Gorilla Jake drew up his huge shoulders.
“I got out o’ that,” he explained, “by makin’ the jury believe that I done the thing in self-defense; but it was a close squeeze.”
“What is your lay now?”
“Seems to me that I’m doin’ all the explainin’!” the apelike man objected. “But, never mind—I’ll git my whack at you when I’m through. Jest now I was goin’ to Blossom Range, where I thought I might find some o’ my old pals. But the chief reason was the Utes, that’s livin’ jest north of it.”
He pulled a package from his pocket. Opening it, he displayed a number of brown tablets.
“Good trick,” he said; “I paid fifty dollars fer the recipe tellin’ how to make ’em. I never need to go road agentin’ no more, to git all the cash I want. Feller that I bought the recipe of was a Chinaman. Ordinary, I take the drugs in their raw state, and mix ’em in whisky. But over in Virginny City I found a drug-store man what made it up in that shape fer me; and I kin kerry a lot of it in a small compass.”
He held one of the brown tablets up in his fingers.
“Contains jest two grains,” he said. “Let a man mix one o’ them in his whisky, and then let him drink it, and he’s jest got to have more. After that, I’ve got him. It makes him see visions and have the howlingest happy ole time, with adventures in clear joy, such as never was; all fer a few cents. One tablet will do that. Give him three; and he gits wild. Give him four er five, and he’d kill his best friend fer a dollar. Give him as high as ten, and he jest lays down and don’t know nothin’ fer twenty-four hours straight.”
Tim Benson became intensely interested.
He took the tablet and looked at it; felt it, smelled it, then tasted it.