CHAPTER XIII
PUNCTUATION AS A FINE ART
Twin River was in full blast when Dave rode in, looking for Tex. Hedropped off the pony and went into the Why-Not, but his man was notthere; after a few unavoidable drinks--Dave could not have avoided oneif it had invited from the middle of the Staked Plain--he looked in atIke's and the I-Call. He sampled the liquor in both places butevidently Comin' Thirty was not in that part of the town and he joggedon up to the Sweet-Echo. He had not been in here since warned off bySlick, but fear of consequences had nothing to do with absentinghimself; fear did not enter into his composition. Dave's fundamentalfault lay in his hatred of being beaten. It had lead him to cheat atplay; to outwit by foul means; to take the sure course to any desiredend, deliberately regardless of what any one might think. The danger ofsuch actions did not deter him in the least; he was always ready,usually overwhelmingly ready, to back them up in any manner hisopponents demanded of him. The defeat, sure to be met when he opposed asuperior intelligence, he confidently relied upon overcoming by sheerforce of personality, mistaking violence for strength, deceit foringenuity. The bad judgment of his failures ever wore the mantle of badluck; and the thought and time he wasted in schemes for revenge mighthave been used more profitably in making success of his failure.
Since his employment by Schatz his mind had been fully occupied by thefurtherance, as he considered it, of his employer's plan. Buck Peters,the Englishman, even Slick, at times pricked his memory, but he hadresolutely put them aside until a more convenient season. Now, withwhiskey spurring his Satanic temperament, he considered it obligatory togo into the Sweet-Echo. He wanted to find Comin' and no fancy bar-keep'nor roaring Scotchman should keep him from going wherever he wanted togo. He stepped from his stirrup onto the porch and went into thebar-room as if he owned it.
The expected trouble did not develop. Slick gave him a short nod andset up glass and bottle with praise-worthy promptitude. If Dave waswithout fear, so was Slick, who would have taken him on in any waywhatever; preferably, as became his Irish ancestry, with his hands, butfailing that, with anything from a pop-gun to a cannon. Dave, with hisusual habit of ignoring the other man, imagined Slick to be overawed;this leavened his savagery with good nature. What was Slick Milligan,anyhow? Just a bar-keep'--Dave turned his back to the bar and surveyedthe inmates of the room. Comin' was not there. Where in thunder was he?
Maybe bucking the tiger at Little Nell's. Dave had two or three drinkswith men he knew and rode back to cross the ford. He was again out inhis reckoning. He watched the cards flick from the box. Nell, herself,was dealing and Dave's fingers itched to get down, but he refrained.With the vague hints dropped by Schatz and his consequent hope ofspeedily winning Rose, he knew he must drop gambling--until he had wonto the fulfilment of his desires, at least.
As he watched he suddenly realized he was hungry and strolled into theeating house, run by Nell as a paying adjunct to her other businesses.The whiskey, as it often does in healthy stomachs, was calling loudlyfor food and Dave answered the call with unstinted generosity. Beinggenuinely wishful to see Tex he did not linger but, as soon as finished,started to make the round again.
He got no farther than the Why-Not. His entry was met by a roar oflaughter and shouts of encouragement: "Bully f' you, gran'pa!"--"Did heever come back?"--"That's th' caper, Dirty!"--"_Let_ him alone, _he_ain't chokin'."
Seated on a box on the top of a table (Dirty would be buried in a box;they would never have the heart to separate his attenuated figure fromthe object so long associated with it in life), old Pop Snow bent up anddown, shrinking, shrinking, until his bony leanness threatened to vanishbefore their gaze; a wheezing gasp started him swelling again and his"he! he! he!" whistled above the uproar like a hiss in a machine shop.
He was astonishingly drunk--for Dirty. His pervious clay had developedinnumerable channels for alcohol in the years of training he had givenit; and he was seldom so joyously hilarious as this. For one reason itwas seldom that any one would pay for it, and Dirty's means only wentfar enough to keep him everlastingly thirsty. The explanation appearedto Dave in the shape of a group of miners, whose voices, in theirappreciation, were the loudest.
