Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/87

Rh considered a public calamity, demanding an explanation, since the dealer was a quasi public functionary, and the convenience of the citizen required that the game should continue. One's life was perhaps the cheapest thing below the Central Pacific Railroad, and it was entirely the duty of the individual to see that it was maintained. If one was unsteady on the trigger, or caught napping on the draw, one was held to have died by virtue of contributory negligence.

To be sure there was law, and machinery for its execution; but the machinery was liberal, and had ideas of its own, and the law adhered with supreme unconcern to its maxim—De minimis non curat lex.

First Class Crawley had been splendidly trained for the duties of his position. If Fortune had been moving of design, she could not have schooled him better for such a life. Some thirty years before, he had been a sutler with the Army of the Potomac—not the sutler of romance, but the sutler of reality; following the army bravely, but at such a distance to the rear as to be at all times extremely safe, and