It was just eighty dollars.
I bought me a saddle with it,
Then I got gamblin’,——
Pawned the saddle,
Tore up the tickets
And throwed them away.”
“I was never in jail but onct,” he told us, rather surprised at his own restraint, “and then I was drunk. I was feelin’ fine,—rode my hoss on the sidewalk, shot off my gun and got ten days. Was you ever drunk? No? Well, beer’s all right if you want a drink, but if you want to get drunk, try champagne. You take it one day, and rense out your mouth the next, and you’re as drunk as you were the night before.”
When the draft came, no high sentiments of patriotism flowed in vers libre from Bill’s lips.
“There’s places in the Grand Canyon I know of where I reckon I could hide out, and no draft officer could find me till the war was over,” he declared. “I’d rather be a live coward than a dead hero any day.”
But he went, and of course was drafted into the infantry, he who saddled his horse to cross the street, and who had said earnestly, “Girls, if you want to make a cow-puncher sore, set him afoot.” Like several other of his “doods” who had witnessed the tragedy of his being drafted, when he went about with lugubrious forebodings and refused to be cheered, I sent him a sweater, and received promptly a letter of thanks.