"We caught him on the horse."
"Yes, yes, yes," says I, raising my voice. "That's all right. But
lend me your ears till I bray a thought or two. I'm that kind of a man
that wouldn't string the meanest mistake the devil ever made without
givin' him a trial."
"You give me a lot of trial this morning," says Long Jim.
I wasn't bringing up any argument; I was pulling them along with a
mother's kind but firm hand, so I says to him: "Ah! I wasn't talking
about _gentlemen_; I'd shoot a gentleman if he did or didn't look
cross-eyed at me, just as I happened to feel. I'm talking about a man
that's suspected of dirty work."
Now, when a man that's held you stiff at the end of a gun calls you a
gentleman, you don't get very mad--just please remember my audience,
when I tell you what I talked. Boys is boys, at any age; otherwise
there wouldn't be no Knights Templars with tin swords nor a good many
other things. I spoke grand, but they had it chalked down in their
little books I was ready and willing to act grander. Had I struck any
one or all of 'em, on the range, thinking of nothing special, and
Fourth-o'-July'd to 'em like that, they would have give me the hee-hee.
Howsomever, they was at present engaged in tryin' to hang a man; a job
one-half of which they didn't like, and would dispose of the balance
cheap, for cash. And I'd run over their little attempt to be pompous
like a 'Gul engine.
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