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This yere prejudice agin profanity is the only thing about this yere Peg-leg that ain't pizen bad, an' that prejudice, you got to know, was just along o' his being loco on that one subjeck. 'Twa'n't as if he had any real principles or convictions about the thing. It was just a loco prejudice. Just as some gesabes has feelin's agin cats an' snakes, or agin seein' a speckled nigger.
"He should not have played that trick. A lame man, too!" "Oh, Louise!" exclaimed her sister Bobby, "Tommy didn't know it was an artificial limb he was stumbling over." "And I'm sure I didn't know it was his old peg-leg I tripped on twice," declared Teddy Tucker in high dudgeon. "What did he want to go to sleep for, spraddled all over the aisle?"
With equal facility was accomplished the metamorphosis of the young backwoodsman, but not so easily that of Sure-shot. The nez retrousse, thin yellow hair, and green-grey eyes appeared to be insurmountable obstacles to the Indianising of the ex-rifleman. Peg-leg, however, proved an artist of skill. The chevelure of Sure-shot, well saturated with charcoal paste, assumed a different hue.
Then come along a man named McGuire, who said he knew where the buttes was and showed black rocks with gold in 'em to prove it, jes' like the ones Peg-leg and ther Injun had found, they was. Well, McGuire he gets five other dern fools and off they starts and that's the end of them. They ain't never heard of ag'in.
The ladino was separated from the bunch of Circle Diamond cattle. Warren and his satellite drove the rest from the camp. "War, looks like," commented Dad Wrayburn. "Yes," agreed the drover. "I wish it didn't have to be. But Peg-Leg called for a showdown. He came here to force my hand. As regards the beef, he might have had it an' welcome. But that wouldn't have satisfied him.
"Y'know how it is now with a fightin' pup if you pull his tail while he's a-chawin' up the other pup. Ye can bat him over the head till you're tired, or kick him till you w'ars your boot out, an' he'll go right on chawin' the harder. But monkey with his tail an' he's that sensitive an' techy about it that he'll take a interest right off. "Well, it were just so with Peg-leg though I never knew it.
"Bully for you, peg-leg!" they cried. "Rules 'n regerlations, boys," replied the latter, without, however, a shade of compromising in his tones. "Had supper?" On receiving a reply in the affirmative, he caught up the lamp, and, having resumed his artificial leg in one deft motion, led the way to narrow little rooms. Thorpe was awakened a long time before daylight by the ringing of a noisy bell.
"Laid out in the chaparral till I got a chance to gun him," the young fellow answered sullenly. "And then?" "Plugged a hole through him an' made my get-away." "You mean you've killed Peg-Leg Warren?" "He'll never be any deader," said Clanton coolly. The dark blood flushed into Webb's face. He wasted no pity on Warren. The man was a cold-hearted murderer and had reaped only what he had sowed.
His right foot had suffered amputation some inches above the ankle, and he walked with the ungainly support of a crutch-topped peg-leg strapped to the flexed knee. As Damaris approached the carriage, he swept back the fur rug in gallantly respectful invitation; and, so soon as she ensconced herself on the seat beside Henrietta, bending down he firmly and comfortably tucked it round her.
He's wealthy and fits out a dozen or more outfits to hunt fer ther three buttes. But after setting out on his twelfth trip he never comes back, so they know that Peg-leg Smith's mine has claimed another victim." "Is there anything to prove that Peg-leg really ever found the Three Buttes?" asked Tom, whom this romance of the desert, like his companions, had strangely interested.
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