Rathburn looked about from his seat on the stool. “This job ain’t none too easy, as it is,” he complained. 85 “As a writer I’m a first-rate cow hand. Lemme take your knife to sharpen this pencil with. When I asked the sheriff for a stub of a pencil he took me at my word.”
“Sure I’ll let you have my knife,” said the jailer sarcastically. “How about my gun––want that, too?”
“Oh, come on, old-timer,” pleaded Rathburn. “The lead in this pencil’s worn clean down into the wood.”
“Hand it over here an’ I’ll sharpen it,” said the jailer, drawing his pocketknife.
Rathburn walked to the bars and held out the pencil. An amiable smile played on his lips. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said contritely. “I forgot it wasn’t jail etiquette to ask for a knife. But I ain’t had much experience in jail. Now according to his nibs, the sheriff, I’m in to get pretty well acquainted with ’em, eh?”
He watched the jailer as he began sharpening the pencil.
“Speaking of knives, now,” he continued in a confiding tone, “I got in a ruckus down near the border once an’ some gents started after me. One of ’em got pretty close––close enough to take some skin off my shoulder with a bullet. He just sort of compelled me to shoot back.”
“I suppose you killed him,” observed the jailer, pausing in his work of sharpening the pencil.
“I ain’t saying,” replied Rathburn. “Anyways I had a hole-up down there for a few days, an’ as luck would have it, I had to put up with a Mexican. All that Mex would do was argue that a knife was better than a gun. He claimed it was sure and made no noise––those were his hardest talking points, an’ I’ll be danged if there isn’t something in it.
“But what I was gettin’ at is that I didn’t have 86 nothing to do, an’ that Mexican got me to practicing knife throwing. You know how slick those fellows are at throwing a blade. Well, in the couple of weeks that I hung aroun’ there he coached me along till I could throw a knife as good as he could. He thought it was great sport, teaching me to throw a knife so good, that a way.