"_That's tough!_" we hollers, loud enough to lift the shakes.

"He lost of his ticket, says, 'Divvil the worse', How's that?"

"_That's tough!_"

Mister Boston stopped byside the door. The sheriff goes on----

"Aw, Pat fer his shirt, he begged hard and plead, But, 'No tickee, no washee', the Chinaman said.

Now Paddy's in jail, and the Chinaman's dead!

How's that?"

"_That's tough!_"

It brung him. He looked in, kinda edged through the door, took a bench, and _sur_veyed them shaps, and them guns till his eyes plumb _pro_truded.

"Rippin'!" I heerd him say.

"'That's tough,'" repeats Monkey Mike, winkin' to the boys. "Wal, I should _re_mark it was!--to go t' jail just fer pluggin' a c.h.i.n.k.

Irish must 'a' felt like two-bits."

Boston lent over towards me. "What's two bits?" he ast.

"What's two bits," says Rawson. "Don't you know? Wal, _one_ bit is what you can take outen the other feller's hide at one mouthful. _Two_ bits, a-course, is two of 'em."

"And," says that college feller from the Lazy X, "go fer the cheek allus--the best eatin'." (He was smart, all right.)

"Not a Chinaman's cheek--too tough," says the sheriff.

Boston begun to kinda talk to hisself. "Horrible!" he says. "Shy Locks, by Heaven!" Then to me again, speakin' low and pointin' at the sheriff, "Mister Lloyd, what kind of a fambly did that man come from?"

"Don't know a hull lot about him," I answers, "but his mother was a squaw, and his father was found on a doorstep."

"A _squaw,_" he says. "That accounts fer it." And he begun to watch the sheriff clost.

"Gents, what you want fer you' supper?" ast the Arnaz boy, comin'

our _di_rection.

"I feel awful caved in," answers Buckshot. "I'll take a dozen aigs."

"How'll you have 'em?"

"Boil 'em hard, so's I can hole 'em in my fingers. And say, cool 'em off 'fore you dish 'em up. I got blistered _bad_ the last time I et aigs."

"Rawson, what'll _you_ have?"

Rawson, he kinda c.o.c.ked one ear. "Wal," he says, easy like, "give me rattlesnake on toast."

n.o.body cheeped fer a minute, 'cause the boys was stumped fer somethin'

to go on with. But just as I was gittin' nervous that the conversation was peterin' out, Boston speaks up.

"Rattlesnake?" he says; "did he say _rattlesnake?_"

Like a shot, Rawson turned towards him, wrinklin' his forrid and wigglin' his moustache awful fierce. "_That's_ what I said," he answers, voice plumb down to his number 'levens.

It give me my show. I drug Boston away. "Gee!" I says, "on _this_ side of the Mississippi, you got to be _keerful_ how you go shoot off you'

mouth! And when you _re_mark on folks's eatin', you don't want t'

look tickled."

Wal, that was all the colour he got till night, when I had somethin'

more _pre_pared. We took up a collection fer winda-gla.s.s, and Chub Flannagan, who can roll a gun the _prettiest_ you ever seen, walked up and down nigh Boston's stoppin'-place, invitin' the fellers t' come out and "git et up," makin' one 'r two of us dance the heel-and-toe when we showed ourselves, and shootin' up the town gen'ally.

Then, fer a week, nothin' happened.

It was just about then that Rose got another letter from Macie. And it seemed t' me that the little gal 'd changed her tune some. She said Noo York took a _turrible_ lot of money--clothes, and grub, and so forth and so on. Said they was so blamed little oxygen in the town that a lamp wouldn't burn, and they'd got to use 'lectricity. And--that was all fer _this_ time, 'cause she had t' write her paw.

"I s'pose," I says to Rose, "that it'd be wastin' my breath t'

ast----"

"Yas, Cupid," she answers, "but it'll be O. K. when she sees you."

"_I_ reckon," I says hopeful. And I hunted up my new boss.

He didn't give me such a lot t' do them days--except t' show up at the feed-shop three times reg'lar. That struck me as kinda funny--'cause he was as flush as a' Osage chief.

"Why don't you grub over to the eatin'-house oncet in a while?" I ast him. "They got all _kinds_ of tony things--tomatoes and cuc.u.mbers and as-paragra.s.s, and them little toadstool things."

"And out here in the desert!" says Boston. "I s'pose they bring 'em from other places."

"Not on you' life!" I answers. "They grow 'em right here--in flower pots."

Out come a pencil. "How pictureskew!" Boston says,--and put it down.

End of that first week, when I stopped in at the Arnaz place fer supper, I says to him, "Wal," I says, "book about done?"

He was layin' back lazy in a chair,--_as_ usual--watchin' Carlota trot the crock'ry in. He batted his eyes. "Done!" he repeats. "_No_.

Why, I ain't got only a few notes."

"Notes?" I says; "notes?" I was _turrible_ disappointed. (I reckon I was worryin' over the book worse'n _he_ was.) "Why, say, couldn't you make nothin' outen that bad man who was a-paintin' the town the other night?"

"Just a bad man don't make a book," says Boston; "leastways, only a yalla-back. But take a bad man, and a _gal,_ and you git a story of _ad_-venture."

A gal. Yas, you need a gal fer a book. And you need _the_ gal if you want t' be right happy. I knowed that. Pretty soon, I ast, "Have you picked on a gal?"

"Here's Carlota," he says. "_She'd_ make a figger fer a book."

Carlota!--the little skeezicks! Y' see, she's _aw-ful_ pretty. Hair blacker'n a stack of black cats. Black eyes, too,--big and friendly lookin'. (That's where you git fooled--Carlota's a blend of tiger-cat and bronc; she can purr 'r pitch--take you' choice.) Her face is just snow white, with a little bit of pink--now y' see it, now y' don't see it--on her cheeks, and a little spot of blazin' red fer a mouth.

"But what I'm after most now," he goes on, "is a plot."