Peets stands in the door, one of his
little pup-guns in each hand.
"'Which I likes your aplomb!' says Black Jack to Peets, as he swabs
off the bar in a peevish way. 'I makes it my boast that I'm the
best-nachered barkeep between the Colorado an' the Rio Grande, an'
yet I'm free to confess, sech plays chafes me. May I ask,' an' Black
Jack stops wipin' the bar an' turns on Peets plumb p'lite, 'what
your idee is in thus shootin' your way into a commercial affair in
which you has no interest?'
"'This ycre bibulous person is my patient,' says Peets, a heap
haughty. 'I preescribes no licker; an' them preescriptions is goin'
to be filled, you bet! if I has to fill 'em with a gun. Whatever do
you-all reckon a medical practitioner is? Do you figger he's a
Mexican, an' that his diagnosises, that a-way, don't go? I notifies
you this mornin' as I stands yere gettin' my third drink, that if
this outcast comes trackin' in with demands for nose-paint, to
remember he's sick an' throw him out on his head. An' yere's how I'm
obeyed!'
"Which, of course, this explains things to Black Jack, an' he sees
his inadvertences. He comes out from behind the bar to where this
sick maverick has done fainted in the confoosion, an' collars him
an' sets him on a char.
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