No more we’ll see his banty legs,
Nor hear him tell a lie.
He’s vanished from old Paradise,
“That’s a mighty pretty thing, Muley,” applauds Pole Cat. “Can’t yuh think of something nice to say for old man Whittaker?”
“The rest of you fellers stand back from Pole Cat and Harelip, and old man Whittaker will say something for himself,” states a voice at the door, and there stands the old man, with a shotgun which he levels at Pole Cat and Harelip.
The crowd obeys. Bill McFee’s legs get so weak that he sets down on the bar-rail where he gasps like a fish out of water.
“You danged pair of dynamiters!” snaps the old man. “With the shadder of the gallows staring me in the eye, and Chuck Warner’s ghost haunting my dreams, I comes back to show yuh that your dastardly deed failed. When yuh blowed up that jail yuh didn’t get me and Scenery. Sabe? Shut up!” he snaps, as Harelip starts to say something. “Don’t try to deny it, Harelip. I can prove it by the heero what let us out. There he stands, gents. Henry Clay Peck. He busted the lock and liberated——”
The crowd turns to look at me, but I don’t seem to be the point of interest at that. They looks right past me. Old man Whittaker’s gun slips from his hands, and clangs on the floor. I twists my neck and looks behind me, and there stands Chuck. He yawns and leans against the pool-table.
“Well,” says Chuck, in a dry voice, “ain’t somebody going to set ’em up? Sleeping in timothy makes a feller dry.”
Bill McFee looks at Chuck and back at Whittaker and the tears of joy runs out of his eyes. Whittaker leans against the door and tries to laugh, but he can’t.