At once seeing my duty, I boldly entered, finding them aligned against
the American bar and clamouring for drink. My welcome was heartfelt,
even enthusiastic, almost every one of them beginning to regale me
with incidents of the afternoon's horse-breaking. The Honourable
George, it seemed, had himself briefly mounted one of the animals,
having fallen into the belief that the cow-persons did not try
earnestly enough to stay on their mounts. I gathered that one
experience had dissuaded him from this opinion.
"That there little paint horse," observed Cousin Egbert genially,
"stepped out from under the Judge the prettiest you ever saw."
"He sure did," remarked the Honourable George, with a palpable effort
to speak the American brogue. "A most flighty beast he was--nerves all
gone--I dare say a hopeless neurasthenic."
And then when I would have rebuked him for so shamefully disappointing
the ladies of the Onwards and Upwards Society, he began to tell me of
the public house he had just left.
"I say, you know that Spilmer chap, he's a genuine murderer--he let me
hold the weapon with which he did it--and he has blind relatives
dependent upon him, or something of that sort, otherwise I fancy
they'd have sent him to the gallows. And, by Gad! he's a witty
scoundrel, what! Looking at his sign--leaving the settlement it reads,
'Last Chance,' but entering the settlement it reads, 'First Chance.
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