“If he’s locoed,” Mr. McBride retorted through his grief, “I’m locoed, too. Sorrow over Bridget an’ the onmerited contoomely of that old profligate has shore left me as crazy as a woman’s watch. Bat, don’t stop me! Which I’ve sot my heart on his h’ar.”
Mr. Masterson was granite. There was no shaking him off. He persuaded, commanded, explained, and gave his word that Bobby Gill should make humble amends. At last, Mr. McBride, realising the inevitable, surrendered, and promised to be at peace.
“For all that, Bat,” concluded Mr. McBride, with a gulp, “old Bobby’s queered them obsequies for me. I can never look back on ’em now without regret.”
It was the bluish dawn before Mr. Masterson felt justified in leaving the widowed Mr. McBride. He was so worn with his labours that he made no more profound arrangements for slumber than casting aside his coat and kicking off his boots. A moment later he was as sound asleep as a tree.
Mr. Masterson had been asleep four hours, when Jack broke in upon him with the rude word that Mr. Allison had “turned in to tree the town.”
“You can nail him from the window,” puffed Jack, who was out of breath with hurry. “You haven’t time to pull on your boots and go down. Your best hold is to get the drop on him from the window, an’ when he makes a break, cut loose.”
Mr. Masterson sprang from the blankets and caught up his Sharp’s for the honour of Dodge. To permit Mr. Allison to give the town an unchecked shaking up would mean immortal disgrace. For all the hurry, however, Mr. Masterson had time to admire the military sagacity of Jack.
“Some day you’ll make a marshal, Jack,” quoth Mr. Masterson, and the “cluck-cluck!” of the buffalo gun as he cocked it served to punctuate the remark.
Some cynic, with a purpose to injure that commonwealth only equalled by his sour carelessness of truth, once said that Indiana was settled by folk who had started for the West, but lost their nerve. This is apparent slander, and not to be believed of a people who later endowed us with Ade, Tarkington, David Graham Phillips and Ben Hur. The one disgrace traceable to Indiana is that in some unguarded moment she gave birth to the Ground Owl, and sent him forth to vex the finer sentiments of Dodge. Also the Ground Owl, with his insolences, imbecilities, and feeble timidities, was the harder to bear since he never once offered the outraged public, in whose side he was the thorn, an opening to be rid of him by customary lead and powder means.
The Ground Owl had come to Dodge in fear and trembling. He did not want to come, but for reasons never fathomed he couldn’t remain in Indiana. It was a wholesale firm in Chicago that asked Mr. Wright to employ him as salesman in his store; and Mr. Wright, acting after those reckless business methods that obtain in the West and are a never flagging wellspring of trouble, consented without waiting to see the Ground Owl or estimate his length and breadth and depth as a communal disaster. For this blinded procedure Mr. Wright was often sorely blamed.