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You ain't goin' back on your word? Ye ain't going down at the feet of this trash, like a whipped hound?" Culpepper was silent. He was very white. Presently he looked up and said quietly. "No." Culpepper Starbottle had challenged Jack Folinsbee, and the challenge was accepted. The cause alleged was the expelling of Culpepper's uncle from the floor of the Assembly Ball by the order of Folinsbee.
"No, he'd hev died fust!" said Mr. Hamlin gravely. "Why, he's that sensitive is Jack Folinsbee that it nearly kills him to take money even of ME. But where does this angel reside when he isn't fightin' the tiger, and is, so to speak, visible to the naked eye?" "He he stops here," said Peg, with an awkward blush. "I see.
The roads of dusty red and the scented pine groves come back in story after story, and Colonel Starbottle and Jack Folinsbee look like immortals. The vagabond with the melodious voice who did something virtuous and went away warbling into the night is alive in new as in old pages, in defiance of fatigue.
He found the room with no difficulty. A faint cough from within, and a querulous protest, answered his knock. Mr. Hamlin entered without further ceremony. A sickening smell of drugs, a palpable flavor of stale dissipation, and the wasted figure of Jack Folinsbee, half-dressed, extended upon the bed, greeted him. Mr. Hamlin was for an instant startled.
The Colonel came up panting. "I've looked all over town for you, and be dashed to you, sir. Who was that with you?" "A lady." "D m 'em all! "Who was it?" asked Culpepper, listlessly. "Jack Folinsbee." "Who?" "Why, the son of that dashed nigger-worshipping psalm-singing Puritan Yankee. What's the matter, now? Look yar, Culp, you ain't goin' back on your blood, ar' ye?
I note these defects to show that she was by no means a heroine. I quote her affair with Jack Folinsbee to show she was scarcely the average woman. That handsome, graceless vagabond had struck the outskirts of Red Dog in a cyclone of dissipation which left him a stranded but still rather interesting wreck in a ruinous cabin not far from Peg Moffat's virgin bower.
"To-morrow will do," he said, "and then " "If I don't " "If you don't," responded Hamlin, "why, I'll just wade in and CUT YOU OUT!" But on the morrow Mr. Hamlin was spared that possible act of disloyalty; for, in the night, the already hesitating spirit of Mr. Jack Folinsbee took flight on the wings of the south-east storm. When or how it happened, nobody knew.
"Mistress Margaret Moffat," said Jack with lazy deliberation, taking off his watch and beginning to wind it up, "ef you're that much stuck after Jack Folinsbee, you kin keep him off of me much easier than I kin. You're a rich woman. Give him enough money to break my bank, or break himself for good and all; but don't keep him foolin' round me in hopes to make a raise.
It is said that Euchre-deck Billy, working in the gulch at the crossing, never saw Miss Folinsbee pass but that he always remarked apologetically to his partner, that "he believed he MUST write a letter home."
There came to him the awakened tumult of a great city, in which the prodigal's footsteps were lost forever. The latch on the garden gate of the Folinsbee Ranch clicked twice.
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