.

CLOUD-SIGN VERSUS CUPID.
Few men are ever called upon by untoward circumstance to know the sensations caused by rattlesnake bite, knife gashes, impromptu cauterization, and, topping the whole, the peculiar torture of congested veins and swollen muscles which comes from a tourniquet.

The feeling must be unpleasant in the extreme, and the most morbid of sensation-seekers would scarcely put himself in the way of that particular experience.
Peppajee Jim, therefore, had reason in plenty for glowering at the world as he saw it that day.

He held Huckleberry rigidly down to his laziest amble that the jar of riding might be lessened, kept his injured foot free from the stirrup, and merely grunted when Good Indian asked him once how he felt.
When they reached the desolation of the old placer-pits, however, he turned his eyes from the trail where it showed just over Huckleberry's ears, and regarded sourly the deep gashes and dislodged bowlders which told where water and the greed of man for gold had raged fiercest.

Then, for the first time during the whole ride, he spoke.
"All time, yo' sleepum," he said, in the sonorous, oracular tone which he usually employed when a subject held his serious thought.