Part 14 (1/2)

”Don't you?” I asks pretty sharp.

”No,” says she.

”Well, I do,” says I.

I walked up to her, jerked out my guns, and reached around both sides of her to the pianner. I run the muzzles up and down the keyboard two or three times, and then shot out half a dozen keys.

”That's the piece I know,” says I.

But the other girl and the Jew drummer had punched the breeze.

The girl at the pianner just grinned, and pointed to the winder where they was some ragged gla.s.s hangin'. She was dead game.

”Say, Susie,” says I, ”you're all right, but your friends is tur'ble.

I may be rough, and I ain't never been curried below the knees, but I'm better to tie to than them sons of guns.”

”I believe it,” says she.

So we had a drink at the bar, and started out to investigate the wonders of Cyanide.

Say, that night was a wonder. Susie faded after about three drinks, but I didn't seem to mind that. I hooked up to another saloon kept by a thin Dutchman. A fat Dutchman is stupid, but a thin one is all right.

In ten minutes I had more friends in Cyanide than they is fiddlers in h.e.l.l. I begun to conclude Cyanide wasn't so lonesome. About four o'clock in comes a little Irishman about four foot high, with more upper lip than a muley cow, and enough red hair to make an artificial aurorer borealis. He had big red hands with freckles pasted onto them, and stiff red hairs standin' up separate and lonesome like signal stations. Also his legs was bowed.

He gets a drink at the bar, and stands back and yells:

”G.o.d bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!”

Now, this was none of my town, so I just stepped back of the end of the bar quick where I wouldn't stop no lead. The shootin' didn't begin.

”Probably Dutchy didn't take no note of what the locoed little dogie DID say,” thinks I to myself.

The Irishman bellied up to the bar again, and pounded on it with his fist.

”Look here!” he yells. ”Listen to what I'm tellin' ye! G.o.d bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle! Do ye hear me?”

”Sure, I hear ye,” says Dutchy, and goes on swabbin' his bar with a towel.

At that my soul just grew sick. I asked the man next to me why Dutchy didn't kill the little fellow.

”Kill him!” says this man. ”What for?”

”For insultin' of him, of course.”

”Oh, he's drunk,” says the man, as if that explained anythin'.

That settled it with me. I left that place, and went home, and it wasn't more than four o'clock, neither. No, I don't call four o'clock late. It may be a little late for night before last, but it's just the shank of the evenin' for to-night.

Well, it took me six weeks and two days to go broke. I didn't know sic em, about minin'; and before long I KNEW that I didn't 'know sic 'em.

Most all day I poked around them mountains---not like our'n--too much timber to be comfortable. At night I got to droppin' in at Dutchy's.