evoted to loonatics, playin'
with a string of spools.'

"'That's your onthinkin' way. Do you reckon now, if I'd been a slave
to drink when that Laredo wife of mine first sees me, she'd have
w'irled me to the altar an' made me the blighted longhorn you sees
now? She wouldn't have let me get near enough to her to give her a
bunch of grapes. It's my sobri'ty that's my ondoin', that an' bein'
plumb moral. Which I onerringly traces them divorce troubles, an' her
sellin' up my stock at public vandoo for cost an' al'mony like she
does, to me weakly holdin' aloof from whisky when I'm young.'

"'Which I shore,'--an' Boggs shows he's mighty peevish an' put
out--'never meets up with a more exasp'ratin' conversationist! It's
because you're sech an' egreegious egotist! You-all can't talk ten
minutes, Texas, but what you're allers bringin' in them domestic
affairs of yours. If you desires to discuss whiskey abstract, an' from
what the Doc thar calls a academic standp'int, I'm your gent. But I
declines to be drug into personal'ties, in considerin' which I might
be carried by the heat of deebate to whar I gets myse'f shot up.'

"'I sees your attitood, Dan; I sees your attitood, an' respects it.
Jest the same, thar's an anti-nuptial side to the liquor question, an'
bein' a drunkard that a-way is not without its compensations.'

"'But he's bound to be so blurred,' reemonstrates Boggs, who by nacher
is dispootatious, an' once started prone to swing an' rattle with a
topic like a pup to a pig's y'ear: 'That drunkard is so plumb
blurred.'

"'Blurred but free, Dan,' retorts Texas, mighty firm. 'Don't overlook
no sech bet as that drunkard bein' free. Also, it's better to be free
than sober.'

"'Goin' back to Monte,' says Boggs, returning to the orig'nal text;
'half the time, over to the O.K. Restauraw when Missis Rucker slams
him down his chuck, he ain't none shore he's eatin' flapjacks or
rattlesnakes. The other day, when Rucker drops a plate, he jumps three
feet in the air, throws up his hands an' yells, "Take the express box,
gents, but spar' my life!" It's whiskey does it. The old cimmaron
thinks it's road agents stickin' him up.'

"Dispoote is only ended by the stage thunderin' in--leathers creakin',
chains jinglin', bosses a lather of sweat an' alkali dust, Monte
cocked up on the box as austere as a treeful of owls. He's for openin'
the door, but Peets is thar before him. Let it get dealt down to
showin' attentions to a lady, a