PUNCTUATION AS A FINE ART
Twin River was in full blast when Dave rode in, looking for Tex. He
dropped off the pony and went into the Why-Not, but his man was not
there; after a few unavoidable drinks--Dave could not have avoided one
if it had invited from the middle of the Staked Plain--he looked in at
Ike's and the I-Call. He sampled the liquor in both places but
evidently Comin' Thirty was not in that part of the town and he jogged
on up to the Sweet-Echo. He had not been in here since warned off by
Slick, but fear of consequences had nothing to do with absenting
himself; fear did not enter into his composition. Dave's fundamental
fault lay in his hatred of being beaten. It had lead him to cheat at
play; to outwit by foul means; to take the sure course to any desired
end, deliberately regardless of what any one might think. The danger of
such actions did not deter him in the least; he was always ready,
usually overwhelmingly ready, to back them up in any manner his
opponents demanded of him. The defeat, sure to be met when he opposed a
superior intelligence, he confidently relied upon overcoming by sheer
force of personality, mistaking violence for strength, deceit for
ingenuity. The bad judgment of his failures ever wore the mantle of bad
luck; and the thought and time he wasted in schemes for revenge might
have been used more profitably in making success of his failure.
Since his employment by Schatz his mind had been fully occupied by the
furtherance, as he considered it, of his employer's plan. Buck Peters,
the Englishman, even Slick, at times pricked his memory, but he had
resolutely put them aside until a more convenient season. Now, with
whiskey spurring his Satanic temperament, he considered it obligatory to
go into the Sweet-Echo. He wanted to find Comin' and no fancy bar-keep'
nor roaring Scotchman should keep him from going wherever he wanted to
go. He stepped from his stirrup onto the porch and went into the
bar-room as if he owned it.
The expected trouble did not develop. Slick gave him a short nod and
set up glass and bottle with praise-worthy promptitude. If Dave was
without fear, so was Slick, who would have taken him on in any way
whatever; preferably, as became his Irish ancestry, with his hands, but
failing that, with anything from a pop-gun to a cannon. Dave, with his
usual habit of ignoring the other man, imagined Slick to be overawed;
this leavened his savagery with good nature. What was Slick Milligan,
anyhow? Just a bar-keep'--Dave turned his back to the bar and surveyed
the inmates of the room. Comin' was not there. Where in thunder was he?
Maybe bucking the tiger at Little Nell's. Dave had two or three drinks
with men he knew and rode back to cross the ford. He was again out in
his reckoning. He watched the cards flick from the box. Nell, herself,
was dealing and Dave's fingers itched to get down, but he refrained.
With the vague hints dropped by Schatz and his consequent hope of
speedily winning Rose, he knew he must drop gambling--until he had won
to the fulfilment of his desires, at least.
As he watched he suddenly realized he was hungry and strolled into the
eating house, run by Nell as a paying adjunct to her other businesses.
The whiskey, as it often does in healthy stomachs, was calling loudly
for food and Dave answered the call with unstinted generosity. Being
genuinely wishful to see Tex he did not linger but, as soon as finished,
started to make the round again.
He got no farther than the Why-Not. His entry was met by a roar of
laughter and shouts of encouragement: "Bully f' you, gran'pa!"--"Did he
ever come back?"--"That's th' caper, Dirty!"--"_Let_ him alone, _he_
ain't chokin'."
Seated on a box on the top of a table (Dirty would be buried in a box;
they would never have the heart to separate his attenuated figure from
the object so long associated with it in life), old Pop Snow bent up and
down, shrinking, shrinking, until his bony leanness threatened to vanish
before their gaze; a wheezing gasp started him swelling again and his
"he! he! he!" whistled above the uproar like a hiss in a machine shop.
He was astonishingly drunk--for Dirty. His pervious clay had developed
innumerable channels for alcohol in the years of training he had given
it; and he was seldom so joyously hilarious as this. For one reason it
was seldom that any one would pay for it, and Dirty's means only went
far enough to keep him everlastingly thirsty. The explanation appeared
to Dave in the shape of a group of miners, whose voices, in their
appreciation, were the loudest.
