"'I reckons I'm wrong, Dan,' says Thompson, turnin' apol'getic. 'Let it all go to the diskyard. I'm that peevish I simply ain't fit to stay yere nor go anywhere else. I ain't been the same person since my wife runs cimmaron that time an' demands said sep'ration.'
"'Bein' I'm a married man,' remarks Dave Tutt, sort o' gen'ral, but swellin' out his chest an' puttin' on a lot of dog at the same time, 'an' wedded to Tucson Jennie, the same bein' more or less known, I declines all partic'pation in discussions touchin' the sex. I could, however, yoonite with you-all in another drink, an' yereby su'gests the salve. Barkeep, it's your play.' "'That's all right about another drink,' says Faro Nell, 'but I wants to state that I sympathizes with Texas in them wrongs. I has my views of a female who would up an' abandon a gent like Texas Thompson, an' I explains it only on the theery that she shorely must have been coppered in her cradle.'
"'Nellie onderstands my feelin's,' says Texas, an' he's plumb mournful, 'an' I owes her for them utterances. However, on second thought, an' even if it is a love tale, if Enright will resoome his relations touchin' that eepisode of the Mexican War, I figgers that it may divert me from them divorce griefs I alloodes to. An', at any rate, win or lose, I assures Enright his efforts will be regyarded.'
"Old Man Enright takes his seegyar out of his mouth an' rouses up a bit. He's been wropped in thought doorin' the argyments of Boggs an' Thompson, like he's tryin' to remember a far-off past. As Thompson makes his appeal, he braces up.
"'Now that Dan an' Texas has ceased buckin',' says Enright, 'an' each has all four feet on the ground, I'll try an' recall them details. As I remarks, its towards the close of the Mexican War. Whatever I'm doin' in that carnage is a conundrum that's never been solved. I had hardly shed my milk teeth, an' was only 'leven hands high at the time. An' I ain't so strong physical, but I feels the weight of my spurs when I walks. As I looks back to it, I must have been about as valyooable an aid to the gov'ment, as the fifth kyard in a poker hand when four of a kind is held. The most partial an' besotted of critics would have conceded that if I'd been left out entire, that war couldn't have suffered material charges in its results. However, to get for'ard, for I sees that Nellie's patience begins to mill an' show symptoms of comin' stampede.
"'It's at the close of hostil'ties,' goes on Enright, 'an' the company I'm with is layin' up in the hills about forty miles back from Vera Cruz, dodgin' yellow fever. We was cavalry, what the folks in Tennessee calls a "critter company," an', hailin' mostly from that meetropolis or its vicinity, we was known to ourse'fs at least as the "Pine Knot Cavaliers." Thar's a little Mexican village where we be that's called the "Plaza Perdita." An' so we lays thar at the Plaza Perdita, waitin' for orders an' transportation to take us back to the States.
"'Which most likely we're planted at this village about a month, an' the Mexicans is beginnin' to get used to us, an' we on our parts is playin' monte, an' eatin' frijoles, an' accommodatin' ourse'fs to the simple life of the place. Onct a week the chaplain preaches to us. He holds that Mexico is a pagan land, an', entertainin' this idee, he certainly does make onusual efforts to keep our morals close-herded, an' our souls bunched an' banded up in the Christian faith, as expressed by the Baptis' church. Candor, however, compels me to say that this yere pulpit person can't be deescribed as a heavy winner on the play.' "'Was you-all so awful bad?' asks Faro Nell.
"'No,' replies Enright, 'we ain't so bad none, but our conduct is a heap onhampered, which is the same thing to the chaplain. He gives it out emphatic, after bein' with the Pine Knot Cavaliers over a year, that he plumb despairs of us becomin' christians.'
"'Whatever does he lay down on you-all like that for?' says Faro Nell. 'Couldn't a soldier be a christian, Daddy Enright?'
"'Why, I reckons he might,' says Enright, he'pin' himse'f to a drink; 'a soldier could he a christian, Nellie, but after all it ain't necessary.