"Hold on," I interrupted; "put on by his wife, did you say?"
"Yes, by his wife. Him and her had been keepin' a faro bank, you see, and they quarreled about it, so she just put a reward on him, and so—"
"Excuse me," I said, "but do you mean to say that this reward was put on publicly?" to which my friend answered with an air of gentlemanly boredom at being interrupted to gratify my thirst for irrelevant detail:—
"Oh, no, not publicly. She just mentioned it to six or eight intimate personal friends."
"Go on," I responded, somewhat overcome by this instance of the primitive simplicity with which New Mexican matrimonial disputes were managed, and he continued:—
"Well, two men come ridin' in to see me to borrow my guns. My guns was Colt's self-cockers. It was a new thing then, and they was the only ones in town. These come to me, and 'Simpson,' says they, 'we want to borrow your guns; we are goin' to kill Fowler.'
"'Hold on for a moment,' said I, 'I am willin' to lend you them guns, but I ain't goin' to know what you'r' goin' to do with them, no, sir; but of course you can have the guns.'" Here my friend's face lightened pleasantly, and he continued:—
"Well, you may easily believe I felt surprised next day when Fowler come ridin' in, and, says he, 'Simpson, here's your guns!' He had shot them two men! 'Well, Fowler,' says I, 'if I had known them men was after you, I'd never have let them have the guns nohow,' says I. That wasn't true, for I did know it, but there was no cause to tell him that."
I murmured my approval of such prudence, and Simpson continued, his eyes gradually brightening with the light of agreeable reminiscence:—
"Well, they up and they took Fowler before the justice of peace. The justice of the peace was a Turk."