"Dot vash all righd," says Curly.
"That wouldn't pass for German," says Jim, "not even in a fog."
"Shure," says Curly, "is it me forgettin' me nativity? Amn't I Oirish?"
They had entered the Naco trail by this, and were walking their horses up the hill for Grave City. If the silly kids had obeyed my orders we should never have seen a hair of them that night. As it was, Deputy-Marshal Pedersen and I came with full thirty men on top of them.
I don't profess I knew either the Irish hayseed boy or the vaquero, until the black horse, a melancholy plug called Jones which I'd lent Curly, began to whicker to the grey mare I rode. Pedersen, too, was mortal suspicious of that buckskin mare with Jim.
"Black points," says he. "That's so—Crook's had white laigs."
"Shure," says Curly, prompt, "an' is it thim robbers ye'd be afther hunting?"
Pedersen reined up.
"They've passed you, eh?" he called.
"Didn't they shoot me," says Curly, "till I'm kilt entoirely? There was elivan av thim agin' me and the young feller that was along with me, the rapscallions, and thim with black masks on their dirthy faces!"