“Was the loaded one bloody?”
“Awful.”
“That’s all,” says Artie with a gracious wave of his hand, dismissing the witness. “Your Honor, our friend the Gaul, alias Frenchy, is before you. I am refined by nature. One gentle pull on the trigger would have removed all doubt. He would have been dead dead. He isn’t. I move that my client, Artemus G. Jones, me, I, myself, be discharged, and plaintiff reprimanded for frivolity in taking up the time of the court. Had I wished to kill this jigger I certainly would have shot him. The gun that was bloody was the gun of Artemus,” and Artie paid the whole blamed court a compliment by the way he retired.
Frenchy’s lawyer began to holler, but the judge cut him quick. “Sit down, Mr. Satterlee,” says he. “Unless you can prove your client is dead, the court will pursue the course indicated by the learned counsel for defense.”
“Selah!” says Satterlee. “I’m down. Set ’em up in the other alley.”
III
THE MASCOT OF THE GRAYS
A BASE-BALL GAME AND THE SUBSEQUENT PROCEEDINGS
“Why, yes!” said Mr. Perkins, “I’ll tell you all about it, if you’ve got the time to spare. I was managing the Grays—that was the club from the west side of the river, you know—and we thought ourselves the prettiest things that ever played base-ball in Dakota; for a while. And then we had hard luck. Our fancy pitcher was an ex-soldier named Fitzeben; a well-built, pale, handsome fellow, with lots of style, and no heart. As long as things were coming his way, he could put up a game of base-ball that would make a man forget his religion; but if they began to find him on the other side, Fitz would go to slops on the run. First-base was this man Falk you was speaking about. There was a Hoodoo playing second. ‘Hindoo?’ Yes, that’s it. You’ve got it. He’d come a long ways to our town. Nice, pleasant little man he was, too, with a name that would have made him an overcoat and a pair of pants, and then something left for the babies—‘Dammerjoodeljubberjubberchah,’ or words to that effect. The boys called him ‘Jub,’ so it didn’t matter so much about that.”
Mr. Perkins stopped to crook his elbow, as they say in the vernacular, and stood a while in silence, as the tears of ecstasy gathered in his eyes.
“Whoo, Jimmy!” said he, “there ought to go a damper with that whisky—it’s almost too good with the full draft on. Blast your seltzer! Give me water. I like my whisky and my water straight, just as God made ’em. Well, I was telling you about our outfit. One of our fellows was crooked as a ram’s horn—Jim Burke, that played short. Darn his buttons! He couldn’t keep his hands off other people’s property to save his neck. And gall!—say, that man was nothing but one big gall with a thin wrapper of meat around it. One day old Solomon, that had the clothing store, comes to me oozing trouble.