Slim picks the gent up by one leg and an arm, carries him out and dumps him right into the street without no clothes on.
“There!” yells Slim, as the stranger hits the dirt. “I’ve read all about yuh, Mister Legree, and this is one colored person yuh can’t run no sandy on. Sabe?”
This Legree person don’t linger. It’s about two hundred yards to Holt’s hotel door, and he negotiates the distance in the time it takes Slim to shoot six shots into the dirt behind him. On his way he meets “Cobalt” Williams. Cobalt steps to one side to let him past, catches his spur in the dirt, and sets down. It spoils his aim, he tears the knob off the door after it shuts behind Legree. Cobalt gets up and comes on down to the saloon, shaking his head.
“What yuh trying to do—kill him? Yuh danged fool!” snorts Slim.
Cobalt had reached for the bottle, but he turns to look at Slim and his hand drops. He pushes his hat back and stares at Slim and seems to swaller with difficulty.
“Ex-cuse me,” he says, sort of to himself. “No more Paradise hooch for mine! Mike Pelly said it was a hundred and twenty proof, and this proves it. First I see a naked man running around the main street, and then I meets a colored brother what looks like Slim Hawkins. I’m through! Sabe? I’m going home—me!”
He ducks out, gets his bronc at the rack and points out of town.
“That’s what I’d call a temperance lecture in ink,” opines Magpie. “As editor and a man of letters I congratulates yuh. We can hereby reverse that old saying, ‘He who runs may read’ and make it, ‘He who reads may run.’”
We inaugurates a poker game and plays until almost dark, when sudden-like we hears the sound of music, and stampedes to the door. Here comes that show bunch down the street, and stops in front of the old Mint Hall. They got a banner what proclaims there will be a show tonight, and “Mighty” Jones is packing the banner, with his chest stuck out like a fool-hen after a feed.
We cashes in and goes over to the band.