"'Get your hat, you old dried-up alligator,' I shouts, 'you ain't dead yet. You're part human, anyhow, if you did get all bogged up in matrimony. We'll take this town to pieces and see what makes it tick. We'll make all kinds of profligate demands upon the science of cork pulling. You'll grow horns yet, old muley cow,' says I, punching Perry in the ribs, 'if you trot around on the trail of vice with your Uncle Buck.' "'I'll have to be home by seven, you know,' says Perry again. "'Oh, yes,' says I, winking to myself, for I knew the kind of seven o'clocks Perry Rountree got back by after he once got to passing repartee with the bartenders. "We goes down to the Gray Mule saloon--that old 'dobe building by the depot. "'Give it a name,' says I, as soon as we got one hoof on the foot-rest. "'Sarsaparilla,' says Perry. "You could have knocked me down with a lemon peeling. "'Insult me as much as you want to,' I says to Perry, 'but don't startle the bartender. He may have heart-disease. Come on, now; your tongue got twisted. The tall glasses,' I orders, 'and the bottle in the left-hand corner of the ice-chest.' "'Sarsaparilla,' repeats Perry, and then his eyes get animated, and I see he's got some great scheme in his mind he wants to emit. "'Buck,' says he, all interested, 'I'll tell you what! I want to make this a red-letter day. I've been keeping close at home, and I want to turn myself a-loose. We'll have the highest old time you ever saw. We'll go in the back room here and play checkers till half-past six.' "I leaned against the bar, and I says to Gotch-eared Mike, who was on watch: "'For God's sake don't mention this. You know what Perry used to be. He's had the fever, and the doctor says we must humour him.' "'Give us the checker-board and the men, Mike,' says Perry. 'Come on, Buck, I'm just wild to have some excitement.' "I went in the back room with Perry. Before we closed the door, I says to Mike: "'Don't ever let it straggle out from under your hat that you seen Buck Caperton fraternal with sarsaparilla or _persona grata_ with a checker-board, or I'll make a swallow-fork in your other ear.' "I locked the door and me and Perry played checkers. To see that poor old humiliated piece of household bric-a-brac sitting there and sniggering out loud whenever he jumped a man, and all obnoxious with animation when he got into my king row, would have made a sheep-dog sick with mortification. Him that was once satisfied only when he was pegging six boards at keno or giving the faro dealers nervous prostration--to see him pushing them checkers about like Sally Louisa at a school-children's party--why, I was all smothered up with mortification.