"He's got a bad eye, a regular mule eye. You'd better step easy around him and not stir him up too quick."
Lambert had no faith in the valor of Jedlick at all, but Taterleg would fight, as he very well knew. But he doubted whether there was any great chance of the two coming together with Alta Wood on the watch between them. She'd pat one and she'd rub the other, soothing them and drawing them off until they forgot their wrath. Still, he did not want Taterleg to be running any chance at all of making trouble.
"You'd better let me take your gun," he suggested as they approached the hotel.
"I can take care of it," Taterleg returned, a bit hurt by the suggestion, lofty and distant in his declaration.
"No harm intended, old feller. I just didn't want you to go pepperin' old Jedlick over a girl that's as fickle as you say Alta Wood is."
"I ain't a-goin' to pull a gun on no man till he gives me a good reason, Duke, but if he gives me the reason, I want to be heeled. I guess I was a little hard on Alta that time, because I was a little sore. She's not so foolish fickle as some."
"When she's trying to hold three men in line at once it looks to me she must be playin' two of 'em for suckers. But go to it, go to it, old feller; don't let me scare you off."
"I never had but one little fallin' out with Alta, and that was the time I was sore. She wanted me to cut off my mustache, and I told her I wouldn't do that for no girl that ever punched a piller."
"What did she want you to do that for, do you reckon?"
"Curiosity, Duke, plain curiosity. She worked old Jedlick that way, but she couldn't throw me. Wanted to see how it'd change me, she said. Well, I know, without no experimentin'."