[35] Why is this? Americans lack neither imagination nor artistic feeling.
[36] To "ring in a cold deck" is to order in and substitute a fresh pack, in which the cards are prearranged.
[37] Counters.
CHAPTER XIII. A CRUISE IN NORTHERN MEXICO.—I.
We were seated at dusk on the platform outside the Depôt or railway hotel at Deming, enjoying what the Colonel called: "A feast of reason, and a flow of souls." "We" consisted of the Colonel himself, Joe,[38] a life-long friend of his and an old friend of my own also, Navajo Bill, and myself. The Colonel had just returned from Silver City, Joe had just broken a journey from New York to San Francisco to visit us, and I had just returned from Chihuahua City viâ El Paso. As for Bill, with a vague smile flickering on the end of his nose and muzzle—an unengaged smile, waiting for a job as it were, he was merely "standing around" on the chance of the Colonel saying: "Navajo, here's two-and-a-half for you. Go and get drunk."
Who was Navajo? Ah, "that's where you've got me, young man." Heaven knows! I don't think Navajo aspired to have as much identity as that question would imply. He was a sort of odd-man-out-of-place. He had a little shanty up town, and a kind of costermonger's barrow, in which he used to "take the air" with Mrs. Navajo, a lady who looked as if she had been born and bred to make him a suitable wife. Bill had no particular profession. He "went trips" if any one wanted him to. He could drive a team, cook indifferently, was cheerful, obliging, a fair worker, had good pluck, long hair, a queer amusing smile, a gutta-percha physiognomy, a fund of quaint sayings, and altogether was a good man to "have along" on a trip. At present, as the Colonel was suffering a good deal from rheumatism, he attended him as valet and rubber. Bill, with equal confidence, would have undertaken to manage a bank, or transact a diplomatic mission to the Court of St. James.
The Colonel "had the floor," and was referring to his visit to Silver City. "And whilst they were knocking the sawdust out of the Pirates of Penzance all these amateurs—every man and woman in Silver that could squawk, in fact—Lindauer, and Louis Timmer, and Judge Falby, and I, we played pool."
"It isn't everybody that could play pool, while the Pirates of Penzance were catching it like that," commented Joe severely.