“Hold up your hands, thar!” said Moore. “Up with 'em; I shan't say it twice!”
Riley Bent could not obey; he had taken ten seconds off to faint.
When he revived Jack Moore had claimed his pistols and was calmly setting the bones of the broken leg; devoting the woollen shirts in the war-bags on his saddle to be bandages, and making splints of cedar bark. These folk of the plains and mountains, far from the surgeon, often set each other's, or, for that matter, their own bones, when a fall from a pony, or some similar catastrophe, furnishes the call.
“If you-all needed me,” observed Riley Bent peevishly, when a little later Jack Moore was engaged over bacon and flap-jacks for the sundown meal, “whatever was the matter of sayin' so? Thisyere idee of shootin' up a gent without notice or pow-wow is plumb onlegal. An' I'll gamble on it, ten to one!”
“Well!” said Jack Moore, as he deftly tossed a flap-jack in the air and caught it in the frying-pan again, “I didn't aim to take no chances of chagrinin' one who loves you, by lettin' you get away. Then, ag'in, my own notion is that it might sorter hasten the bridal some. Thar's nothin' like a bullet in a party's frame for makin' him feel romantic an' sentimental. It softens his nature a heap, an' sets him to yearnin' for female care.
“Which you've been shootin me up to be married!” responded Riley Bent in tones of disgust.
“That's straight!” retoited Jack Moore, as he slid the last flap-jack into the invalid's tin plate. “You've been pesterin' 'round Wagon Mound Sal ontil that lady has become wropped in you. She confides to me cold that she's anxious to make a weddin' of it, which is all the preliminary necessary in Arizona. You are goin' back to Wolfville with me tomorry on a buck-board,—which will be sent on yere from the stage station,—an' after Doc Peets goes over your laig ag'in, you an' Wagon Mound Sal are goin' to become man an' wife like a landslide. You have bred hopes in that lady's bosom, an' you've got to make 'em good. That's all thar is to this play; an' you don't get your guns ag'in ontil you're a married man.”
Jack Moore, firm, direct and decided, had a great effect in fixing the wandering fancies of Riley Bent. He thoughtfully masticated his flap-jack a moment, and then asked:
“S'pose I arches my back an' takes to buckin' at these yere abrupt methods in my destinies; s'pose I quits the deal cold?”
“In which eevent,” responded Jack Moore, with an air of iron confidence, “we merely convenes the Stranglers an' hangs you for luck.”