“What do you think yourse’f, Cimarron?” asked Rattlesnake earnestly, when the worthy Cimarron had been rounded up by Jack for the conference.
“That limb,” observed Cimarron, judgmatically, and cocking a wise eye like a crow looking into a jug, “that limb, as framed up, is a credit to us both. It’s simply aces before the draw! Don’t tech it.”
“But Calamity allows she’ll throw me down about that weddin’.”
Miss Barndollar was not in the room, and Cimarron took on a look of grim cunning.
“Ev’ry cloud has a silver linin’,” remarked Cimarron, enigmatically. “Rattlesnake, this yere will turn out the luckiest laig you ever had.”
Following these foggy announcements, Cimarron said that it would be a point of honour with him to prevent any intromission with the leg of Rattlesnake Sanders.
“This offensive sawbones,” he explained, “publically allooded to me as a empirick. In so doin’ he compels me to go through the way I’m headed. I shall consider any attempt to break that laig again as an attack upon my character, an’ conduct myse’f accordin’ with a gun.”
“That sounds on the level,” observed Rattlesnake to Miss Barndollar, who had come into the room in time to hear the ultimatum of Cimarron. “For us to go tamperin’ with this yere member that a-way, would be equiv’lent to castin’ aspersions on Cimarron.”
“You never loved me!” murmured Miss Barndollar, beginning to cry.
“Calamity!” exclaimed Rattlesnake, reproachfully. “You’re my soul!”