"You ruther hold over me, pard.I reckon I can't call that hand.Ante and pass the buck.""How? I beg pardon.What did I understand you to say?""Well, you've ruther got the bulge on me.Or maybe we've both got the bulge, somehow.You don't smoke me and I don't smoke you.You see, one of the boys has passed in his checks and we want to give him a good send-off, and so the thing I'm on now is to roust out somebody to jerk a little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsome.""My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered.Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me.Cannot you simplify them in some way?
At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now.Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of metaphor and allegory?"Another pause, and more reflection.Then, said Scotty:
"I'll have to pass, I judge."
"How?"
"You've raised me out, pard."
"I still fail to catch your meaning."
"Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me--that's the idea.Ican't neither-trump nor follow suit."
The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed.Scotty leaned his head on his hand and gave himself up to thought.
Presently his face came up, sorrowful but confident.
"I've got it now, so's you can savvy," he said."What we want is a gospel-sharp.See?""A what?"
"Gospel-sharp.Parson."
"Oh! Why did you not say so before? I am a clergyman--a parson.""Now you talk! You see my blind and straddle it like a man.Put it there!"--extending a brawny paw, which closed over the minister's small hand and gave it a shake indicative of fraternal sympathy and fervent gratification.
"Now we're all right, pard.Let's start fresh.Don't you mind my snuffling a little--becuz we're in a power of trouble.You see, one of the boys has gone up the flume--""Gone where?"
"Up the flume--throwed up the sponge, you understand.""Thrown up the sponge?"
"Yes--kicked the bucket--"
"Ah--has departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne no traveler returns.""Return! I reckon not.Why pard, he's dead!""Yes, I understand."
"Oh, you do? Well I thought maybe you might be getting tangled some more.Yes, you see he's dead again--""Again? Why, has he ever been dead before?""Dead before? No! Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a cat?
But you bet you he's awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I'd never seen this day.I don't want no better friend than Buck Fanshaw.
I knowed him by the back; and when I know a man and like him, I freeze to him--you hear me.Take him all round, pard, there never was a bullier man in the mines.No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw to go back on a friend.But it's all up, you know, it's all up.It ain't no use.
They've scooped him."
"Scooped him?"
"Yes--death has.Well, well, well, we've got to give him up.Yes indeed.It's a kind of a hard world, after all, ain't it? But pard, he was a rustler! You ought to seen him get started once.He was a bully boy with a glass eye! Just spit in his face and give him room according to his strength, and it was just beautiful to see him peel and go in.
He was the worst son of a thief that ever drawed breath.Pard, he was on it! He was on it bigger than an Injun!""On it? On what?"
"On the shoot.On the shoulder.On the fight, you understand.
He didn't give a continental for any body.Beg your pardon, friend, for coming so near saying a cuss-word--but you see I'm on an awful strain, in this palaver, on account of having to cramp down and draw everything so mild.But we've got to give him up.There ain't any getting around that, I don't reckon.Now if we can get you to help plant him--""Preach the funeral discourse? Assist at the obsequies?""Obs'quies is good.Yes.That's it--that's our little game.We are going to get the thing up regardless, you know.He was always nifty himself, and so you bet you his funeral ain't going to be no slouch--solid silver door-plate on his coffin, six plumes on the hearse, and a nigger on the box in a biled shirt and a plug hat--how's that for high?
And we'll take care of you, pard.We'll fix you all right.There'll be a kerridge for you; and whatever you want, you just 'scape out and we'll 'tend to it.We've got a shebang fixed up for you to stand behind, in No.1's house, and don't you be afraid.Just go in and toot your horn, if you don't sell a clam.Put Buck through as bully as you can, pard, for anybody that knowed him will tell you that he was one of the whitest men that was ever in the mines.You can't draw it too strong.He never could stand it to see things going wrong.He's done more to make this town quiet and peaceable than any man in it.I've seen him lick four Greasers in eleven minutes, myself.If a thing wanted regulating, he warn't a man to go browsing around after somebody to do it, but he would prance in and regulate it himself.He warn't a Catholic.Scasely.He was down on 'em.His word was, 'No Irish need apply!' But it didn't make no difference about that when it came down to what a man's rights was--and so, when some roughs jumped the Catholic bone-yard and started in to stake out town-lots in it he went for 'em! And he cleaned 'em, too! I was there, pard, and I seen it myself.""That was very well indeed--at least the impulse was--whether the act was strictly defensible or not.Had deceased any religious convictions?