“Archie,” replied David, solemnly, “I should think your own better instincts might prompt you to recall that you’ve only been a widower four months.”
“Four months?—Four hundred years!” cried the Earl, stoutly. He reached round and replenished his glass. “It is with the greatest difficulty that I recall any detail of the matrimonial state. Already the memory of my first pair of breeks is infinitely fresher to me than any of it. In another week or so the last vestige of a recollection of it will be clean gone. And a good riddance, too!”
“It was an ill thought to remind you of it,” admitted Mosscrop. “Devil take all women—or all but one——”
“And she black-haired,” interposed the Earl.
“Deuce seize them all but two, then, for the rest of the night. Where have you been the long year-and-a-half, Archie?”
“Just looking about me,” replied the other, with nonchalance. “Bechuanaland for a time, but it’s sore overrated. Then I had a shy at the Gaboon country, but there’s a conspiracy among the niggers to protect the gorilla—I think he’s a sort of uncle of theirs—and a white man can do no good by himself. I thought there might be some decent sport over in Brazil, where they advertised a revolution on, and I tried to travel around with the rebels for a while, but it wasn’t up to much. You brought down an occasional half-breed Portugueser with epaulettes on, but you couldn’t eat ’em, and you didn’t want ’em stuffed at any price; and besides, when you came to find out, the whole war was merely a fight between two firms of coffee-traders in New York, and that wasn’t good enough. I tell you what, though,” he went on, with more animation, “Arizona is damned good fun. I haven’t seen anything better anywhere than a good, square cattle-lifter hunt. They got up three or four, just on my account, I imagine, after they found I could ride, and shoot at a gallop. The charm of the thing is that there’s no close season for cattle-thieves, and they’re game to the death, I tell you. I got potted twice, and once they let daylight straight through me. I had to lie up for repairs for nearly three weeks. They went and hung the fellow while I was in bed. We had words about that. I insisted it wasn’t sportsmanlike—and that they ought to have given him a horse, and then sprung him out of a trap or something of that sort, and let him have a run for his money, the same as we do with rabbits that the ferrets bring up. But they couldn’t see it, and so I turned it up and came North. They’ll ruin the whole thing, though, if they don’t chuck that foolish hanging business. The first thing they know, everybody’ll stop running off cattle, just as a protest, and then their place won’t be worth living in. It’ll be a pity, because a cow-boy gone wrong is really the best thing there is. He’s as good as a Bengal tiger and a Russian wolf together, with a grizzly bear thrown in. You may quote me as saying so.”
“I shall not fail to do so,” said David. “Come, drink up your liquor, and we’ll toddle. I’m fair glad to see you back whole and sound, laddie—and more still, a free man.”
He brought forth from the bedroom a pillow and some blankets, and began arranging them upon the sofa. “And are the Americans so daft about lords and titles as they’re made out?” he asked as he worked. “Did they humble themselves before the handle to your name?”
Drumpipes sat up. “Do you suppose I’m such an abandoned ass as to travel with a title?” he demanded. “Man, if you knew what it cost me, even without it, it would turn your hair grey. Ten dollars here, twenty dollars there, seven dollars and a-half somewhere else—one steady and endless drain on the purse, till the marvel is I was able to get out at all! And there’s no third-class on the railways whatever. It’s just terrible, Davie! And as ill-luck would have it, I couldn’t even come home steerage on the steamer. There were passengers that I knew in the first cabin, and so I had to throw away more money there. And I’m not like you—I’ve no ten-pound notes to spare for my day’s amusement.”
“No, you’re not like me,” responded Moss-crop, in no sympathetic tone. “I have my magnificent £432 per annum, which is over eight guineas a week. And you—you have only a paltry four thousand odd, not more than ten times as much. I wonder you’ve kept off the rates so long, Archie.”