"What did you do?"
Jimmie Time stayed laconic.
"Left him there—that's all!"
It was arid, yet somehow informing. It conveyed to me that a marshal had been cleverly put to needing a new deputy.
"Burying ground?" I guessed.
"That's all!" He laughed venomously—a short, dry, restrained laugh. "They give me a nickname," said he. "They called me Little Sure Shot. No wonder they did! Ho! I should think they would of called me something like that." He lifted his voice. "Hey! Boogles!"
I had been conscious of a stooping figure in the adjacent vegetable garden. It now became erect, a figure of no distinction—short, rounded, decked in carelessly worn garments of no elegance. It slouched inquiringly toward us between rows of sprouted corn. Then I saw that the head surmounting it was a noble head. It was uncovered, burnished to a half circle of grayish fringe; but it was shaped in the grand manner and well borne, and the full face of it was beautified by features of a very Roman perfection. It was the face of a judge of the Supreme Court or the face of an ideal senator. His large grave eyes bathed us in a friendly regard; his full lips of an orator parted with leisurely and promising unction. I awaited courtly phrases, richly rounded periods.
"A regular hell-cat—what he is!"
Thus vocalized the able lips. Jimmie Time glowed modestly.
"Show him how I can shoot," said he.