"`After a brief pow-wow the
Greaser who's actin' range-boss for the outfit puts six beans in a
buckskin bag. Five is white an' one's black. Them Greasers is on the
gamble bigger'n wolves, an' they crowds up plenty gleeful to see us
take a gambler's chance for our lives. The one of us who draws a
black bean is to p'int out after the lieutenant. "`Sayin' somethin'
in Spanish which most
likely means" Age before beauty,"the Mexicans makes Willis an' me
stand back while the four others searches one after the other into
the bag for his bean. "`Tate goes first an' wins a white bean.
"`Then a shiftless, no-account party whom we-alls calls "Chicken
Bill" reaches in. I shorely hopes, seein' it's bound to be somebody,
that this Chicken Bill acquires the black bean. But luck's ag'in us;
Chicken Bill backs off with a white bean. "`When the third gent
turns out a white bean the shadow begins to fall across Jim Willis
an' me. I looks at Jim; an' I gives it to you straight when I says
that I ain't at that time thinkin' of myse'f so much as about Jim.
To see this yere deal, black as midnight, closin' in on Jim, is
what's hurtin'; it don't somehow occur to me I'm likewise up ag'in
the iron my se'f.
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