Me Smith

he had declared.
    They had looked at him quizzically.
    “The fact is, I’m tired of livin’ under my hat. I aims to settle down.”
    “And reform?” They had laughed uproariously.
    “Not to notice.”
    Smith sincerely believed that nothing stood between him and Dora but his lack of money. Once she saw it, the actual money, when he could go to her and throw it in her lap, a hatful, and say, “Come on, girl”—well, women were like that, he told himself.
    Ahead of Smith, on the dusty flat, was the little cow-town, looking, in the distance, like a scattered herd of dingy sheep. He was glad his ride was ended for the day. He was thirsty, hot, and a bit tired.
    Tinhorn Frank, resting the small of his back against a monument of elk and buffalo horns in front of his log saloon, was the first to spy Smith ambling leisurely into town.
    “There’s Smithy!” he exclaimed to the man who loafed beside him, “and he’s got a roll!”
    His fellow lounger looked at him curiously.
    “Tinhorn, I b’lieve you kin smell money; and I swear they’s kind of a scum comes over your eyes when you see it. How do you know he’s carryin’ a roll?”
    Tinhorn Frank laughed.
    “I know Smithy as well as if I had made him. I kin tell by the way he rides. I always could. When he’s broke he’s slouchy-like. He don’t take no pride in coilin’ his rope, and he jams his hat over his eyes—tough. Look at him now—settin’ square in the saddle, his rope coiled like a top Californy cowboy on a Fourth of July. That’s how I know. Hello, Smithy! Fall off and arrigate.”
    “Hullo!” Smith answered deliberately.
    “How’s she comin’?”
    “Slow.” He swung his leg over the cantle of the saddle.
    “What’ll you have?” Tinhorn slapped Smith’s back so hard that the dust rose.
    “Get me out somethin’ stimulating, somethin’ fur-reachin’, somethin’ that you can tell where it stops. I want a drink that feels like a yard of barb-wire goin’ down.” Smith was tying his horse.
    “Here’s somethin’ special,” said Tinhorn, when Smith went inside. “I keeps it for my friends.”
    Smith swallowed nearly a tumblerful.
    “When I drinks, I drinks, and I likes somethin’ I can notice.” He wiped the tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand.
    “I guarantee you kin notice that in about five minutes. It’s a never failing remedy for man and beast—not meaning to claim that its horse liniment at all. Put it back, Smithy; your money ain’t good here!”
    Tinhorn Frank’s dark eyes gleamed with an avaricious light at sight of the roll of yellow banknotes which Smith flung carelessly upon the bar, but he had earned his living by his wits too long to betray eagerness. He masked the adamantine hardness of his grasping nature beneath an air of generous and bluff good-fellowship.
    He was a dark man, with a skin of oily sallowness; thickset, with something of the slow ungainliness of a toad. His head was set low between stooped shoulders, and his crafty eyes had in them a look of scheming, scheming always for his own interests. Smith knew his record as well as he knew his own: a dance-hall hanger-on in his youth, despised of men; a blackmailer; the keeper of a notorious road-house; a petty grafter in a small political office in the little cow-town. Smith understood perfectly the source of his present interest, yet it flattered him almost as much as if it had been sincere, it pleased him as if he had been the object of a gentleman’s attentions. When he had money, Smith demanded satellites, sycophants who would laugh boisterously at his jokes, praise him in broad compliments, and follow him like a paid retinue from saloon to saloon. This was enjoying life! And upon this weakness, the least clever, the most insignificant and unimportant person could play if he understood Smith.
    The word had gone down the line that Smith was in town with money. They rallied around him with loud protestations of joy at the sight of him. Smith held the centre of the stage, he was the conspicuous figure, the magnet which drew them all. He gloried in it, revelled in his popularity; and the “special brand” was beginning to sizzle in his veins.
    “I’m feelin’ lucky to-day, me—Smith!” he cried exultantly. “I has a notorious idea that I can buck the wheel and win!”
    He had not meant to gamble—he had told himself that he would not; but his admiring friends urged him on, his blood was running fast and hot, his heart beat