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 sick, and I was some sorry that I could not see my way to interfere and blow the roof off of Hale's head. I'll tell you how it was."

But before he began he desired the bar-tender to do his duty in the matter of poison. He swallowed his dose of nose-paint and took a breath.

"It warn't in the neighbourhood of the Rock, but over to San Antone," said Gedge, "for at that time the Rock was no more than a rock, and those damn fools, of which we are an important part, who reckoned that this City was goin' to be somethin', had not yet developed any such fatal deelusion. To be strickly ackerate, which is my aim, I jedge that Painted Rock had been heard of by six cowboys, five wanderin' lunatics, four ordinary fools, three surveyors, two brayin' burros, and one wise man who saw it and died. That is to say, it warn't known to any extent beyond the Indians and greasers, and the Texas Pacific Railroad was reposin' as an unborn idea in the brain of the scoundrel that was at last ass enough to give birth to the unfounded notion that all parts of this holy