' "Deep inside their shirts I allers allows
these yere persons deems high an' 'fectionate of one another right
at the time they's hangin' up their hardest bluffs an' carryin' on
most hostile. Which trivial incidents discloses this.
"Once in the Red Light, when a party who's new from Tucson, turns in
to tell some light story of Billy,--him not bein' present none,--
'Doby goes all over this yere racontoor like a landslide, an'
retires him from s'ciety for a week. An' 'Doby don't explain his
game neither; jest reprimands this offensive Tucson gent, an' lets
it go as it lays. Of course, we-alls onderstands it's 'cause 'Doby
ain't puttin' up with no carpin' criticism of his old pard; which
the same is nacheral enough.
"Don't you-all ever notice, son, how once you takes to fightin' for
a party an' indorsin' of his plays, it gets to be a habit,--same,
mebby, as fire-water? Which you lays for his detractors an' pulls on
war for him that a-way long after you ceases to have the slightest
use for him yourse'f. It's that a-way with 'Doby about Billy.
"An' this yere Billy's feelin's about 'Doby is heated an' sedulous
all sim'lar. 'Doby gets laid out for a week by rheumatics, which he
acquires years before--he shore don't rope onto them rheumatics none
'round Wolfville, you can gamble! said camp bein' salooberous that
a-way--over on the Nevada plateaus, an' while he's treed an' can't
come down to his claim, a passel of sharps ups an' mavericks it;
what miners calls 'jumps it.
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