"Sure," says Dutchy, calm as a milk cow, "sure, I hears ye!"
I was plumb sorry for O'Toole. I'd like to have given him a run; but, of course, I couldn't take it up without makin' myself out a friend of this Dutchy party, and I couldn't stand for that. But I did tackle Dutchy about it one night when they wasn't nobody else there.
"Dutchy," says I, "what makes you let that bow-legged cross between a bulldog and a flamin' red sunset tromp on you so? It looks to me like you're plumb spiritless."
Dutchy stopped wiping glasses for a minute.
"Just you hold on" says he. "I ain't ready yet. Bimeby I make him sick; also those others who laugh with him."
He had a little grey flicker in his eye, and I thinks to myself that maybe they'd get Dutchy on the peck yet.
As I said, I went broke in just six weeks and two days. And I was broke a plenty. No hold-outs anywhere. It was a heap long ways to cows; and I'd be teetotally chawed up and spit out if I was goin' to join these minin' terrapins defacin' the bosom of nature. It sure looked to me like hard work.
While I was figurin' what next, Dutchy came in. Which I was tur'ble surprised at that, but I said good-mornin' and would he rest his poor feet.
"You like to make some money?" he asks.
"That depends," says I, "on how easy it is."