“Patriotic?” he echoed. “Doggone us, we’re the biggest patriots on the coast! No man is a gentleman who wouldn’t be a gentleman on such an occasion as this. Skete, you’ve saved the life of yonder braggart,” and he pointed to Slivers. “I couldn’t be a gentleman and slay him when a child’s been born in this here county. Slivers, you can go your way, without alarm.”
“What!” demanded Tuttle. “No fight? All on account of a baby?”
“If I ever!” added Sally Wooster.
A third disgusted person queried, “What’s a baby got to do with a duel, and the kid near forty miles away?”
To this one Barney turned with pitying scorn. “You don’t know how easy it is to disturb a new-born baby,” said he. “There ain’t a man but me in camp knows how to behave himself in a holy moment like this here, and I ain’t a-goin’ to kill no man when a sacred thing like that has went and happened.”
“Well, durn his slippery hide!” grumbled Tuttle. “He’s gittin’ too smart!”
The men were all grinning, including Slivers.
“I reckon Barney knows as much about a baby as a hop-toad knows about arithmetic,” said Wooster, winking prodigiously. “He’s got us all square beat on kids.”
“I don’t know about that,” replied a lanky individual who had sobered amazingly at the news from Red Shirt Canyon. “I’ve saw a kid or two myself.”
“That so, Moody?” said Slivers. “Well, say, maybe we could work up a bet between you and Barney, to see which knows the most about a youngster.”