r.

"That's enough," said Jones. "More than enough."

Mr. Adams, being mature in judgment, rose instantly, like a good old
sheep, and put his knife back obedient to orders. But in the brain of
the over-strained, bewildered boy universal destruction was whirling.
With a face stricken lean with ferocity, he staggered to his feet,
plucking at his obstinate holster, and glaring for a foe. His eye fell
first on his deliverer, leaning easily against the bar watching him,
while the more and more curious audience scattered, and held themselves
ready to murder the boy if he should point his pistol their way. He was
dragging at it clumsily, and at last it came. Specimen Jones sprang like
a cat, and held the barrel vertical and gripped the boy's wrist.

"Go easy, son," said he. "I know how you're feelin'."

The boy had been wrenching to get a shot at Jones, and now the quietness
of the man's voice reached his brain, and he looked at Specimen Jones.
He felt a potent brotherhood in the eyes that were considering him, and
he began to fear he had been a fool. There was his dwarf Eastern
revolver, slack in his inefficient fist, and the singular person still
holding its barrel and tapping one derisive finger over the end,
careless of the risk to his first joint.

"Why, you little ---- ----," said Specimen Jones, caressingly, to the
hypnotized youth, "if you was to pop that squirt off at me, I'd turn you
up and spank y'u. Set 'em up, Ephraim."

But the commercial Ephraim hesitated, and Jones remembered. His last
cent was gone. It was his third day at Ephraim's. He had stopped, having
a little money, on his way to Tucson, where a friend had a job for him,
and was waiting. He was far too experienced a character ever to sell his
horse or his saddle on these occasions, and go on drinking. He looked as
if he might, but he never did; and this was what disappointed business
men like Ephraim in Specimen Jones.

But now, here was this tenderfoot he had undertaken to see through, and
Ephraim reminding him that he had no more of the wherewithal. "Why, so I
haven't," he said, with a short laugh, and his face flushed. "I guess,"
he continued, hastily, "this is worth a dollar or two." He drew a chain
up from below his flannel shirt-collar and over his head. He drew it a
little slowly. It had not been taken off for a number of years--not,
indeed, since it had been placed there originally. "It ain't brass," he
added, lightly, and strewed it along