PROPRIETY PRATT, HYPNOTIST
"Do I ever see any folks get hypnotized? Which I witnesses a few sech instances. But it's usually done with a gun. If you're yearnin' to behold a party go into a trance plumb successful an' abrupt, get the drop on him. Thar ain't one sport in a hundred who can look into the muzzle of a Colt's .45, held by a competent hand, without lapsin' into what Peets calls a 'cataleptic state.'
"Shore, son, I savvys what you means."
The last was because I had begun to exhibit signs of impatience at what I regarded as a too flippant spirit on the part of my old cattleman. In the polite kindliness of his nature he made haste to smooth down my fur.
"To be shore I onderstands you. As to the real thing in hypnotism, however, thar arises as I recalls eevents but few examples in Arizona. The Southwest that a-way ain't the troo field for them hypnotists, the weak-minded 173 among the pop'lation bein' redooced to minimum. Now an' then of course some hypnotic maverick, who's strayed from the eastern range, takes to trackin' 'round among us sort o' blind an' permiscus. But he never stays long, an' is generally tickled to death when some vig'lance committee so far reelents as to let him escape back.
"Over in Bernilillo once, I'm present when a mob gets its rope onto one of these yere wizards, an' it's nothin' but the mercy of hell an' the mean pars'mony of what outcasts has him in charge, which saves him from bein' swung up. Mind you, it ain't no vig'lance committee, but a mob, that's got him.
"Whatever is the difference?
"Said difference, son, is as a spanless gulf. A vig'lance committee is the coolest kind of comin' together of the integrity an' the brains of a commoonity. A mob, on the other hand, is a chance-blown convention of deestructionists, as savagely brainless as a pack of timber wolves. A vig'lance committee seeks jestice; a mob is merely out for blood."
"About this Bernilillo business?"
The old gentleman, as though the recital 174 might take some time, signalled the black attendant to bring refreshments. The bottle comfortably at his elbow, he proceeded.