‘You spoke yore piece, pardner,’ laughed Hashknife. ‘I’ll load the gun for yuh.’
He took a box of shells off a shelf and dropped one in each barrel, after which he stood the gun in a corner.
‘Thank you so much,’ said Rex.
‘Good huntin’ to yuh, brother,’ grinned Hashknife.
‘Oh, but I’m not going hunting for any one.’
‘You won’t have to. In Arizona, that kind of game comes right up to yore door.’
CHAPTER XI: THE NAVAJO RUG
It is doubtful if any of his friends would have recognized Napoleon Bonaparte Briggs as he stood against the Oasis bar that night. On his narrow, slightly grizzled head was an ancient brown derby hat, several sizes too small. Around his skinny neck was a high, bat-wing collar, plenty large enough for Napoleon to sink into up to his generous ears, and his bosom was resplendent in a once-white, starched bosom shirt.
He wore no vest, no necktie, and his old brown coat showed evidences of its long vacation inside a war-bag. His overalls were glaringly new, tucked inside a pair of high-heel boots, which emitted an unmistakable odor of stove polish. Inside the waist-band of his overalls, the butt of it reposing against the lower end of his shirt-bosom, was a heavy Colt revolver.
And Napoleon Bonaparte Briggs was drunk. It was seldom that Briggs ever came to Mesa City on a drunk, and no one had ever seen him dressed in this manner.