HIS PLAYFUL WAY.

Western Star, Issue 949, 20 May 1885, Page 4

HIS PLAYFUL WAY.

One evening in tho autumn of '56, •word reached the Major that a party of prospectors had jumped the "JS T ip and Tuck," clatmod by him. The next morning the Major buckled on his favorite bono-handled revolver and started out to expostulate with the boys in his peculiar way. Expecting to find them at work in the tunnel, he walked carclesslv towards its mouth. Tho boys were "laying for him." As ho reached the dump-pile commanding a view of the tunnel he saw the muzzles of threegunsfrowning through a clump of bushes at its mouth, and threw himself backwards as the boys blazed away. The ambushing party rushed out elated to-look at the fallen Terror of the Mines, Jim Turner, a wild Texan, who feared not even the Major's aim, being in the load. The Major, who sat upright at the foot of the'dump-pile unhurt, with his revolver ready, " pinked" him promptly. The discussion which followed' was concise and somewhat Major, turning to the other two assailants who stood with unloaded guns: "3 see your blind and straddle it; I hold a ' full hand' (nodding toward his favorite bone-handled), and j here (producing another) is my straight flush." " Major, bedad, I pass!" said Tom Burke, a man from Galway, dashing through the chapparal (thicket). '\l chip," said the Major, still speaking in gambling-table slang; and as he spoke the man from G-alway yelled at the sting of a bullet where it ploughed deep but broke no bones. ''Boney, where'll you have it?" said the Major, turning to the remaining assailant. Boney had prudently disappeared in the depths of the tunnel. —' Exchange.'