Tom Baker laughingly chimed in: “If I am any judge, and I allow as how I am, Buck here would make that pound-of-flesh Shylock feller look like thirty cents Mex.”
Ashley smiled greedily, but in a satisfied way, as he said with unruffled calm: “Guess I’d better weigh them nuggets and see how much the old squaw’s groceries cost her.”
“The treacherous Indian and the honest paleface,” laughed Dick Willoughby in a half-rebuking tone.
Buck Ashley bridled up. His voice rang with deep feeling.
“Boys,” he said, “you think I’m a Shylock, a robber, a devil I expect, and everything that’s bad. I don’t talk much about myself, but just so you’ll not think too blamed hard of me, I’ll ask you a question. Supposen when you was only about fifteen years old, you stood by, tied hand and foot, and saw a lot of redskins scalp and kill your father and mother and two little sisters, and then rob your dead father of over ten thousand dollars in gold, run off the family stock, and take you to their camp to burn at the stake as a sort of incidental diversion at one of their pow-wow dances; and supposen you performed a miracle and got away and took an oath to kill and rob every derned Indian you might see throughout the remaining days of your life—what, then, if I reformed and gave up the kilin’ and stuck to robbin’, would you blame me?”
During this tragic recital of his wrongs the old storekeeper had become noticeably excited.
Dick Willoughby got up from the cracker-box where he had been resting, and advancing with hand extended, said: “Buck, what you have told us presents the whole matter in a new light. Shake!”
“Thanks,” replied the storekeeper as he turned away to wipe a mist from his eyes.
Then quickly facing about, he called out in his usual gruff, hale and hearty manner: “Say, boys, what’ll you all have? This round is on the house.” They drank in silence. A fragment of Buck Ashley’s history had cleared away a good deal of previous misunderstanding.