"By this move he has Dick some disgruntled an' gains more time to draw; then, bang! go the gatlin's a'most together, an' Dick's theery cuts adrift from him without strainin' itself none. He's dead meat that sudden, he don't even have time to emit a groan.
"The stranger's hit too, plumb through the lung, an' pretty soon cashes in likewise; but, where the game comes queer is this way. That 'ere black-eyed party whom I allowed was a boy is a woman, an' a mighty pretty one at that, though her sperit peters out 'fore we is able to corral any reasons for the game she plays; an' as I pulls my freight next sun-up I never does accoomilate no knowledge tharof. Anyway, P'ison Dick gets his medicine an' lights out that sudden for the heavenly pastures I reckons the angels, or more likely it's them fork-tailed miscreant collectors, is some surprised to see him bulgin' in an' defilin' the scenery o' their sperit-ranche."
"Well," observed Jack slowly, "astronomy's a science which gives a wide fling to the imagination, and without those theories you despise is liable to lose a great deal of interest. But let's look at Orion, the finest constellation in the heavens. He's the greatest hunter the world has ever known—Nimrod, who, with his dogs, has been placed up in the heavens to hunt the Bull.
"D'you see that reddish star? That's Betelgeuse—Arabic beyt al agoos, 'the old man's house.' Betelgeuse is a sun like our own, but a cooling one, and represents the left shoulder of Orion, Bellatrix, supposed to be a lucky star for women, being the right shoulder. Those three bright stars in a line are the hunter's belt, whilst below is Rigel—Arabic rigl, 'a foot'—being Orion's left foot.
"That big star of a delicate green is Sirius, the blazing dog-star, Orion's great hunting dog."
"So!" drawled Broncho with a slow smile. "Smell-dawg or tree-dawg?"[1]
"Sirius," went on Jack, taking no notice of Broncho's facetiousness, "is the brightest star in the heavens, though not the biggest. Canopus, though only half as bright, is immeasurably bigger; but if it were as near to us as Sirius I expect it would shine in the sky with as great a brilliance as our sun.
"Now, at the least computation, Sirius is fifty billion miles off, or five hundred and thirty-seven thousand times as far from the earth as the sun; and since light diminishes as the square of the distance increases, the sun, if as far off as Sirius, would give us two hundred and eighty-eight thousand million times less light than it does now.
"The character of Sirius' spectrum shows that, surface for surface, its brightness is far greater than the sun's, and as Sirius is some twenty times the size of the sun, Sirius is reckoned to shine some seventy times as bright as the sun. This is putting the calculation at its smallest. Good authorities put Sirius at twice that distance off, and calculate the star's brilliancy as two hundred and eighty-eight times greater than the sun's.[7] Now, when you come to contemplate Canopus——"
"Hold on, son! Hold your horses there!" burst out Broncho, drawing a long breath. "Sirius is a size too large for this child. My brain's dizzy an' wobblin' with them Sirius calc'lations o' yours, an' if you turns your wolf loose on this Canopus star, compared to which you allows Sirius is merely a puny picaninny, you'll shore have me that locoed an' brain-strained, tryin' to size up them measurements o' yours, I'd be liable to dislocate my mental tissues an' stampede away into a lunatic complete."