Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/136

 a quart in ten seconds. They told me in that chuckjoint you was a green granger boy, but I guess they got you wrong."

"They got me dead right," Bill confessed in humility that amounted almost to self-contempt. "I'm so green the cows'd bite me if they caught me outside of the fence."

"But you can handle a gun—great smoke, kid! how you can handle a gun! Where did you get that trick?"

"I guess I come by it natural."

"Yes, like hell!" Garland chuckled. "That old stripper in the hash house told me about you missin' Ira Ingram last night. Thought you'd killed him when he'd only trowed one of his fits. Hell, yes; I know him. I asked her what that feller meant yellin' in after you. She told me about it."

"They sure had the laugh on me," Dunham said. "But I'm glad I missed him. I wouldn't want to hurt any afflicted man like him."

"He's mean," Garland said; "he's got a streak of Cherokee in him. But a man that can throw a gun like you don't have to worry about his kind. You didn't know anything about Kellogg's name with a gun when you went out there to shoot it out with him, I guess?"

"Yes," said Bill reflectively, "Mr. MacKinnon and—others, told me."

"Well, I've fooled myself into thinkin' I was kind of handy with a gun sometimes, but I wouldn't 'a' walked out there to face Ford Kellogg any sooner than I'd stand in front of the fastest train on this railroad. I'm