“Where is Mister Harper today?” she asks, ignoring his question.
I peeks out from under the bed and I sees Magpie’s feet real close to me. There’s a piece of rope laying between his heels and the chair leg. Magpie is scared of snakes, and it gives me an idea.
“Ma’am,” says he, “let’s not speak of that person. He done me dirt. Just when I needs him bad he up and quits me. For why? Because he’s scared. That feller ain’t got no nerve a-tall. So long as he can lay around and do nothing but wear a star he’s a hy-iu officer, but the minute he sees a little trouble showing up he quits cold. I hates a coward, ma’am. No man can ever say that a Simpkins flinched when danger came his——”
“Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z!” says I, and begins drawing that rope past his heels.
He freezes to his chair for about three seconds, and then just hits the floor once before he exits through the door. I rolls out the side of the bed, slips the window open and drops out of the back of the cabin. I gets a glimpse of the lady’s face as I slides over the sill, and she’s got tears running down her face.
I figured that this here ain’t the proper time for me to make marriage proposals to the lady, and after taking one good look at her face, as I flopped over the window sill, I don’t figure that Magpie will stand much show of getting her to sign up for life.
My bronc has drifted around to the back, which is the reason Magpie never saw it, so I leads it away from there and laughs all the way home.
I rides up to Buck Masterson’s saloon, and meets Pete Gonyer and a stranger. They immediate and soon surrounds me.
“Ike, this is Mister Brand,” states Pete, and I shakes the hand of this stranger person. “Mister Brand would talk with somebody from the sheriff’s office, Ike, so I turns him loose on you.”
Pete wanders away and me and Mister Brand sets down on the sidewalk. He pulls out a couple of photygrafts and hands ’em to me.