LITMIR.BIZ

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remember he’s studied for the ministry! How did I savey that Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?” A cow-puncher with a squint addressed the table in general. “I scents the aroma of dogma about Simpson in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at the yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his ‘firstly,’ it being a speculation as to her late grazing-ground, which he concludes to be the East. His ‘secondly’ ain’t nothing startling, words familiar to us all from our mother’s knee—‘nice weather’—the congregation ain’t visibly moved. His ‘thirdly’ is insinuating. In it he hints that it ain’t good for man to be alone at meals—”

      “’Twas the congregation that added the ‘foinelly,’ though, before hastily leaving be the back door!” and Costigan slapped his thigh.

      “The gentleman in question don’t seem to be makin’ much use of his present conversational opportunities. I’m feelin’ kinder turned down myself”; and the Texan began to look over his six-shooter.

      The man with the squint looked up and down the board.

      “Gentlemen, I believe the foregoing expresses the sentiment of this company, which, while it incloodes many foreign and frequent-warring elements, is at present held together by the natchral tie of eating.”

      Thumping with knife and fork handles, stamping of feet, cries of “Hear! hear!” with at least three cow-boy yells, argued well for a resumption of last night’s festivities. Simpson glowered, but said nothing.

      “Seems to me you-all goin’ the wrong way ’bout drawin’ Mistu’ Simpson out. He is shy an’ has to be played fo’ like a trout, an’ heah you-all come at him like a cattle stampede.” The big Texan leaned towards Simpson. “Now you-all watch my methods. Mistu’ Simpson, seh, what du think of the prospects of rain?”

      There was a general recommendation from Simpson that the entire company go to a locality below the rain-belt.

      A boy, plainly “from the East,” and looking as if the ink on his graduating thesis had scarce had time to dry, was on his feet, swaggering; he would not have swapped his newly acquired camaraderie with these bronzed Westerners for the Presidency.

      “Gentlemen, you have all heard Simpson say it is lonesome having no one to talk to during meals. We sympathized with him and offered him a choice of subjects. He greets our remarks by a conspicuous silence, varied by profanity. This, gentlemen, reflects on us, and is a matter demanding public satisfaction. All who feel that their powers as conversationalists have been impugned by the silence of Simpson, please say ‘Ay.’”

      “Ay” was howled, sung, and roared in every note of the gamut.

      “If me yoong frind here an me roight”—and Costigan jerked a shoulder towards the boy—“will be afther closin’ that silf-feeding automatic dictionary av his for a moment, I shud be glad to call the attintion av the coomp’ny to somethin’ in the nature av an ixtinuatin’ circoomsthance in the case av Simpson.”

      “Hear! hear!” they shouted. The broad countenance of Costigan beamed with joy at what he was about to say. “Gintlemin, the silence av Mr. Simpson is jew in all probabilitee to a certain ivint recalled by many here prisint, an’ more that’s absent, an’ amicablee settled out av coort—”

      Up to this time the unhappy Simpson had shown an almost superhuman endurance. Now he bristled—and after looking up and down the board for a sympathetic face, and not finding one, he declared, loudly and generally, “’Tain’t so!”

      “Ye may have noticed that frind Simpson do be t’reatened wid lockjaw in the societee av min, but in the prisince av a female ye can’t count on him. Now, talk wid a female is an agreeable, if not a profitable, way av passin’ the toime, but sure ye niver know where it will ind—as witness Simpson. This lady I’m recallin’—’tis a matther av two years ago—followed the ancient and honorable profission av biscuit shootin’ not far from Caspar. Siz Simpson to the lady some such passin’ civilitee as, ‘Good-marnin’; plisent weather we’re havin’.’ Whereupon the lady filt a damage to her affictions an’ sued him for breach av promise.”

      “’Twan’t that way, at all!” screamed Simpson. “’Sall a lie!”

      “Yu ought er said ‘Good-evenin’’ to the lady, Mistu Simpson; hit make a diffunce,” drawled the man from Texas, pleasantly.

      “But ’twas ‘Good-marnin’’ Simpson made chyce av,” resumed Costigan. “An’ the lady replied, ‘You’ve broke my heart.’ Whereupon Simpson, havin’ a matther av t’ree thousand dollars to pay for his passin’ civilitee, learned thot silince was goolden.”

      They all remembered the incident in question, and thundered applause at the reappearance of an old favorite. Without warning, a shadow fell across the sunlight-flooded room, and, as one after another of the men glanced up from the table, they saw standing in the doorway a man of such malignant aspect that his look fell across the company like a menace. The swing of their banter slowed suddenly; it was as if the cold of a new-turned grave had struck across the June sunshine checking their roughshod fun. None of them had the hardihood to joke with a man that stood in the shadow of death; and hate and murder looked from the eyes of the man in the doorway and looked towards Simpson. One by one they perceived the man of the shadow, all but Simpson, eating steak drowned in Worcestershire.

      The man in the doorway was tall and lean, and the prison blench upon his face was in unpleasant contrast to the ruddy tan of the faces about the table. His sombrero was tipped back and the hair hung dank about the pale, sweating forehead, suggestive of sickness. But weak health did not imply weak purpose; every feature in that hawk-like face was sharp with hatred, and in the narrowing eye was vengeance that is sweet.

      He stood still; there was in his hatred a something hypnotic that grew imperceptibly and imperceptibly communicated itself to the men at table. He gloated over the eating fat man as if he had dwelt much in imagination on the sight and was in no hurry to curtail his joy at the reality. The men began to get restless, shuffle their feet, moisten their lips; only the college boy spoke, and then from a wealth of ignorance, knowing nothing of the rugged, give-and-take justice of the plains—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and the law and the courts go hang while a man’s got a right arm to pull a trigger. Not one in all that company, even the cattle-men whose interests were opposed to Rodney’s, but felt the justice of his errand.

      “When did they let him out?” whispered the college boy; and then, “Oughtn’t we to do something?”

      “Yis, me son,” whispered Costigan. “We ought to sit still and learn a thing or two.”

      The fat man cleaned his plate with a crust of bread stuck on the point of a knife. There was nothing more to eat in the way of substantials, and he debated pouring a little more of the sauce on his plate and mopping it with a bit of bread still uneaten. Considering the pro and con of this extra tid-bit, he glanced up and saw the gaunt man standing in the doorway.

      Simpson dropped the knife from his shaking hand and started up with a cry that died away in a gurgle, an inhuman, nightmare croak. He looked about wildly, like a rat in a trap, then backed towards the wall. The men about the table got up, then cleared away in a circle, leaving the fat man. It was all like a dream to the college boy, who had never seen a thing of the kind before and could not realize now that it was happening. Rodney advanced, never once relaxing the look in which he seemed to hold his enemy as in a vise. Simpson was like a man bewitched. Once, twice, he made a grab for his revolver, but his right hand seemed to have lost power to heed the bidding of his will. Rodney, now well towards the centre of the room, waited, with a suggestion of ceremony, for Simpson to get his six-shooter.

      It was one of those moments in which time seems to have become petrified. The limp-clad proprietress of the eating-house, made curious by the sudden silence, looked in from the kitchen. Simpson, his eyes wandering like a trapped rat, saw, and called, through teeth that chattered in an ague of fear, “Ree—memm—her thth—there’s la—dies p—present! For Gawd’s sake, remember t—there’s ladies p—present!”

      The

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