“I laugh when I please, and I smoke what I please,” said Henderson, hotly, his face flaming as he realized that he was in for his first “row.”
That was how it began. How it would have ended is not known—probably there would have been only one John—if it had not been for the almost miraculous appearance at this moment of the third John. For just then the two belligerents found themselves prostrate, their pistols only half-cocked, and between them stood a man all gnarled and squat, like one of those wind-torn oaks which grow on the arid heights. He was no older than the others, but the lines in his face were deep, and his large mouth twitched as he said:—
“Hold on here, yeh fools! There's too much blood in you to spill. You'll spile th' floor, and waste good stuff. We need blood out here!”
Gillispie bounced to his feet. Henderson arose suspiciously, keeping his eyes on his assailants.
“Oh, get up!” cried the intercessor. “We don't shoot men hereabouts till they git on their feet in fightin' trim.”
“What do you know about what we do here?” interrupted Gillispie. “This is the first time I ever saw you around.”
“That's so,” the other admitted. “I'm just down from Montana. Came to take up a quarter section. Where I come from we give men a show, an' I thought perhaps yeh did th' same here.”
“Why, yes,” admitted Gillispie, “we do. But I don't want folks to laugh too much—not when I'm around—unless they tell me what the joke is. I was just mentioning it to the gentleman,” he added, dryly.
“So I saw,” said the other; “you're kind a emphatic in yer remarks. Yeh ought to give the gentleman a chance to git used to the ways of th' country. He'll be as tough as th' rest of us if you'll give him a chance. I kin see it in him.”
“Thank you,” said Henderson. “I'm glad you do me justice. I wish you wouldn't let daylight through me till I've had a chance to get my quarter section. I'm going to be one of you, either as a live man or a corpse. But I prefer a hundred and sixty acres of land to six feet of it.”