“On the whole,” objected Mr. Holiday, following a moment of thought, “why not go back to Arizona and be tried? It’s four to one they couldn’t convict; and I’ve gone against worse odds than that every day since I was born.”
“Man!” expostulated Mr. Masterson, “it would never come to trial. You wouldn’t get as far as Albuquerque. Some of the band would board the train and shoot you in the car-seat—kill you, as one might say, on the nest! It isn’t as though you were to have a square deal. They’d get you on the train: get you with your guns off, too, for you’d be under arrest. Doc, you wouldn’t last as long as a pint of whiskey at a barn-raising.”
Mr. Masterson spoke with earnestness. His brow was wise and wide, his cool eye the home of counsel. It was these traits of a cautious intelligence that had given him station among his fellows as much as any wizard accuracy which belonged with his six-shooters.
“What is your plan, then?” said Mr. Holiday.
“You see the Off Wheeler over yonder?” Mr. Masterson pointed to a drunken innocent who was sunk in slumber in a far corner of the saloon. The Off Wheeler having no supper to eat, was taking it out in sleep. “You go to the edge of the camp,” continued Mr. Masterson. “When you’ve had time to place yourself, I’ll wake up the Off Wheeler and tell him to take my watch to the Belle Union. You stand him up and get it. Then I’ll have him before the alcalde to swear out a warrant. You see, it will be on the square as far as the Off Wheeler is concerned. At the same time, because we don’t mean it, it won’t be robbery; you can console yourself with that. It’ll be a bar to those reward hunters from Tucson, however, with their infernal requisition papers. They ought to be called assassination, not requisition, papers, for that is what it would come to if they took you from here. Now, do as I tell you, Doc; your friends will understand.”
Mr. Holiday pulled his sombrero over his forehead and went out. Ten minutes later Mr. Masterson aroused the Off Wheeler by the genial expedient of holding a glass of whiskey beneath his sleeping nose. The Off Wheeler, under this treatment, revived, with all his feeble faculties, and drank the same. Then he turned a vacant look on Mr. Masterson.
“Take my watch to the Belle Union,” observed Mr. Masterson, giving the Off Wheeler the timepiece. “Give it to Dick Darnell and tell him to take care of it. I’m going to play poker to-night, and if I keep it with me it’ll work its way into a jack-pot and get lost. I go crazy when I’m playing poker, and will bet the clothes off my back.”
The Off Wheeler was pleased with this speech; the more since it smacked of a friendly confidence on the part of Mr. Masterson. To be on even terms with the most eminent personage in camp flattered the Off Wheeler. He departed on Mr. Masterson’s errand, Mr. Masterson having first enlivened his heels with a five-dollar bill.
In twenty minutes the Off Wheeler was back in the Four Flush, and as well as he might for the chattering terrors of his teeth telling Mr. Masterson how Mr. Holiday had held him up at the street corner with one hand, and confiscated the watch with the other.
“He didn’t even pull a gun!” wailed the Off Wheeler. “I wouldn’t feel it so much if he had. But to be stood up, an’ no gun-play, makes it look like he was tryin’ to insult me.”