“‘Now, dance!’ says the cattleman.
“‘I cawnt,’ says the tenderfoot, still unconvinced of the powers that lay in him.
“Bang!
“This time it come under his right foot, and he lifts that.
“‘Now, do it quick,’ says the range rider, and they do say that the way that feller shuffled his feet while them bullets spoiled a perfectly good floor under ’em was as purty to watch as a stage show. Wall, later in the evening them two cattle rustlers gits tired of that an’ they gits in a game of poker. Now, there’s where that tenderfoot should have quit, but he didn’t. He goes and sits inter it with ’em. Wall, purty soon a dispute arises. One of them cow-punchers calls on the other to lay down his hand, and there, stranger, they each have three aces.”
“Wall, you couldn’t see the room for smoke, they shot so fast, and one of ’em died there and other on the doorsill. Wall, there had ter be an inquest, yer know, and among ther witnesses they rounded up was this yar tenderfoot.”
“‘Whar was yer when ther first shot was fired?’ the coroner asks him.”
“‘At the poker table,’ says the tenderfoot.”
“‘And when the last was fired?’ goed on the coroner.”
“‘At the Southern Pacific depot,’ says the tenderfoot, and I reckon that’s the kind of a gun fighter you are, young Mister Reade,” he concluded.