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"Then one day Yorke brought that Blake and Moran case up in front of me. Both of these men I'd met before, but they didn't recognize me again not absolutely. I usually contrived to keep pretty clear of them for reasons which will appear obvious later. I'm coming to that. Moran I recognised as a former Montana tough who used to hang around Havre bronco-buster, cow-puncher, and tin-horn by turns. Many a time I've caught him sizing me up, in Cow Run and elsewhere mighty hard, too, but he never seemed to be sure of me. Once he did chance a feeler, but I just twirled my moustache,
A number of ladies and two women lived in the camp, a few tin-horn "gents," and about two hundred men. It is a seven months' snow-camp, where men take their drama canned in the phonograph, their food canned, their medicine all out of one bottle, and their morals "without benefit of clergy."
"You wouldn't do it, Jerry, would you?" "Wouldn't I?" he mocked disdainfully. "Well, you watch me!" "It's a cowardly way to use an advantage over a woman!" "Never mind," grinned Boyle. "I'll take care of that. If that tin-horn doctor wants to toe the line and do what I say to keep you out of a Federal pen, then let him step lively.
"Ain't much in that," commented the gambler's victim, watching him with puzzled face. No comment from the searching man. "You're a funny feller, anyhow, and I got a notion to take you up. Crook, heh?" "Oh, a sort of a tin-horn," answered the doctor apparently indifferent about the whole matter.
He wailed the last, sadly, as a complaint unspeakable. "Any trouble doin'?" inquired the old man. "You KNOW it!" the other cried, colloquially. "There was a massacree in the Northern last night." "Gamblin' row?" "Yep. Tin-horn called 'Missou' done it." "Sho!" said Dextry. "I know him. He's a bad actor."
I 've been a-prospecttn' through these here mountings fer thirty years, an' now thet I 've hit somethin' worth havin', I 'm hanged if I 'm a-goin' ter lie down meek ez Moses an' see it stole out plumb from under me by a parcel o' tin-horn gamblers. Not me, by God! If I can't git a cinch on sich a feller ez I want, then I 'll come back an' blow a hole through that Farnham down at San Juan.
"'O-rrr righ'! says he; 'Tooty-sweet. I lost a good deal of patience on the spot. You see, it seemed like he was tryin' to be entertaining. I say, by way of an amoosin' remark, that I'm goin' to play a tune on that tin-horn, and he gayly tells me to toot sweet! Well, I don't want to harrow your feelin's.
Passing through the crowd of jabbering Chinamen and "dagoes," of miners off shift, drawn hither by curiosity, and of gamblers of all grades from the professional expert to the "tin-horn," Houston found his way around the corner of the building, down into an alley, dark, dismal and reeking with filth.
I'm more of a man than you, you tin-horn; I want no favours; I do a man's work; I live a man's life; I am a man, and I'm proud of it, but you ; Nome's full of your kind; you need a woman to support you; you're a protoplasm, a polyp. Those Swedes changed their stakes to cover my fraction.
That's yer churches fer yeh!" And still Tommy remained silent. "An' if yeh want to knew more about him, you ask Magee there, an' Morrison an' Old Cap Jim an' a 'eap of fellows about this 'ere preacher, an' 'ear 'em talk. Don't ask me. 'Ear 'em talk w'en they git time. They wuz a blawsted lot of drunken fools, workin' for the whiskey-sellers an' the tin-horn gamblers.
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