Flat Face Dink flipped up a quart bottle, tall, straight sided and long necked, and set up a thick, fluted glass to hold two good liquor drinks. Rearing Bill looked at the glass, picking it up.
“Put ’r thar, mister!” Rearing Bill said, enthusiastically. “You got a measure ’cording to the man here—put ’r thar!”
Flat Face Dink colored happily under that praise, and drank with Rearing Bill, something he never did except with the most distinguished of patrons.
Rearing Bill holstered his gun with the stained ivory handles. He was a gentleman among gentlemen, in Squint Legere’s, all on account of the appreciation of Flat Face Dink of the appropriateness of measures for a man, serving glasses according to one’s size. Rearing Bill surged forth into the street again, popped away a couple of times and went on his way.
He began to sing:
“I’m Rearing Bill of Big Buck Hill.
Snake pisen is my cure.
Of human flesh I eat my fill;
An’ I takes my whisky pure.”
He ended the verse with a chorus of shots. He aimed at lights, which crashed in broken glass, for he could shoot pretty straight. His gunfire made the horses nervous, and they pranced around. When he was on one side of the square men scurried on the opposite side to remove their mounts, either racing out to the livery barn and corral or down toward Strollers’ Campground on the creek bottom.
Rearing Bill’s horse was built on his own generous scale, but he had begun to ride it when it was too young; and now the beast, which would have been a good draft horse, was a swayback with a tired look in the lop of its ears. When Rearing Bill came by, however, the animal pranced and shook nervously.
Word had been sent to City Marshal Pete Culder, who was out in his home cabin. The messenger said that Rearing Bill from Buck Hill had come to town. At least, the fellow had said he was Rearing Bill and acted as bad as they make them. Culder promised to come right down, but he wasn’t seen by any one on that hectic night.
After shooting up Court House Square the disturber went into saloons and took tentative shots at bottles and glasses. Keen observers noticed that he shot with accuracy. He held his biggest of revolvers with a free, powerful grip which on the pull landed the lead slugs in whatever he aimed at, whether tin lamp base or peak glass on a pyramid of glasses.