasing in their invitations to drink, and they even exhibited considerable Christian forbearance when the colonel savagely dissented with every one who advanced any proposition, no matter how incontrovertible.
But unappreciated sympathy grows decidedly tiresome to the giver, and it was with a feeling of relief that the boys saw the colonel stride out of the saloon, mount Tipsie, and gallop furiously away.
Riding on horseback has always been considered an excellent sort of exercise, and fast riding is universally admitted to be one of the most healthful and delightful means of exhilaration in the world.
But when a man is so absorbed in his exercise that he will not stop to speak to a friend; and when his exhilaration is so complete that he turns his eyes from well-meaning thumbs pointing significantly into doorways through which a man has often passed while seeking bracing influences, it is but natural that people should express some wonder.
The colonel was well known at Toddy Flat, Lone Hand, Blazers, Murderer's Bar, and several other villages through which he passed, and as no one had been seen to precede him, betting men were soon offering odds that the colonel was running away from somebody.