“I shall use discretion,” I assured him, “but if it proves that I have fluffed my catch, rely upon me to use extreme measures.”
“Red Gap needs your best effort,” he replied in a voice that brimmed with feeling.
At five-thirty, my rush being over, I repaired to the neighbourhood where the Honourable George had been reported. The stockade now contained only a half-score of the untaught horses, but across the road from it was a public house, or saloon, from which came unmistakable sounds of carousing. It was an unsavoury place, frequented only by cattle and horse persons, the proprietor being an abandoned character named Spilmer, who had once done a patron to death in a drunken quarrel. Only slight legal difficulties had been made for him, however, it having been pleaded that he acted in self-defence, and the creature had at once resumed his trade as publican. There was even public sympathy for him at the time on the ground that he possessed a blind mother, though I have never been able to see that this should have been a factor in adjudging him.
I paused now before the low place, imagining I could detect the tones of the Honourable George high above the chorus that came out to me. Deciding that in any event it would not become me to enter a resort of this stamp, I walked slowly back toward the more reputable part of town, and was presently rewarded by seeing the crowd emerge. It was led, I saw, by the Honourable George. The cattle-hat was still down upon his ears, and to my horror he had come upon the public thoroughfare with his legs encased in the chapps—a species of leathern pantalettes covered with goat’s wool—a garment which I need not say no gentleman should be seen abroad in. As worn by the cow-persons in their daily toil they are only just possible, being as far from true vogue as anything well could be.
Accompanying him were Cousin Egbert, the Indian Tuttle, the cow-persons, Hank and Buck, and three or four others of the same rough stamp. Unobtrusively I followed them to our main thoroughfare, deeply humiliated by the atrocious spectacle the Honourable George was making of himself, only to observe them turn into another public house entitled “The Family Liquor Store,” where it seemed only too certain, since the bearing of all was highly animated, that they would again carouse.
At once seeing my duty, I boldly entered, finding them aligned against the American bar and clamouring for drink. My welcome was heartfelt, even enthusiastic, almost every one of them beginning to regale me with incidents of the afternoon’s horse-breaking. The Honourable George, it seemed, had himself briefly mounted one of the animals, having fallen into the belief that the cow-persons did not try earnestly enough to stay on their mounts. I gathered that one experience had dissuaded him from this opinion.
“That there little paint horse,” observed Cousin Egbert genially, “stepped out from under the Judge the prettiest you ever saw.”
“He sure did,” remarked the Honourable George, with a palpable effort to speak the American brogue. “A most flighty beast he was—nerves all gone—I dare say a hopeless neurasthenic.”
And then when I would have rebuked him for so shamefully disappointing the ladies of the Onwards and Upwards Society, he began to tell me of the public house he had just left.
“I say, you know that Spilmer chap, he’s a genuine murderer—he let me hold the weapon with which he did it—and he has blind relatives dependent upon him, or something of that sort, otherwise I fancy they’d have sent him to the gallows. And, by Gad! he’s a witty scoundrel, what! Looking at his sign—leaving the settlement it reads, ‘Last Chance,’ but entering the settlement it reads, ‘First Chance.’ Last chance and first chance for a peg, do you see what I mean? I tried it out; walked both ways under the sign and looked up; it worked perfectly. Enter the settlement, ‘First Chance’; leave the settlement, ‘Last Chance.’ Do you see what I mean? Suggestive, what! Witty! You’d never have expected that murderer-Johnny to be so subtle. Our own murderers aren’t that way. I say, it’s a tremendous wheeze. I wonder the press-chaps don’t take it up. It’s better than the blind factory, though the chap’s mother or something is blind. What ho! But that’s silly! To be sure one has nothing to do with the other. I say, have another, you chaps! I’ve not felt so fit in ages. I’m going to take up America!”