Our silence obtained for full ten minutes.
Then I proposed "courage" as a subject, and put a question.
"Thar's fifty kinds of courage," responded my companion, "an' a gent
who's plumb weak an' craven, that a-way, onder certain
circumstances, is as full of sand as the bed of the Arkansaw onder
others. Thar's hoss-back courage an' thar's foot courage, thar's day
courage an' night courage, thar's gun courage an' knife courage, an'
no end of courages besides. An' then thar's the courage of vanity.
More'n once, when I'm younger, I'm swept down by this last form of
heroism, an' I even recalls how in a sperit of vainglory I rides a
buffalo bull. I tells you, son, that while that frantic buffalo is
squanderin' about the plains that time, an' me onto him, he feels a
mighty sight like the ridge of all the yooniverse. How does it end?
It's too long a tale to tell walkin' an' without reecooperatifs;
suffice it that it ends disastrous. I shall never ride no buffalo
ag'in, leastwise without a saddle, onless its a speshul o'casion.
"No, indeed, that word 'courage' has to be defined new for each
case. Thar's old Tom Harris over on the Canadian. I beholds Tom one
time at Tascosa do the most b'ar-faced trick; one which most sports
of common sens'bilities would have shrunk from.
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