“I’m outer meat,” says the crim’nal, “an’ a band of pigs comes pi rootin’ about, an’ I nacherally takes my rifle an’ downs one.”
“Was it a valyooable hawg?”
“You-all can gamble it ain’t no runt,” retorts the crim’nal. “I shore ain’t pickin’ out the worst, an’ I’m as good a jedge of hawgs as ever eats corn pone an’ cracklin’.”
At this Old Stewart falls into a foamin’ rage an’ turns on the two gyards who’s soopervisin’ the captives.
“Whatever do you-all mean,” he roars, “bringin’ this common an’ confessed hawg-thief out yere with these five honest men? Don’t you know he’ll corrupt ’em?”
Tharupon Old Stewart reepairs to his rooms in the state house an’ pardons the hawg convict with the utmost fury.
“An’ now, pull your freight,” says Old Stewart, to the crim’nal. “If you’re in Jeff City twenty-four hours from now I’ll have you shot at sunrise. The idee of compellin’ five spotless gents to con-tinyoo in daily companionship with a low hawg-thief! I pardons you, not because you merits mercy, but to preserve the morals of our prison.”
The better element concloods they’ll take advantage of Old Stewart’s willin’ness for rum an’ make a example of him before the multitoode. They decides they’ll construct the example at a monstrous meetin’ that’s schedyooled for Hannibal, where Old Stewart an’ his opponent—who stands for the better element mighty excellent, seein’ he’s worth about a million dollars with a home-camp in St. Looey, an’ never a idee above dollars an’ cents—is programmed for one of these yere j’int debates, frequent in the politics of that era. The conspiracy is the more necessary as Old Stewart, mental, is so much swifter than the better element’s candidate, that he goes by him like a antelope. Only two days prior at the town of Fulton, Old Stewart comes after the better element’s candidate an’ gets enough of his hide, oratorical, to make a saddle-cover. The better element, alarmed for their gent, resolves on measures in Hannibal that’s calc’lated to redooce Old Stewart to a shorething. They don’t aim to allow him to wallop their gent at the Hannibal meetin’ like he does in old Callaway. With that, they confides to a trio of Hannibal’s sturdiest sots—all of ’em acquaintances an’ pards of Old Stewart—the sacred task of gettin’ that statesman too drunk to orate.
This yere Hannibal barbecue, whereat Old Stewart’s goin’ to hold a open-air discussion with his aristocratic opponent, is set down for one in the afternoon. The three who’s to throw Old Stewart with copious libations of strong drink, hunts that earnest person out as early as sun-up at the tavern. They invites him into the bar-room an’ bids the bar-keep set forth his nourishment.
Gents, it works like a charm! All the mornin’, Old Stewart swings an’ rattles with the plotters an’ goes drink for drink with ’em, holdin’ nothin’ back.