CHAPTER VIII.
FOILED BY A WOMAN.
It was their last night in town before breaking up camp, and the Black Hillers, as they already called themselves, under Chichester, were determined to have a lively time of it.
They commenced "wetting up," or pouring down liquid lightning in camp, but, being reminded that what they used there would be missed on their journey, they started to skin the saloons in town, and finish out their spree where it would not diminish their own stores.
As Wild Bill said, they were going where money would be of little account, if all the stories about the gold to be found were true; so what they spent now they wouldn't have to carry.

And they went in, as such reckless men generally do, spending their money as freely as they could, and drinking with a "looseness" that promised headaches on the morrow, if nothing more.
Wild Bill went in on the spree with a rush, as if he wished to drown the remembrance of his late fright, and despite the cautions of his friend, Captain Jack, who strove hard to keep him within bounds.
California Joe of course was in his element, and in a little while all the party became so turbulent that Crawford left them in disgust.

For, as Addie Neidic had said of him, despite his associations, he was a gentleman.
By midnight every saloon had been visited, and many of them pretty well cleaned out, and now Bill proposed to go and break a faro bank that some of the party spoke of.
"I have seven hundred dollars left out of a thousand my woman gave me before I started," said he.

"I'll lose that, or break the bank; see if I don't." All of the party who were sober enough went with Bill, and soon he was before the green board.
Without even waiting to get the run of the game, be planked a hundred dollars on the king, and lost.

Without a word, he put two hundred dollars more on the same card, and won.