But Jake, the keen, discerning critic, quickly opened his eyes. “Take it light, you ——! ——! ——! ——!” The epithets, if printed, would scorch a hole in the page. “Kain’t you see she’s grieving her little heart out? She’s doing it all for Bull.”
At any other time one of those epithets would probably have produced a retort that would have tumbled Jake out of his saddle. But, conscience-stricken, Sliver accepted all. With humility that was almost pathetic, he actually put into words feeling that was, for him, quite subtle. “’Tain’t that I’d set in jedgment on Lady-girl, on’y—I reckon it’s so with all of us—I jes’ kain’t bear to see her say or do anything that don’t jes’ fit.”
After a pause he went on: “About these plans o’ her’n? If there warn’t no revolution, an’ we ked stay along here without a break, an’ they’d destroy all the licker in the world an’ forgit the art of making it, I don’t know but that we might live up to ’em. But I’m telling you, hombre, it’s been awful wearing an’ I jes’ know what a spell in El Paso ’ull do for me—I’ll be that swinish I’ll never dare to come near her ag’in.”
When Jake had admitted like feelings Sliver continued: “Sure, under them conditions, licker an’ its makers being, so to say, put on the hog-train an’ run off the aidge of the earth, I’d hev’ one chanst to make good. But as ’tis, an’ seeing that she’s now settled with a fine young husband an’ kin get along very nicely, I’m sorter allowing that El Paso ’ull let me out.” While his eyes blinked guiltily and his lips quivered with anticipatory thirst, he concluded, “Sure I’m that dry ’twon’t take much temptation for me to tell my troubles to a barkeep an’ have him drown ’em in drink.”
“Nor me,” Jake seconded. “Besides, my fingers is jes’ itching to get into a game.”
“Drink, cards, flat broke—back to rustling.” Sliver laid down the law of their being. “With me it runs like, the A-B-C.”
“I drink, you drink, he drinks, we drink,” Jake chanted it sotto voce. “If folks wasn’t so onreasonable a feller might make an honest living. But the best tinhorn that ever turned a card from the bottom is bound to make a slip, an’ when he does—whoosh! if he’s lucky enough to make his getaway, rustling’s all that’s left.”
“Bull?” Sliver nodded at the broad back ahead. “D’you allow he’s a-going to stay put?”
Jake’s shake of the head mixed doubt with concern. “If we meet up with any Mex—we’ll never get him away. He’ll run amuck among ’em.”
Sliver’s reckless eye lit with a fighting gleam. “An’ the country’s jes’ lousy with revueltosos? Hombre, it’s a cinch! Not that I’d want it,” he hypocritically added, “Lady-girl being along. But if we do chance on a few—hum! what’s the exchange, jes’ now, in Valles’s money? Seven to one, heigh? Well, we’ve three rifles apiece, counting the extras on the pack-horses. One man with three rifles is as good as two men. Twice four of us makes eight. At current exchange, one gringo for seven Mex, we orter account for fifty-six.”