Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/145

 chap ridin' over to Red River to rake up Sage agin' Ben Williams!"

I yanked him hard by the coat, for one of Williams' parasites, and all "bad men" have them, was loafing on a barrel of hardware within a few yards of us.

"Dry up, you immortal young ass," I said, as I looked at the loafer.

"Oh, he's nigh full and heard nix," said White contemptuously. But I wasn't sure, and, as it turned out, Bob was wrong. It pays in no town to talk too much, and in a Western town to "shoot off one's mouth" is the most deadly form of folly with loaded weapons. "He'll turn up to-night, I hope," said Bob. "I'll be in the American House then to see."

"Much better stay at home," I replied. "If there's shooting don't run up against any lead."

But a kind of morbid curiosity took me to the American House myself about seven o'clock in the evening, and I had a drink with half a dozen, and stood liquor in my