We didn't none of us seem to have a great deal to say, but just stood
there lookin' foolish. Finally Dick came out of it an' sez, "I have
been accused of cheatin' an' lyin' an' stealin'. The circumstantial
evidence is all again me, so I shall have to go away, but you remember
all I told you out in the other room--an' on our rides across the
plain, an' on our walks in the moonlight; an' Barbie, girl, don't you
believe a word of it.
"Good-bye, Happy--I know you an' you know me. Jabez Judson, I know it
ain't no use to attempt any explanation; but I give you my word of
honor--an' I set just as much store by it as any man in all the
world--that I never stacked a deck o' cards in my life, an' I never
held a single underhanded thought again you; while as for Barbie--well,
Barbie knows. Good-bye."
Dick turned on his heel an' stalked out o' the room, Barbie dropped
into a chair sobbin', an' me an' the old man continued to look like the
genuine guilty parties. Then it occurred to me that mebbe it would be
wise to see if Piker was worth botherin' with. First thing I did though
was to see where he had helt his gun when he fired beneath the table.
The' wasn't no gun on the floor, an' I couldn't nowise savvy it.
He had one gun in his holster, but he couldn't have pulled it out
without bein' seen, an' he couldn't have put it back, nohow. I was
plumb mystified, an' had about give it up when I came across it. I own
up it was a clever dodge, but snakish to an extreme. He had fashioned a
rig just above his knee, an' when he had sat down the gun had been
pointin' at Dick all through the game, an' nothin' but Jabez makin'
Dick move had saved him. It was a blood-thirsty scheme, an' I felt like
stampin' his face into a jelly.
His head was still bent over an' he was black in the face; but when I
straightened him out an' soused a lot o' water over him, he came out of
it, an' I fair itched to make him eat his gun--knee-riggin' an' all! He
sat up an' began to tell what a low-down, sneakin' cuss Dick had allus
been. I let him sing a couple o' verses, an' then I sez: "Now, you look
here, you slimy spider. Dick's too busy just now to attend to your case
an' if you don't swaller them few remarks instant I'll be obliged to
prepare you for the coroner myself. I've knowed Dick sometime, an' I've
knowed several other men; an' I know enough to know that such a
dust-eatin' lizard as you never could know enough to know what such a
man as Dick was thinkin' out or plannin' to do. An' furthermore, you're
a liar in your heart, an' still further more, I don't like your face;
an' one other furthermore--the longer I look at you the madder I get!
My advice to you, an' I give it in the name o' peace an' sobriety, an'
because the' 's a lady present, is to start right now to a more
salubrious climate--you an' your knee-gun an' your black lies an' your
marked decks. Do you hear what I say? Are you goin' to go?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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