"We-uns are expectin' of they-uns to-day."
And he broke the barrels and took out the shells to examine them.
"Do they come shooting?" I interposed.
He shut the gun with a snap. "We split even, stranger."
Seeing that the butcher was a fragile piece of bric-a-brac, and that I
might need him for future study, I bethought me of the banker down the
street. Bankers are bound to be broad-gauged, intelligent, and
conservative, so I would go to him and get at the ancient history of
this neck of woods. I introduced myself, and was invited behind the
counter. The look of things reminded me of one of those great green
terraces which conceal fortifications and ugly cannon. It was boards and
wire screen in front, but behind it were shot-guns and six-shooters hung
in the handiest way, on a sort of disappearing gun-carriage arrangement.
Shortly one of the cowboys of the street scene floundered in. He was
two-thirds drunk, with brutal, shifty eyes and a flabby lower lip.
"I want twenty dollars on the old man. Ken I have it?"
I rather expected that the bank would go into "action front," but the
clerk said, "Certainly," and completed this rather odd financial
transaction, whereat the bull-hunter stumbled out.
"Who is the old man in this case?" I ventured.
"Oh, it's his boss, old Colonel Zuigg, of Crow City. I gave some money
to some of his boys some weeks ago, and when the colonel was down here I
asked him if he wanted the boys to draw against him in that way, and he
said, 'Yes--for a small amount; they will steal a cow or two, and pay me
that way.
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