Morley Roberts

“ For Ben Williams, after his victory, lost his self-control. He had been tried, and tried high, and now broke down into the desire to kill. He knew, and none knew better, how near a thing it had been. But for the lamp which shone more upon his opponent than on himself he might have been crawling in the dust. He saw the Colonel and fell into a bloody rage.
"You old dog, you fetched him here for me," said Ben, and there was running slaver on his lips. The crowd parted suddenly like a divided wave. I was ten yards from the old Colonel, and saw him standing upright like a man. ”

“ If he had laughed and gone right up to Smith, the old man might have broken down in his intent. So strange a thing the mind is! But at the first half-step the little pretence of courage failed in the man who had none. It was horrible to be confronted with this ghost of the past, and to see that this was a man who cared not for life. Hale stopped and his lip fell, and he turned—and ran!
I heard the sound of two quick shots, and, when I came to the American Saloon, Hale was within a quarter of an hour of death, and Smith was sitting at a table in the saloon, with Gedge beside him. ”

“ He said he'd have to ask advice on a "p'int" in the morning, and when Bill desired to hear it now, he said he had to think of it.
"Oh, you're too melancholy and suspicious to live," said Bill, who was in a jovial mood. "Bless me, with a nice little raynch and a few head o' good steers, and a wife like my Mary and a gal like my Amandy, and a hoss to ride like my pinto, I'm all hunky, and I find Texas pleasant, and the people joyous, and it's a good world, George, so cheer up some and let up on your gloomy hints o' trouble, for you've nothing to worry you." ”

“ And then Jack went off to Texas again, just in time to prevent him breaking out and assaulting a policeman. Tom and I saw him off at Euston, and Tom's eyes were as moist as dewy morn when the train left the platform. He loved his brother dearly.
"But all the same it's a relief for him to go, and a relief for me," said Tom. "His notions are so extraordinary. He never seems to understand that a man in no circumstances is justified in taking the law into his own hands." ”

“ The young men in chappareros and guns fought shy of him. It is horrid to be confronted with a "gun" when one comes courting, for it is, of course, almost impossible to kill one's prospective father-in-law without discouraging the lady. That is what the boys felt, and some of the boldest of them quailed before Bill Higginson on that account.
"If we kills Ole Bill, Amandy will look sideways on us," they murmured. But they persevered, for Amandy was a daisy and a flirt, and looked at them under her eyelashes till they all felt that love for them bloomed in her tender heart. ”

“ Amandy wept bitterly.
"I—like you some," said Amandy, with her eyes to the ground.
"Two minutes," said Bill.
"If you'd rather merry Joyce or Morgan, don't you mind me," said the cowboy. "I kin die, Amandy."
George spoke.
"Bill, mebbe I was wrong——" he began.
"Silence," said his brother; "’tis too late for you to be wrong. 'Tis marriage or immejit death."
"Oh, mother!" sobbed Amandy. But Mis' Higginson sat down with an apron over her head so as to avoid seeing anyone killed.
"Merry him, Amandy," said George. He whispered in her ear. ”

“ Bill didn't "apoplex," but he looked alarmingly near it.
"What was he like?"
"Large and powerful, weighin' some two hundred pounds or thereabouts," said George, "and he'd an ivory butt to his gun and mesquite leggin's and a red shirt, and his eyes was blue, and he warn't bad-lookin', and he rode a big sorrel pony branded Circle X on the near shoulder."
"That's Billy Prentiss," said Bill Higginson; "sure as death that's Billy Prentiss, who is thess minute—lookin' forward a little—as dead as ever any man was." ”

“ And very often Jeff was outside. Sometimes he heard the voices of men he knew. Bill Davies was in there at least once a week. He heard Simon Keats, to whose store his father's body had been taken. For Simon, though a respectable store-keeper by day, had a passion for faro which bloomed after sundown. And sometimes he heard Walker. But the window was shut and the blind was down. ”

“ For those are the ways of the West, without any doubt. And the end of the story of Smith and Hale came that very night, not two hours after sundown, when the gambling saloons were filling up and the streets of Painted Rock were alive with talk and laughter. I did not see the end, but I heard it; and Gedge saw it, and I came in time to see the dead man before he was dead. For Smith and Hale met face to face outside the American Saloon, in which Gedge and Pillsbury had their gambling lay-outs. And Hale did not know Smith, because the man had altered so much through his happiness and his grief. ”

“ I saw Bob White among the men there. Then I looked again at Sage and Ben. From where I sat Ben's face was somewhat in shadow, for the nearest lamp was behind him. I could see Sage very plainly.
"You're away off," said the Colonel. "There'll be hell up Fourth Street and blood on the face of the moon this night."
As the night outside grew darker I saw both men better. I perceived the growing tension. Tom stood back against his shelves and polished glasses. He did it mechanically, for his eyes were fixed on the men on the other side of the bar, who leant against it carelessly and yet rigidly. ”

“ Jeff threw up his head.
"You ain't defendin' Walker none, are you, Bill Davies?"
The cowboy shrugged his shoulders.
"Me defend him, Jeff! He's the meanest sort of murderer. He don't take chances with any but old men and tender-feet. He ain't the man to kill when it ain't self-defence. He looks for self-defence, and is greedy for it. I'd like to see him laid out cold, and before I buried him in style I'd see the dogs eat him."
"I'll kill him," said Jeff. "Will you sleep here, Bill, and lend me your pony so's I can go into town and see Paw? I'll send the pony back early." ”

“ But all the time his very fertile imagination was working on the subject of Amandy and the large cowboy. His talk presently followed his mind.
"You ain't merried yet, Amandy?" he said, with a nervous laugh.
"I ain't a-thinkin' o' merriage," returned Amandy.
"’Pears to me you should think of it," said her uncle; "there's sad dangers in this world for the unmerried, specially unmerried gals. Ain't there, Mary?"
"Mebbe, George," said Mis' Higginson, who was very weary of her brother-in-law and troubled little about Amandy's "merriage." She had heard too much of it from Bill. ”

“ The fat old Dutchman who kept a quarter dollar hash-house stepped inside and put his lamp out. He wasn't the man to take chances.
And all this time I was looking at Sage-brush. He was long and thin and very hard, so men said. They reckoned at Red River that he was a very "stout" man, and in the language of the great West "stout" means strong. Ben was dark and ruddy, but Sage was fair and had long tawny moustaches. His eyes were small and grey, his jaw heavy, his forehead overgrown with hair that grew downwards, though it was close-cropped. He walked up to the bar lightly. ”