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IX
MONTHS later, the cowboy was frying pork over the stove of a little ranch near the Dakota line, when there was a quick thud of hoofs outside, and, presently, the Easterner entered with the letters and the papers.
"Well," said the Easterner at once, "the chap that killed the Swede has got three years. Wasn`t much, was it?"
"He has? Three years?" The cowboy poised his pan of pork, while he ruminated upon the news. "Three years. That ain`t much."
"No. It was a light sentence," replied the Easterner as he unbuckled his spurs. "Seems there was a good deal of sympathy for him in Romper."
"If the bartender had been any good," observed the cowboy thoughtfully, "he would have gone in and cracked that there Dutchman on the head with a bottle in the beginnin` of it and stopped all this here murderin`."
"Yes, a thousand things might have happened," said the Easterner tartly.
The cowboy returned his pan of pork to the fire, but his philosophy continued. "It`s funny, ain`t it? If he hadn`t said Johnnie was cheatin` he`d be alive this minute. He was an awful fool. Game played for fun, too. Not for money. I believe he was crazy."
"I feel sorry for that gambler," said the Easterner.
"Oh, so do I," said the cowboy. "He don`t deserve none of it for killin` who he did."
"The Swede might not have been killed if everything had been square."
"Might not have been killed?" exclaimed the cowboy. "Everythin` square? Why, when he said that Johnnie was cheatin` and acted like such a jackass? And then in the saloon he fairly walked up to git hurt?" With these arguments the cowboy browbeat the Easterner and reduced him to rage.
"You`re a fool!" cried the Easterner viciously. "You`re a bigger jackass than the Swede by a million majority. Now let me tell you one thing. Let me tell you something. 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?"
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