Listen! Johnnie was cheating!"
"'Johnnie,'" said the cowboy blankly. There was a minute of silence,
and then he said robustly: "Why, no. The game was only for fun."
"Fun or not," said the Easterner, "Johnnie was cheating. I saw
him. I know it. I saw him. And I refused to stand up and be a man. I
let the Swede fight it out alone. And you- you were simply puffing
around the place and wanting to fight. And then old Scully himself! We
are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is kind of an
adverb. Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us,
have collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually there are
from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in
this case it seems to be only five men- you, I, Johnnie, old Scully,
and that fool of an unfortunate gambler came merely as a
culmination, the apex of a human movement, and gets all the
punishment."
The cowboy, injured and rebellious, cried out blindly into this
fog of mysterious theory. "Well, I didn't do anythin', did I?"
THE END
.
Pages:
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43