Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/91

 "You don't know me, you never heard of Old Doc Ross. I'm brimstone, I'm croton oil, I'm and oil of mustard! I'm red pepper, by the gods!"

"Kind of a hot prescription, ain't you?" said Hall, smiling in a tolerant way, as he might have smiled at the efforts of somebody honestly bent on amusing him, whose efforts were outlandish and uncouth.

Ross was not very steady on his legs. This fact, taken together with the little gang of spectators hanging off a hundred feet or so up the street, was sufficient proof for Hall that this seedy, vile old fellow had been roused out of his alcoholic stupor to put on an afternoon's entertainment for the town. The crowd of expectant onlookers was growing; the portly figure of Jim Justice was prominent on the front line.

Hall flared up against this public eagerness to see him humbled. Not satisfied with having unloaded a sneaking, cowardly murder on him only a few hours before, they had put him up now for a public spectacle. They had gone to work immediately with their ice water and coffee to rouse this hairy little old tarantula from his drunken sleep, knowing very well how to do it in the shortest way by the experimentations of the past. Jim Justice, who had seemed friendly enough last night, was now the moving spirit of this diversion, it appeared.

Hall looked up from this momentary cogitation, to see Ross coming nearer, holding his coat spread to show the weapons in his belt. The blustering old scoundrel could not have been more than two or three inches above five feet, Hall estimated. It was impossible for him to associate any thought of danger with this man, strutting