They marched Washee-Washee to the Howling Wilderness, told the sentence, and called upon the Parson to enforce judgment.
He now took a cordial and began. Washee-Washee sat before him on a bench, leaning against the wall. The little man seemed as if he was about to go to sleep; possibly his conscience had kept him awake the night before, when he found that all his little investments had been a failure in the Forks.
The Parson began. Washee-Washee flinched, jerked back, sat bolt upright, and seemed to suffer.
Then the Parson shot another oath. This time it came like a cannon ball, and red hot too, for Washee-Washee was almost lifted out of his seat.
Then the Parson took his breath a bit, rolled the quid of tobacco in his mouth from left to right and from right to left, and as he did so he selected the very broadest, knottiest, and ugliest oaths that he had found in all his fifty years of life at sea and on the border.
Washee-Washee had lost his expression of peace. He had evidently been terribly shaken. The Parson had rested a good spell, however, and the little, slim, brown man before him, who had crawled out over the great wall of China, sailed across the sea of seas, climbed the Sierras, and sat down in their midst to begin the old clothes business, without pay or promise, was again settling back, as if about to surrender to sleep.
Cannon balls! conical shot! chain shot! and shot red hot! Never were such oaths heard in the world before! The Chinaman fell over.
"Stop!" cried the bar-keeper of the Howling Wilderness, who didn't want the expense of the funeral; "stop! do you mean to cuss him to death?"
The Chinaman was allowed time to recover, and then they sat him again on the bench. A man fanned him with his broad bamboo hat, lest he should faint before the last half of the punishment was nearly through, and the Judge was called upon to enforce the remainder of their sentence.
The Judge come forward slowly, put his two hands back under his coat tails, tilted forward on his toes and began: