"Let him come!" I says. "What you holding him for, 's if he was a ragin' lion or something? Let go of him!"
"You skip, you darn fool," says my first friend. "He'll eat you raw."
"Well, it will be my funeral," I says. "If you will see he don't put me down and gouge my eye out, I'll take him as he comes."
Gouging was a great trick with that gang,—I feared it more than death itself.
Just at that minute old Eli drove up. "What in tarnation's this?" says he. When he found out, he tried to make me go home, but all this advice I didn't want had made me more determined. I got crying mad. "Gol-ding it all to thunder!" says I, hopping up and down. "You see me fair play and turn him loose, Eli. I want one more swat at him,—just let me hit him once more, and I'll go home."
Eli was a tall, round-shouldered man, who looked like a cross between a prosperous minister and a busted lawyer. He had a consumptive cough, and an easy, smoothing way with his hands, always sort of apologizing. Several men had been led astray by these appearances, and picked a quarrel with Eli. Two weeks in bed was the average for making that mistake.
He looked at me with his head sideways, pulling his chin whisker. "Billy," says he, "I hev experienced them sentiments myself. It shell be as you say." He went to his wagon, and drew out a muzzle-loading pistol from under the seat. The pistol was loaded with buckshot, and four fingers of powder to push it, as every one around knew. He walked up to Mick and put the touch of a cold, gray, Yankee eye on him. "Young man," he says, "I ain't for your clawin', chawin', kickin' style of conductin' a row, so I tell you this: you fight that boy fair, or I'll mix buckshot with your whisky.—Turn your bullock loose!"
