“You little old devil!” he at last burst out; “you stay there, and back you go to the ranch. I’ll shake the liquor out of you before we get home.”
Tresler sprang into his saddle, and, turning his mare’s head homeward, led the buckskin and its drunken freight at a rattling pace. And Joe kept silence for a while. He felt it was best so. But, in the end, he was the first to speak, and when he did so there was a quiet dryness in his tone that pointed all he said.
“Say, Tresler, I’m kind o’ sorry you wus put to all that figgerin’ an’ argyment,” he said, shaking up his old pony to bring him alongside the speedy mare. “Y’ see ye never ast me ’bout that letter. Kind o’ jumped me fer a fool-head at oncet. Which is most gener’ly the nature o’ boys o’ your years. Conclusions is mostly hasty, but I ’lows they’re reas’nable in their places—which is last. An’ I sez it wi’out offense, ther’ ain’t a blazin’ thing born in this world that don’t reckon to con-clude fer itself ’fore it’s rightly begun. Everything needs teachin’, from a ‘tenderfoot’ to a New York babby.”
Joe’s homily banished the last shadow of Tresler’s ill-humor. The little man had had the best of him in his quiet, half-drunken manner; a manner which, though rough, was still irresistible.
“That’s all right, Joe. I’m no match for you,” he said with a laugh. “But, setting jokes on one side, I think you’re in for trouble with Jake. I saw it in his eye before I started out.”
“I don’t think. Guess I’m plumb sure,” Joe replied quietly.
“Then why on earth did you do it?”
Joe humped his back with a movement expressive of unconcern.
“It don’t matter why. Jake’s nigh killed me ha’f a dozen times. One o’ these days he’ll fix me sure. He’ll lace hell out o’ me to-morrow, I’m guessin’, an’ when it’s done it won’t alter nothin’ anyways. I’ve jest two things in this world, I notion, an’—one of ’em’s drink. ’Tain’t no use in sayin’ it ain’t, ’cos I guess my legs is most unnateral truthful ’bout drink. Say, I don’t worrit no folk when I’m drunk; guess I don’t interfere wi’ no one’s consarns when I’m drunk; I’m jest kind o’ happy when I’m drunk. Which bein’ so, makes it no one’s bizness but my own. I do it ’cos I gits a heap o’ pleasure out o’ it. I know I ain’t worth hell room. But I got my notions, an’ I ain’t goin’ ter budge fer no one.” Joe’s slantwise mouth was set obstinately; his little eyes flashed angrily in the moonlight, and his whole attitude was one of a man combating an argument which his soul is set against.
As Tresler had no idea of arguing the question and remained silent, the choreman went on in a modified tone of morbid self-sympathy sympathy—