“All right,” sez Horace. “This will be a good chance for me to see if I’m still in practice. I’m a purty good rifle-shot, Happy.”
I never could quite harden myself to Horace. The change in him was almost as much as that between an egg and a chicken; but yet the’ was still a suggestion of what he had been at first—his side-burns, most likely—and it allus jarred me to see him steamin’ ahead with self-confidence fizzin’ out of his safety valve. He took his elephant gun and trained it on one o’ the dogs which was sniffin’ around the place where Dixon’s body had lain. We were purty well off to the north of the ravine; but it was still a consid’able angle of a down-shot, and a good long one too.
“Remember,” sez I, “that when shootin’ down grade, you are mighty apt to shoot too high.”
He lowered his gun an’ looked at me as though I had called him a girl baby. “I have shot from every angle the’ is,” sez he; “and I’ve shot big game, too.”
“Ex-cuse me!” sez I. “Shoot now, and let’s see what happens.”
You had to take off your hat to Horace when it came to a cultivated taste in firearms. The thing he had got Promotheus with had been small enough to conceal in your back hair, while his present instrument wasn’t rightly a rifle at all, it was a half-grown cannon. It shot a bullet as big as your thumb which mushroomed out and exploded, as soon as it hit. The dog died a merciful death; but he left a mighty disquietin’ bunch o’ remains.
“Good boy, Horace!” I said, slappin’ him on the shoulder. “You keep on removin’ the dogs, and I’ll go up the slope, and pertect your rear, should they try to come up the ravine.”
I heartily endorsed this slaughter o’ the dogs; but I wasn’t ambitious to see it done. I have been well acquainted with a large number o’ dogs of all sorts and sizes, and I have deep feelin’s for dogs. When it comes to livin’ accordin’ to a feller’s own standard, a dog has us all beat. When a dog signs up, he don’t whisper nothin’ under his breath. He signs up for the full trip, and he don’t ask a lot o’ questions about how long the hours’ll be, or what sort o’ grub and quarters and pay he’ll draw. He just wags his tail, and sez: “This here feller is my idea of exactly what a feller ought to be; and I’m for him in all he does. If he wants me to fight, I’m hungry for it, if he wants me to be polite and swaller a lot o’ insults, I’ll do it, or if the time comes when my death is worth more to him ’n my life, why, I don’t know nothin’ about future rewards or such truck; but I’m perfectly willin’ to swap life for death in his name, and I’m proud to take the consequences—so long as he gets the reward.”
I own up ’at a dog has no morality; he’s only a reflection of his master. A decent man has a decent dog, a vicious man has a vicious dog—and this is why it would have hurt me more to watch Horace testin’ his aim on the dogs ’n it would if he had been minded to pot a few Cross-branders themselves, especially Ty Jones.
Now, the sound o’ this gun, and the sight of the dead dog made things buzz down below. The men peered out from all directions, but hardly knew what to do. I had sent Mexican Slim off to the right, just above the ravine, to pick off any dogs ’at came in that direction, and soon after Horace got his, Slim also got one; and Ty whistled the dogs to come to the house. Here was where his method of treatin’ a dog showed up bad. Any time before this, a dog which so much as set foot on the porch had been belted with anything capable of inflictin’ pain, and now they refused to go inside.