"He-he-he! He-he-he-he!" Pop Snow's shrill pipe continued, while the
others demanded more. "Sawbones had n't been gone a week afore he was
wanted. He-he-he! eh, dear! eh, dear! Lucky Jones come along--an'
stopped. Ther' wearn't nothin' _to_ do but stop. He comes to me an' he
says: 'Wheer 's ther' a doctor?' 'Well,' I says, 'jedgin' from what I
hears, if you jest foller th' river north fur about fifteen mile to
Drigg's Worry,' I says, 'you 'll find a saw-bones as used to be yer--but
when he left he swears as how he ain't never comin' back to th' P'int,'
I says. He-he-he! Send-I-may-live if he don't, though. Yep, an' Jones
purty nigh goes into th' wet, too. 'Th' P'int?' roars th' Doc, 'No,
siree, by G--d, no, sir! Twenty-eight mile th' last time to tend a
stinkin' ole sow, on account o' a misbegotten son o' Beelzebub an th'
North Pole they call Snow down there. This time I 'spose 't'ud be a
skunk.' 'It's my wife,' says Jones, 'an' if yuh don't come right sudden
I 'm a-goin' to blow off th' top o' yore devilish ole head,' says Jones;
'an' if she dies,' he sez, 'I blows her off, anyhow.' He-he-he!
Saw-bones, he riz up an' come a-kitin'. I ain't much on Welshmen; they
biles over too easy. But Saw-bones done a good job an' got away wi' his
life. We hears all about it nex' day when Jones comes to me an' tells
me it is two at once, boy an' a girl. Fust we knowed he 'd brung his
wife. Not as she stays long. Winter 's one too many fur her an' she
cashes in. Then Lucky Jones, he tries to cross th' river below th'
P'int, 'stid o' th' ford, an' th' ice ain't strong enough, an' Jones, he
was some drunk, I reckon. We calls th' river after him an' th' forks
after th' kids. Lord, they was bad uns, both on 'em. Black Jack, he
hez hisself hung for suthin' or other, an' Little Jill, she turns out
just a plain--"
Every one jumped, it was so unexpected. The lead sung so close to
Dirty's nose that the backward jerk almost took him off the table and he
recovered his seat with a sideways wriggle and squirm that did credit to
the elasticity of his aged muscles. Having managed to retain his seat,
he continued to retain it. None of the others showed the least desire
to move, though every last man of them yearned for absence--sudden,
noiseless absence--of a kind so instantaneous as to preclude the
possibility of notice: anything less were foolhardy in the face of those
blazing eyes and that loosely held gun, its business end oscillating
like the head of a snake and far more deadly.
"Don't be afeared, Dirty," purred Dave, in the kindliest tones. "I was
jest a-puttin' in th' period. Yore eddication is shameful, Dirty, an' I
grieves for you, account of it. You has a generous mixture o' commas
an' semi-commas an' things like that, but yore periods is shore some
scarce. You was a-sayin' as how Little Jill was a sweet, good gal, as
never done wrong in her life, was n't you?"
Dirty swallowed hard and nodded. Speech was beyond him just then and
perhaps he had spoken too much, already. He repeated his former
contortion with equal skill and success, and every head in the crowd
rose perceptibly and returned to its former level as the gun spoke again
and another hole appeared in the wall, close to the first.
"A period comes after that, Dirty," said Dave. "Don't you never forgit
th' kind o' gal she was--an' then comes th' period. You 'll mebby hold
yore liquor better." He shoved the gun back in the holster, eyed the
crowd insolently for a moment, and turning his back on it, walked calmly
from the room.
Pop Snow climbed down from the table in haste and pushed his way through
the detaining arms and the medley of questions that assailed him on his
way to the door, which opened and closed like a stage trap as he stepped
out and sprang to one side; his anger was that of a sober and far
younger man and he peered about with keen eyes. His caution was
uncalled for: Dave was splashing through the ford and Dirty watched him
set out in a swift lope along the Big Moose trail. Dave had no stomach
for further company that night.
Dirty rubbed a pair of trembling lips as he gazed. "Black Jack!" he
muttered, "Black Jack! He _warn't_ hung, then. No, an' he won't never
be 'less it's fur killin' pore ole Pop Snow. Pore ole Pop Snow," he
repeated, whimpering as he hurried across the bridge toward shelter;
"Jest like Dutch Onion. Dead an' gone, pore ole Dutch. Pore ole Pop."
He stopped in the middle of the trail and with a flash of his former
spirit, shook his fist after the distant Dave: "Shell I?" he jeered:
"shell I, then? I been yer afore you, Jack, an' I 'll be a-livin' when
you rot."
Hoofbeats coming out of the darkness where Dave had disappeared,
startled him and he scuttled away like a rabbit.