Bug-eye was shabby and disreputable, but he had a sonorous voice and a way of “slinging words” that was calculated to make the average citizen of Scarlet Gulch sit up and take notice.
“Feller citerzens, it’s this here way,” said Bug-eye, with an oratorical wave of his hand, the other hand being tucked under and engaged in waving his coat tails, “when a man who’s been honored as Buffalo Bill has been honored; when a man who traveled to the ends o’ the earth and showed benighted lands what the reel and ginoowine wild West, which we have here, looks like; when sich a man, I say, stoops so low as to dishonor hisself by becomin’ an ordinary holdup thief, a-leadin’ holdup gangs, and so dishonors the glorious Stars and Stripes that he lives under, and which gives him perfection—then I say that it’s time fer us, feller citerzens, to put him where the wicked cease frum troubling and the weary aire at rest.”
Applause greeted Bug-eye’s oratorical effort.
“He’s a-raidin’ ’round through this country,” Bug-eye went on, tiptoeing to make himself look taller, and flirting his coat tails until the dust fairly flew from them, “pertendin’ to be here ter pertect us, and then, in a sneakin’ way, holdin’ up stagecoaches and lone and wanderin’ wayfarers, work which he tries ter make people think is done by the reg’lar road agents. Feller citerzens, the time is ripe ter put an end to his masqueradin’, and night roamin’ with a handkerchief over his face, and elevate him by a rope to a handy tree limb, and there let him do a dance on nothin’.”
The roaring cheers broke out again.
“And so now I nomernate fer judge of a Judge Lynch court, that shell do unto Buffalo Bill as he’d ought to be done to, our esteemed feller citerzen, Nate Rainey, the keeper of the Flash Light Saloon here—a man what sets out the best redeye that’s set out over any bar in the whole area of this broad and magnificent country; feller citerzens, I nominates Nate Rainey, ther man what all of us delights to honor.”
Nate Rainey, a hatchet-faced man, with a billy-goat tuft of whiskers on the tip of his chin, popped up like the occupant of a toy jack-in-box. Every one there was yelling his name, and he flushed with pride.
The scene was the wide piazza in front of the Flash Light, and the time late afternoon. In the street were several score men of the border type—miners, cowboys, ranchmen—together with the scum and rabble always to be found in such a place.
Few of the reputable citizens of the town of Scarlet Gulch were in that noisy crowd; they had something more important to do than to hang round Nate Rainey’s saloon and listen to the big words of Bug-eye Slocum. But all the dangerous elements of the community were represented, from the blackleg gambler to the cheap street loafer.
“I ain’t no orator, like what my friend Slocum is,” Nate Rainey apologized, as he stood before the yelling mob, “er I’d try ter make ye a speech. It’s acts that talks fer me, says I; and so I say, jist bring Buffler Bill before me, and prove that he’s been doin’ these hyer things that everybody says he’s doin’, and up he goes, at the end of a rope, quick’s a cat kin wink her eye; and now you hear me!”