"Then we'll have to arrest you," sez he. I put my hand down to my leg,
but both my guns was rolled up in my blankets. "I'm goin' out to see a
lawyer," sez I, thinkin' that would be more business-like than to tell
him I 'd blow the top of his head off. The' was lots more things I
wanted to tell him, but it took most o' my strength to manage my
self-control; an' I allus like to have good footin' when I make my
spring. I didn't feel at home, either, an' that's a heap. It kind o'
got on my nerves to see that little shrimp squattin' there behind his
spectacles an' tellin' me what I had to do, the same as if I was a
hoss. I turned on my heel and strode out o' that store head up an' I
was some glad that Hammy had taught me what strodin' was, 'cause the
rest o' the gang opened up a path you could 'a' drove a
street-sprinkler through.
I didn't like the looks o' that lawyer, he reminded me of a rat. I
don't care much for the law anyhow. All the law is fit for is to take
care o' the weak an' the ignorant--an' they can't afford it. I've
noticed that much, the little time I've been penned up in cities. This
lawyer o' mine had full command o' the kind o' talk that bottles up a
man an' keeps him from expressin' himself. He said I had a good case
an' that he would save me my findin's, but that I had to give him half
of it for his services--in advance. If you don't tell a lawyer the
truth he can't fight your case; an' if you do you put yourself in his
power. Course I don't claim to be authority, but I just actually don't
like the law.
When I came away from the law office, a nice friendly feller got into
conversation with me, an' after I'd bought him a couple o' drinks, he
grew confidential an' told me his troubles. He was owner of a whole
block of buildin's an' a lot o' residence houses, but he was stone
broke. He had had a quarrel with the banks, an' couldn't raise a penny,
an' he had lost ten thousand dollars the night before, gamblin'. He
said it would take forty dollars for him to go to Los Angeles, where he
had friends who would lend him any amount. Otherwise they would
foreclose the little mortgage he had on the business block.
He talked along until I couldn't stand it any longer, so I give him the
forty on the condition that I was to be his collecting agent at wages
of two hundred a month, as soon as he got back from Los Angeles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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