"Look a hyer!" remonstrated Smith, "ain't you pannin' me out a leetle too fine? It mought 'a' been this way, an' it mought 'a' been that. But I've no business to point if I can't find. When a man's got to the bottom of his pile, you can't fo'ce him to borrow. 'Sposin' I set you barkin' up the wrong tree; what good's that gwine to do?"
"Vell, Schmidt, I don't zay but what you zay right. You mustn't zay anyting you don't know someting apout."
After another silence, during which Texas continued to hold his hands above his head, Meyer added, "Kelly, you may come to an order. Schmidt, you may put down your hants. Will you haf a jew of topacco?"
The three men now approached each other, took alternate bites of the sergeant's last plug of pigtail, and masticated amicably.
"You army fellers run me pootty close," said Texas, after a while, in a tone of complaint and humiliation. "I don't want to fight brass buttons. They're too many for me. The Capm he lassoed me, an' choked me some; an' now you're on it."
"When things habben to officers, they must pe looked into," replied Meyer.
"I dunno how in thunder the lariat got busted," repeated Texas. "An' if I should go for to guess, I mought guess wrong."
"All right, Schmidt; I pelieve you. If there is no more drubble, you will not pe called up again."
"Ask him what he thinks of the leftenant's chances," suggested Kelly to his superior.
"Reckon he'll hev to run the river a spell," returned the borderer. "Reckon he'll hev to run it a hell of a ways befo' he'll be able to git across the dam country."