The Swede began to talk; he talked arrogantly, profanely,
angrily. Johnnie, the cowboy and the Easterner maintained a morose
silence, while old Scully appeared to be receptive and eager, breaking
in constantly with sympathetic ejaculations.
Finally the Swede announced that he was thirsty. He moved in his
chair, and said that he would go for a drink of water.
"I'll git it for you," cried Scully at once.
"No," said the Swede contemptuously. "I'll get it for myself." He
arose and stalked with the air of an owner off into the executive
parts of the hotel.
As soon as the Swede was out of hearing Scully sprang to his feet
and whispered intensely to the others. "Upstairs he thought I was
tryin' to poison 'im."
"Say," said Johnnie, "this makes me sick. Why don't you throw 'im
out in the snow?"
"Why, he's all right now," declared Scully. "It was only that he was
from the East and he thought this was a tough place. That's all.
He's all right now."
The cowboy looked with admiration upon the Easterner. "You were
straight," he said, "You were on to that there Dutchman."
"Well," said Johnnie to his father, "he may be all right now, but
I don't see it. Other time he was scared, and now he's too fresh."
Scully's speech was always a combination of Irish brogue and
idiom, Western twang and idiom, and scraps of curiously formal diction
taken from the story-books and newspapers.
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