Jerry Price’s long, lank figure appeared in the doorway. It was not policy which animated him, for he had nothing at stake. With an inherent knowledge of human nature, some untutored instinctive capacity for manipulating its idiosyncrasies, he half consciously found a certain satisfaction in exercising his keen acumen on the men about him. It might have been employed more profitably in the field of local politics, had the gift been adequately realized and valued. He was of an amiable, even of an admirable, temperament, and he devised the adjustment of many complications, in which open interference would avail naught, by subtly appealing to some predominant motive or sentiment with the accuracy with which a surgeon can touch a nerve.
“Look-a-hyar, Mink,” he said, apparently unobservant of any signs of a quarrel, “ain’t you-uns a-goin’ ter shoot?”
Mink’s angry aspect dropped like a husk.
“Waal, I can’t, ye know,” he said, in a voice eager with interest. “They ’lowed ter me ez they hed done made up the money an’ bought the beef, an’ all the chances are gone,—six fur a dollar, shillin’ apiece.”
“Waal, I bought eight chances. I’ll let ye hev two of ’em, ef two’ll do ye.”
“Jiminy Crack-corn an’ I don’t keer!” exclaimed Mink, doubling himself partly in a gesture of ecstasy, and partly to reach a silver coin that led a lonesome life in the depths of his long pocket. He handed it over, and slapped his leg with a sounding thwack. “I could shoot ye all off ’n the ground, an’ I kin git the fust an’ second ch’ice in two cracks.”
Rood, in the doorway behind Price, regarded the transaction with disapproval.
“I don’t b’lieve it’s ’cordin’ ter rules, Jerry,” he expostulated, “ter go roun’ an’ swap off yer chances arter ye paid fur ’em. I never seen it done afore, no-ways.”
“Ye hold yer jaw!” said Price, imperious, though good-natured. “I hev shot fur beef ’fore ye war born!”—a diminutive marksman, were this statement to receive full credit, since he was but a year or two older than Rood.
Irregular though it may have been, there was no appeal from the self-arrogated authority of Price, and his oft-reiterated formula as to his experience before his interlocutor’s birth had all the enlightened functions of precedent.