Months later, the cowboy was frying pork over the stove of a little
ranch near the Dakota line, when there was a quick thud of hoofs
outside, and presently the Easterner entered with the letters and the
papers.
"Well," said the Easterner at once, "the chap that killed the Swede
has got three years. Wasn't much, was it?"
"He has? Three years?" The cowboy poised his pan of pork, while he
ruminated upon the news. "Three years. That ain't much."
"No. It was a light sentence," replied the Easterner as he unbuckled
his spurs. "Seems there was a good deal of sympathy for him in
Romper."
"If the bartender had been any good," observed the cowboy,
thoughtfully, "he would have gone in and cracked that there Dutchman
on the head with a bottle in the beginnin' of it and stopped all this
here murderin'."
"Yes, a thousand things might have happened," said the Easterner,
tartly.
The cowboy returned his pan of pork to the fire, but his philosophy
continued. "It's funny, ain't it? If he hadn't said Johnnie was
cheatin' he'd be alive this minute. He was an awful fool. Game played
for fun, too. Not for money. I believe he was crazy."
"I feel sorry for that gambler," said the Easterner.
"Oh, so do I," said the cowboy. "He don't deserve none of it for
killin' who he did."
"The Swede might not have been killed if everything had been square."
"Might not have been killed?" exclaimed the cowboy. "Everythin'
square? Why, when he said that Johnnie was cheatin' and acted like
such a jackass? And then in the saloon he fairly walked up to git
hurt?" With these arguments the cowboy browbeat the Easterner and
reduced him to rage.
"You're a fool!" cried the Easterner, viciously. "You're a bigger
jackass than the Swede by a million majority. Now let me tell you one
thing. Let me tell you something. Listen! Johnnie _was_ cheating!"
"'Johnnie,'" said the cowboy, blankly. There was a minute of silence,
and then he said, robustly, "Why, no. The game was only for fun."
"Fun or not," said the Easterner, "Johnnie was cheating. I saw him. I
know it. I saw him. And I refused to stand up and be a man. I let the
Swede fight it out alone. And you--you were simply puffing around the
place and wanting to fight. And then old Scully himself! We are all in
it! This poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is kind of an adverb.
Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have
collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually there are from a
dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case
it seems to be only five men--you, I, Johnnie, old Scully, and that
fool of an unfortunate gambler came merely as a culmination, the apex
of a human movement, and gets all the punishment."
The cowboy, injured and rebellious, cried out blindly into this fog of
mysterious theory: "Well, I didn't do anythin', did I?"
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