s, red and pale, sick, dead, and well, that outside symptoms
don't count for much.

I noticed another thing, that I expected. Out of the corner of my eye
I see them boys nudgin' each other and talkin' about me. And the more
I rode along so quiet, the more scart of me they got.

I tell you how I'd test a brave man. I'd line the competitors up, and
then spring a fright behind them. Last man to cross the mark is the
bravest man--still, he might only be the poorest runner. With fellers
like me, it ain't courage at all. It's lunacy. I ain't in my right
mind when a sharp turn comes. Why, I've gone cold a year after,
thinking of things I laughed my way through when they happened. But
I'm not quarrelling with fate--I thank the good Lord I'm built as I am,
and don't feel scornful of a man that keeps his sense and acts scart
and reasonable.

In one way, poor old Burton, lugging himself into the game by the
scruff of his pants, showed more real man than I did. Yet, he couldn't
accomplish anything; so there you are, if you know where that is.

I said nothing until we slid off beneath the first tree. Then I walked
up to the three leaders and says, whilst the rest gathered around and
listened:

"Has this critter been tried?"

"Why, no!" says one man. "We caught him on the horse."

"Yes, yes, yes," says I, raising my voice. "That's all right. But
lend me your ears till I bray a thought or two. I'm that kind of a man
that wouldn't string the meanest mistake the devil ever made without
givin' him a trial."

"You give me a lot of trial this morning," says Long Jim.

I wasn't bringing up any argument; I was pulling them along with a
mother's kind but firm hand, so I says to him: "Ah! I wasn't talking
about _gentlemen_; I'd shoot a gentleman if he did or didn't look
cross-eyed at me, just as I happened to feel. I'm talking about a man
that's suspected of dirty work."

Now, when a man that's held you stiff at the end of a gun calls you a
gentleman, you don't get very mad--just please remember my audience,
when I tell you what I talked. Boys is boys, at any age; otherwise
there wouldn't be no Knights Templars with tin swords nor a good many
other things. I spoke grand, but they had it chalked down in their
little books I was ready and willing to act grander. Had I struck any
one or all of 'em, on the range, thinking of nothing special, and
Fourth-o'-July'd to 'em like that, they would have give me the hee-hee.