Sergeant King was so early in his coming to Mobeetie as to be almost entitled to fame as one of its founders. Nor did the fact go without a value, since nothing but that residential antiquity had saved him from being warned to quit the town a dozen times.
Mobeetie confessed to no love for Sergeant King. He was dark of brow, with cruel mouth and furtive secret eye. He had been run out of Abilene, as the upshot of an enterprise wherein he combined a six-shooter with a deck of cards--the latter most improperly marked--and which resulted in the demise of a gentleman then and there playing draw-poker against him. Also, he was that creature--most detested and soonest to die in the West--a blusterer and a bully; and when a bit unbuckled of rum he would boast of the blood he had spilled.
This latter relaxation is exceeding bad form. Mobeetie could have overlooked the marked cards, since it is understood in the West that every gentleman, in what games of chance engage his interest, must be equal to his own protection or suffer those forfeits which nature everywhere imposes upon ignorance gone astray; it might have condoned the homicide, because, technically, it was a killing rather than a murder, and the departed wore his hardware at the time; even those hang-dog facial marks of an innate treachery would have passed unchallenged, for who may help his looks? but that braggart trick of, orally, reviewing what scalps he had taken, and exulting thereat, set public sentiment flowing against Sergeant King to such a height of disfavour that no one wanted his company and but few his gold. This last should be the measure of an utter public disregard for, however blackly hated your outlaw villain may be, his gold, as a rule, partakes in no wise of his unpopularity. For what says Vespasian? "The smell of all money is sweet."
Following her inadvertent conquest of the poet, and his broken-hearted dismissal to Dodge, Sergeant King was that one who gave to the Wild Rose what he would have called his heart. The gift bred an alarm in her bosom beyond any induced by the rhyming passion of the sonneteer. Whereas the poet had only annoyed her, she drew back frightened in the base instance of Sergeant King. He saw and understood, and the bitterness which lay like poison at the bottom of his evil heart was stirred.