The Forfeit | Page 8

an excessive quantity of bluestone
disguised under the name of alcohol that your overweening conceit has
entirely distorted your perspective till you fancy that your own dregs of
human nature constitute the human nature of all the rest of the world,
who would entirely resent being classed as your fellows. In a word you
need physic, Ju."
The speaker laughed amiably, and his smile revealed the weakness
which was pointed by the signs of debauchery in his good-looking face.
Ju eyed him steadily. The offense of his words was mitigated by his
manner, but Ju resented the laugh which went round the entire room at
his expense.
"See here, Bob Whitstone," he began, abandoning his glass wiping and
supporting himself on his counter, with his face offensively thrust in his
opponent's direction, "I ain't got the langwidge you seem to have
lapped up with your mother's milk. I don't guess any sucker paid a
thousand dollars a year for my college eddication so I could come out
here and grow a couple of old beeves and spend my leisure picklin' my
food depot in a low down prairie saloon. Therefor' I'll ask you to excuse
me if I talk in a kind o' langwidge the folks about here most gener'ly
understan'. Guess you think you know some. Maybe you figger to
know it all. Wal, get this. When you get back home jest stand in front
of a fi' cent mirror, if you got one in your bum shanty, an' get a peek at
your map, an' ask yourself--when you studied it well--if I couldn't buy
you, body an' soul, fer two thousand dollars--cash. I'd sure hate slingin'
mud at any feller's features, much less yours, who're a good customer to
me, but you're comin' the highbrow, an' you got notions of honor still
floatin' around in your flabby thinkin' department sech as was handed

you by the guys who ran that thousand dollar college. Wal, ef you'll
look at yourself honest, an' argue with yourself honest, you'll find them
things is sure a shadder of the past which happened somew'eres before
you tasted that first dose o' prairie poison which has since become a
kind o' habit. It ain't no use in getting riled, Bob, it ain't no use in
workin' overtime on that college dictionary o' yours to set me crawlin'
around among the spit boxes. Fac's is fac's. Ken you hand me a list o'
the things you--you who ain't got two spare cents to push into the
mission box, an' who'd willingly sleep in a hog pen if it weren't for a
dandy wife who'd got no more sense than to marry you--wouldn't do if
I was to hand you out a roll of ten thousand dollars right now--cash?
Tcha! You think. I know."
He turned away in a wave of contemptuous disgust. And as he did so a
harsh voice from the other end of the bar held him up.
"What about me, Ju?"
The tough-looking prairie man made his demand with a laugh only a
shade less harsh than his speaking voice.
Ju stood. His desperate, keen face was coldly still as he regarded the
powerful frame of his challenger. Then his retort came swift and
poignant.
"You, Sikkem? You'd allus give yourself away. Get me?"
The frigidity of the saloon-keeper's manner was over-powering. The
man called Sikkem was unequal in words to such a challenge. A flush
slowly dyed his lean cheeks, and an angry depression of the brows
suggested something passionate and forceful. Just for a moment many
eyes glanced in his direction. The saloon-keeper was steadily regarding
him. There was no suggestion of anger in his attitude, merely cat-like
watchfulness. Their eyes met. Then the cloud abruptly lifted from
Sikkem's brow, and he laughed with unsmiling, black eyes. The
saloon-keeper rinsed a glass and unconcernedly began to wipe it.
The incident was allowed to pass. But it was the termination of the

discussion, a termination which left Ju victor, not because of the
rightness of his views, but because there was no man in Orrville
capable of joining issue with him in debate with any hope of success.
Action rather than words was the prevailing feature with these people,
and, in his way, Ju Penrose was equal, if not superior, not only in
debate, but in the very method these people best understood.
A moment later Sikkem took his departure.
* * * * * *
It was well past midnight when the last man turned out of Ju's bar. But
the crowd had not yet scattered to their various homes. They were
gathered in a small, excited cluster gaping up at a big notice pasted on
the weather-boarding of the saloon-keeper's shack. Ju himself was
standing in their midst, right in front