“Ear?” said Ephraim. “You boys ought to been along when I found him, and seen the way they’d fixed up his mouth.” Ephraim explained the details simply, and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a humorist. “Wonder how it feels,” he continued, “to have--” Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company, singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him in the least. He had seen everything quite often. “Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf,” remarked the old gentleman to the tenderfoot. “High-yer!” And he placidly fired a fourth shot that scraped the boy’s boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand. “‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’” sang Specimen Jones, softly. They did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although he was but twenty-six now. The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played “Matamoras,” Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and the concertina stopped with a quack. “Quit it!” said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his weapon. “I don’t want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We’ve just got cleaned up.” It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret of Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and now for the first time he noticed the boy. “Blamed if he ain’t neat,” he said. But interest faded from his eyes, and he turned again to the wall. “‘Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,’” he melodiously observed. His repertory was wide and refined. When he sang he was always grammatical. “Ye kin stop, kid,” said the old gentleman, not unkindly, and he shoved his pistol into his belt. The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being lithe and strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath, but he was trembling with the plan and the prospect he had laid out for himself. “Set ’em up,” he said to Ephraim. “Set ’em up again all round.”