“He’s timid. Got some gold going out on the stage today and says he hates to take a chance. Said it was my duty to see that he got through safe-like. Safe ——!”
“He’s right,” says I. “Its your duty, Magpie. I’ll go up and see if the lady needs anything. You can’t shirk all your responsibility.”
Magpie smokes a while and nods:
“I reckon you’re right, Ike. The office has to protect them what needs it, so I’ll send you. I was thinking of the pleasant time you and me was going to have up at that little cabin today, but since your oration about duty I reckon we’ll have to help Art out. You just tell him I sent you for a guard. Who yuh writing to, Ike?”
“You,” says I, looking up from my labor. “This is my resignation, Magpie.”
“Coward!” says he, soft-like.
The Harper tribe are a peacefully inclined lot of human beings, and forgiving to a startling degree, but that word means light. I hits him in the neck, with the ink-bottle, and then we tangles.
When we gets through I’m on the floor with the stove in my lap, while Magpie sets half-way out of the door with a chair hung around his neck. Just then Scenery Sims sticks his head in the window, and yelps:
“What’s this? What’s this?”
I lakes one of the legs off that stove, and bounces it off his head and yells: