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The expression in her soft eyes was veiled, like autumn fires in the hills blazing through mists. "You just jumped to help me. You forgot he carried two forty-fives and would use them, didn't you?" "Yes," he admitted. "I reckon if I'd thought of that " Even as the laughter rippled from her throat she gave a gesture of impatience. There were times when self-depreciation ceased to be a virtue.
In the thick of it, when Stewart was drivin' Pat an' his crowd off the place, one of them de-pooties lost his head an' went fer his gun. Nels throwed his gun an' crippled the feller's arm. Monty jumped then an' throwed two forty-fives, an' fer a second or so it looked ticklish. But the bandit-hunters crawled, an' then lit out."
'Twas 'Good mornin', Misther Dooley, an' will ye come in an' have a cup iv tay, an' 'How d'ye do Misther Dooley, I didn't see ye at mass this mornin', an' 'Martin, me boy, dhrop in an' take a hand at forty-fives. Th' young ladies has been ask in' me ar-re ye dead. I was th' pop'lar idol, ye might say, an' manny's th' black look I got over th' shouldher at picnic an' wake.
None of them carried one, but Bonita ran into the house and brought back a small bulldog. Dave looked it over without enthusiasm. It was a pretty poor concern to take against a man who carried two forty-fives and knew how to use them. But he thrust it into his pocket and swung to the saddle.
And with the emptying of their long guns the Americans drew their short ones, and in a concerted ripping crash the forty-fives volleyed death and dismay into the oncoming cannibals. The rush was checked. For a few seconds the Red Bones wavered and milled about. Into their mass poured a cloud of arrows and blowgun darts from the silent but no less deadly weapons of the Mayorunas.
"She'd been takin' lessons fr'm a Dutchman down th' sthreet, an' they say she can play as aisy with her hands crossed as she can with wan finger. She's been whalin' away iver since, an' Donahue is dhrinkin' again. "Ye see th' other night some iv th' la-ads wint over f'r to see whether they cud smash his table in a frindly game iv forty-fives. I don't know what possessed Donahue.
Finally things settled down to jury trials and men let lawyers do most of the fighting with forensics instead of forty-fives. Churches were built and school-houses; a new graveyard was established; brush and weeds hid the old one's leaning headboards. Time passed; a city grew; the boot-hill was forgotten. This is a chronicle of men whose bones lie in those vanished boot-hills.
He fought with distinction and grace and abandon and was perfectly willing to use fists or knives or guns at the pleasure of the other contracting party. In another age, with armour and a golden chain and spurs, Jerry Strann would have been but why think of that? Swords are not forty-fives, and the Twentieth Century is not the Thirteenth. He was, in fact, born just six hundred years too late.
The public portion was furnished with two long deal tables, at which the men sat on the Bush stools and diced and drank, or played monotonous, if noisy, games of euchre and forty-fives. That night Aurora surnamed Australis by a facetious digger was particularly attentive to Done.
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