"'Doc,' says Black Jack, when he's got the wilted gent planted firm an' safe, 'I tenders my regrets. Havin' neither brands nor y'earmarks to guide by, I never recognizes this person as your invalid at all; none whatever. I'd shore bent a gun on him an' harassed him back into his lair, as you requests, if I suspects his identity. To show I'm on the squar', Doc, I'll do this party any voylence, even at this late hour, which you think will make amends.'
"'Your apol'gy is accepted,' says Peets, but still haughty; 'I descerns how you gets maladroit through errors over which you has no control. As to this person, who's so full of stealthy cunnin', he's all right. So long as he don't get no licker, no voylence is called for in his case.' An' with that Peets conducts his patient, who's come to ag'in, back to his reservation.
"But I onbuckles this afternoon to tell you-all about Old Man Enright's early love, an' if I aims to make the trip before the moon comes up, I better hit the trail of them reminiscences an' no further delays.
"It's in the back room of the New York Store where the casks be, an' Enright, on whose nerves an' sperits Peets' preescriptions of 'no licker' has been feedin' for two full days, sits thar sort o' fidgin' with his fingers an' movin' his feet in a way which shows he's a heap on aige. Thar's a melancholy settles on us all, as we camps 'round on crates an' shoe boxes an' silently sympathizes with Enright to see him so redooced. At last the grand old chief starts in to talk without questions or requests.
"'If you-all don't mind,' says Enright, 'I'll let go a handful of mem'ries touchin' my yooth. Thar's nothin' like maladies to make a gent sentimental, onless it be gettin' shot up or cut up with bullets or bowies; an' these yere visitations, which Peets thinks is alkali an' I holds is the burdens of them years of mine, shore leaves me plumb romantic.
'Which I've been thinkin' all day, between times when I'm thinkin' of licker, of Polly Hawks; an' I'll say right yere she's my first an' only love. She's a fine young female, is Polly—tall as a saplin', with a arm on her like a cant-hook. Polly can lift an' hang up a side of beef, an' is as good as two hands at a log-rollin'.
"'This yere's back in old Tennessee on the banks of the Cumberland. It's about six years followin' on the Mexican war, an' I'm shot up'ards into the semblances of a man. My affections for Polly has their beginnin's in a coon-hunt into which b'ars an' dogs gets commingled in painful profoosion.
"'I ain't the wonder of a week with a rifle now, since I'm old an' dim, but them times on the Cumberland I has fame as sech. More'n once, ag'inst the best there is in either the Cumberland or the Tennessee bottoms, or on the ridge between, I've won as good as, say first, second and fifth quarters in a shoot for the beef.'
"'Whatever do you-all call a fifth quarter of beef?' asks Dan Boggs. 'Four quarters is all I'm ever able to count to the anamile.'
"'It's yooth an' inexperience,' says Enright, 'that prompts them queries. The fifth quarter is the hide an' tallow; an' also thar's a sixth quarter, the same bein' the bullets in the stump which makes the target, an' which is dug out a whole lot, lead bein' plenty infrequent in them days I'm dreamin' of.