After this exchange the two munched wordless flapjacks, diversified by mouthfuls of salt pork. Rattlesnake Sanders broke the silence.
“Then I takes it we starts back by sun-up.”
“Rattlesnake,” observed Cimarron Bill, with a pompous solemnity that was not wanting in effect upon his auditor, “you’ve come to a bad, boggy, quicksand crossin’. My advice is not to jump your pony off the bank, but ride in slow.”
“As how?” asked Rattlesnake Sanders, somewhat mystified.
“You think I’m honest, don’t you?” demanded Cimarron.
“Shore, I think you’re honest,” returned Rattlesnake Sanders. Then, cautiously: “But still I allers sort o’ allowed you had you’re honesty onder control.”
“Well, this is the straight goods at any rate,” said Cimarron. “Thar’s two kinds of folks you must never surrender to: ladies an’ Injuns. Surrender to either is the shore preloode to torture. For you, now, to go surgin’ rapturously into Dodge, like a drunkard to a barbecue, would be the crownin’ disaster of your c’reer.”
“Whatever then should be my little game?”
“It’s this a-way: I said you can’t afford to surrender to Injuns an’ ladies. But you can make treaties with ’em. That gives you a chance to preeserve yourse’f for yourse’f. What you ought to do is plant yourse’f as solid as a gob of mud, an’ send back word that you’re thinkin’ it over.”
“But s’pose Calamity goes in the air, an’ says it’s all off?”