Part 2 (1/2)
”My dear Mr. Jack, I am glad to know you. You are really quite an accession to our settlement.”
”Well, if I ain't, my saloon is. How you've managed to live so long without liquor beats me. Why, it ain't civilized.”
”It _was_ pretty dull,” admitted Peabody.
”No life, no amus.e.m.e.nt; for all the world like a parcel of Methodists.
What luck have you met with, stranger?”
”Beastly luck!” answered Peabody. ”I tell you, Mr. Jack, California's a fraud. Many a time I've regretted leaving Boston, where I lived in style, and moved in the first circles, for such a place as this.
Positively, Mr. Jack, I feel like a tramp, and I'm afraid I look like one. If my fas.h.i.+onable friends could see me now, they wouldn't know me.”
”I ain't got no fas.h.i.+onable friends, and I don't want any,” growled Missouri Jack, spitting on the floor. ”What I want is, to meet gentlemen that ain't afraid to drink like gentlemen. I say, stranger, you'd better leave them Methodist fellers, and join our gang.”
”Thank you, Mr. Jack, you're very kind, and I'll think of it,” said Peabody, diplomatically. Though a little exhilarated, he was not quite blind to the character of the man with whom he was fraternizing, and had too much real refinement to enjoy his coa.r.s.eness.
”Have another drink!”
”Thank you.”
Peabody drank again, this time with a friend of Jack's, a man of his own stripe, who straggled into the saloon.
”Do you play euchre?” asked Jack, producing a dirty pack of cards.
”I know little of it,” said Peabody; ”but I'll try a game.”
”Then you and me and Bill here will have a game.”
”All right,” said Peabody, glad to while away the time.
”What'll you put up on your game, stranger?” asked Bill.
”You don't mean to play for money, do you?” asked Peabody, a little startled.
”Sartain I do. What's the good of playin' for nothing?”
So the young Bostonian, out of his modest pile was tempted to stake an ounce of gold-dust. Though his head was hardly in a condition to follow the game intelligently, he won, or at least Bill and Jack told him he had, and for the first time Lawrence felt the rapture of the successful gambler, as he gathered in his winnings.
”He plays a steep game, Bill,” said Jack.
”Tip-top--A No. 1.”
”I believe I do play a pretty good game,” said the flattered Peabody.
”My friends in Boston used to say so.”
”You're hard to beat, and no mistake,” said Bill. ”Try another game.”
”I'm ready, gentlemen,” said Peabody, with alacrity.