I walked over to the cook wagon, as I hit the shadow I loosened my
guns, an' the very minute they slipped in their holsters my lone-
sickness rolled off like a cloud an' the hurtin' melted out o' my
inwards. They was somethin' rolled up in a Navajo under the cook
wagon an' I sized it up. It appeared to be seven feet long, but I
kicked it in the ribs. Things began to happen at once. A huge
creature of a man slid out on the opposite side of the cook wagon,
an' when he came around the tail of it he was holdin' a bear gun so
it would explode without much ceremony. He was usin' some language
an' his speed was a thing to covet; but I just stood with my back to
the fire, waitin' until I could get a chance to introduce myself. He
was in the light, an' he was enough to make a man reform. Nigger,
Greaser, Injun--oh, he was the hardest lookin' specimen I had ever
seen, an' the think that occurred to me was that some time a woman
had rocked him to sleep an'--kissed him. That's the queer thing
about me. My face don't change, but I never got into a mess in my
life without some outlandish, foreign idea poppin' into my head an'
tryin' to hog my attention.

My attention wasn't much required just at that moment anyhow. He
held the bear gun loose in his hand an' swore on like the roar of a
mountain torrent. Once I glanced over my shoulder an' saw a pained
look on the fair-hair's face, while the ante-up bunch was grinning
wickedly an' waitin' for my finish. Me lookin' younger an' easier at
that time than I really was, proved a big thing in my favor. Well,
as soon as the mongrel cook had cussed himself clean an' dry, he
yells at me, "Who in the hell are you an' what in the hell do you
want?"