Of course, there's lots of things will damage you worse than butting a stout gentleman; at the same time I went at him quick, and stopped quicker. This world was all a dizzy show, till the crowd came up, Jim, on his Pedro, leading. They were all there: all the revolutionists, all the women with babies, and all the dogs, down to the last pup. I couldn't have had a bigger audience if I'd done something to be proud of. Some of 'em held on to the fat gentleman, who was yearning to draw my heart's blood with the green umbrella. Some of 'em stood and admired Archie, who was smacking his lips over some grass that grew on the side, and looked about as vicious as Mary and her little lamb; some of 'em come to help me--all conversed freely. "Now, darn your buttons!" says Jim, "you might have been killed! Hadn't been for Señor Martinez there, you would 'a' been. Didn't I tell you not to try it again--didn't I?" It was quite true he had told me that very thing. At the same time, one of the least consoling things in this world, when a man's made a fool of himself, is to have somebody come up and tell him he prophesied it. You'd like to think it just happened that way. It breaks your heart to feel it's like twice two. I sat up and looked at Jim. "You told me all that," says I, "but what's the matter with letting virtue be its own reward?" Jim laughed and said he guessed I was not quite done yet. Then he introduced me to Mr. Martinez as the grateful result of a well-lined stomach applied at the proper time. Martinez sheathed the green umbrella and extended the hand of friendship, like the Spanish gentleman he was. "Ah me!" says he, "but you ride with furiosity! And," he adds thoughtfully, "your head is of a firmness." He waved his hand so the diamonds glittered like a shower. "A treefle--a leetle, leetle treeful," by which he meant trifle. "Now," says he, as if we'd finished some important business, "shall we resuscitate?" Jim said we would, so the whole crowd moved to where Santiago Christobal Colon O'Sullivan gave you things that lightened the shadows for the time being, and proceeded to resuscitate. Inside, Mr. Martinez the Stout told the whole story between drinks. He was the horse, or me, or himself, or the consequences, as occasion required. I'd have gone through more than that to see Mr. Martinez gallop the length of the saloon, making it clear to us how Archie acted. And when he was me, darned if he didn't manage to look like me, and when he was Archie he seemed to thin out and grow bony hip-joints immediately; Archie'd nickered at sight of him. How in blazes a three-hundred-pound Spanish gentleman contrived to resemble a thin, red-headed six-foot-two New England kid and a bow-necked, cat-hammed mustang is an art beyond me. He did it; let it go at that.