"He-he-he! He-he-he-he!" Pop Snow's shrill pipe continued, while theothers demanded more. "Sawbones had n't been gone a week afore he waswanted. He-he-he! eh, dear! eh, dear! Lucky Jones come along--an'stopped. Ther' wearn't nothin' _to_ do but stop. He comes to me an' hesays: 'Wheer 's ther' a doctor?' 'Well,' I says, 'jedgin' from what Ihears, if you jest foller th' river north fur about fifteen mile toDrigg's Worry,' I says, 'you 'll find a saw-bones as used to be yer--butwhen he left he swears as how he ain't never comin' back to th' P'int,'I says. He-he-he! Send-I-may-live if he don't, though. Yep, an' Jonespurty nigh goes into th' wet, too. 'Th' P'int?' roars th' Doc, 'No,siree, by G--d, no, sir! Twenty-eight mile th' last time to tend astinkin' ole sow, on account o' a misbegotten son o' Beelzebub an th'North Pole they call Snow down there. This time I 'spose 't'ud be askunk.' 'It's my wife,' says Jones, 'an' if yuh don't come right suddenI 'm a-goin' to blow off th' top o' yore devilish ole head,' says Jones;'an' if she dies,' he sez, 'I blows her off, anyhow.' He-he-he!Saw-bones, he riz up an' come a-kitin'. I ain't much on Welshmen; theybiles over too easy. But Saw-bones done a good job an' got away wi' hislife. We hears all about it nex' day when Jones comes to me an' tellsme it is two at once, boy an' a girl. Fust we knowed he 'd brung hiswife. Not as she stays long. Winter 's one too many fur her an' shecashes in. Then Lucky Jones, he tries to cross th' river below th'P'int, 'stid o' th' ford, an' th' ice ain't strong enough, an' Jones, hewas some drunk, I reckon. We calls th' river after him an' th' forksafter th' kids. Lord, they was bad uns, both on 'em. Black Jack, hehez hisself hung for suthin' or other, an' Little Jill, she turns outjust a plain--"
Every one jumped, it was so unexpected. The lead sung so close toDirty's nose that the backward jerk almost took him off the table and herecovered his seat with a sideways wriggle and squirm that did credit tothe elasticity of his aged muscles. Having managed to retain his seat,he continued to retain it. None of the others showed the least desireto move, though every last man of them yearned for absence--sudden,noiseless absence--of a kind so instantaneous as to preclude thepossibility of notice: anything less were foolhardy in the face of thoseblazing eyes and that loosely held gun, its business end oscillatinglike the head of a snake and far more deadly.
"Don't be afeared, Dirty," purred Dave, in the kindliest tones. "I wasjest a-puttin' in th' period. Yore eddication is shameful, Dirty, an' Igrieves for you, account of it. You has a generous mixture o' commasan' semi-commas an' things like that, but yore periods is shore somescarce. You was a-sayin' as how Little Jill was a sweet, good gal, asnever done wrong in her life, was n't you?"
Dirty swallowed hard and nodded. Speech was beyond him just then andperhaps he had spoken too much, already. He repeated his formercontortion with equal skill and success, and every head in the crowdrose perceptibly and returned to its former level as the gun spoke againand another hole appeared in the wall, close to the first.
"A period comes after that, Dirty," said Dave. "Don't you never forgitth' kind o' gal she was--an' then comes th' period. You 'll mebby holdyore liquor better." He shoved the gun back in the holster, eyed thecrowd insolently for a moment, and turning his back on it, walked calmlyfrom the room.
Pop Snow climbed down from the table in haste and pushed his way throughthe detaining arms and the medley of questions that assailed him on hisway to the door, which opened and closed like a stage trap as he steppedout and sprang to one side; his anger was that of a sober and faryounger man and he peered about with keen eyes. His caution wasuncalled for: Dave was splashing through the ford and Dirty watched himset out in a swift lope along the Big Moose trail. Dave had no stomachfor further company that night.
Dirty rubbed a pair of trembling lips as he gazed.
"Black Jack!" hemuttered, "Black Jack! He _warn't_ hung, then. No, an' he won't neverbe 'less it's fur killin' pore ole Pop Snow. Pore ole Pop Snow," herepeated, whimpering as he hurried across the bridge toward shelter;"Jest like Dutch Onion. Dead an' gone, pore ole Dutch. Pore ole Pop."He stopped in the middle of the trail and with a flash of his formerspirit, shook his fist after the distant Dave: "Shell I?" he jeered:"shell I, then? I been yer afore you, Jack, an' I 'll be a-livin' whenyou rot."
Hoofbeats coming out of the darkness where Dave had disappeared,startled him and he scuttled away like a rabbit.