“I don’t think I care to see him at all,” mused Joshua. “He’s heard of the money I got from Demarest, Spruce and Tillou, and probably wants to slip me a ream or two of whimpermeter for a touch.”
“Say, you don’t always talk English either, do you?” chuckled California Bill. “Seems like in this country every jasper’s got a language of his own. But I’d see this pelican, Tony. I think he knows somethin’. Ye might find out who threw that thirty-thirty bullet into ye that time.”
“Did he tell you anything about that?”
“No; but, as the fella says, he hinted darkly. But wait’ll mornin’. Le’s spend the rest of our interestin’ conversation on the subject of morons before we hit th’ hay.”
Joshua laughed as he lighted his pipe at the glowing end of a twig from the outskirts of the hot ashes.
“Well,” he said, “do you know what a bromide is?”
“That ain’t what a fella takes when he’s tryin’ to sober up, is it?” asked Bill, with a devilish twinkle in his slate-blue eyes.
“You know I don’t mean that,” Joshua accused.
“Well, I guess I read about th’ kind o’ bromides you mean somewheres,” Bill admitted. “They say a lot that somebody’s already said, don’t they?”
“I never heard a more concise definition,” Joshua applauded. “Well, in an effort to be as concise myself—a moron is a bromide, only worse.”