In the West Mr. Holiday’s diploma would do him little good. There lives no more of Western call for a dentist than for one who paints flowers upon silks. Wherefore, and because Mr. Holiday must dine and drink until he died of that consumption, he took to cards.
Now, cards make up a commerce wherein the West confesses an interest. Mr. Holiday became a busy man, and encountered fortune, black and white; but he never complained until one Dallas evening, when a gentleman said that he held six cards. The game was draw poker, and a hand consisting of six cards would have been an inexcusable vulgarity.
There was no long-drawn discussion. The gentleman who had mentioned the six cards cut off debate with a Colt’s pistol. Mr. Holiday met the situation half way, and Dallas buried a foremost citizen.
Dallas blamed no one.
“They broke even as to guns,” said Dallas, “and Joe lost.”
“Let Charlie Swear to the Papers.”
From Dallas Mr. Holiday travelled into the Panhandle. Perhaps his broken health made him irritable, or possibly he was over-sensitive. Whatever the argument, when a rude spirit, a rider for the Frying Pan ranch, whom he met in Tascosa, spoke of Mr. Holiday as one who ought to have been clerking in a store, he promptly hived him with a bullet through his heart. This was when Mr. Willingham flourished as Sheriff for the Panhandle; but as that officer was over towards Goodnight’s at the time, no fault should attach to him. Panhandle sentiment, as had that of Dallas, justified Mr. Holiday; his critic had his guns on when he perished, and that is, or should be, sufficient wherever justice holds the scales.
From the Panhandle Mr. Holiday migrated to Denver. No one packs a gun in Denver, at least no gun big enough to win the respect of Mr. Holiday. Yielding to the jealousy of Denver touching pistols, our dying one from Georgia put his irons aside. He felt lonesome without them, a feeling that grew into disgust when a rough, having advantage of his weak condition, heaped contumely on his head, Mr. Holiday sighed as he drew a knife—it was carried somewhere between his shoulders—and altered the appearance of the insolent one to such a degree that he was as a stranger to his friends.
It was six months later when Mr. Holiday next claimed attention by listlessly emptying his pistol into the head of a gentleman who had laid unlawful claim to a stack of his chips. They were reposing, coppered, in what faro gamesters term the Big Square.