I tell you how I'd test a brave man. I'd line the competitors up, and then spring a fright behind them. Last man to cross the mark is the bravest man--still, he might only be the poorest runner. With fellers like me, it ain't courage at all. It's lunacy. I ain't in my right mind when a sharp turn comes. Why, I've gone cold a year after, thinking of things I laughed my way through when they happened. But I'm not quarrelling with fate--I thank the good Lord I'm built as I am, and don't feel scornful of a man that keeps his sense and acts scart and reasonable.
In one way, poor old Burton, lugging himself into the game by the scruff of his pants, showed more real man than I did. Yet, he couldn't accomplish anything; so there you are, if you know where that is.
I said nothing until we slid off beneath the first tree. Then I walked up to the three leaders and says, whilst the rest gathered around and listened:
"Why, no!" says one man. "We caught him on the horse."
"Yes, yes, yes," says I, raising my voice. "That's all right. But lend me your ears till I bray a thought or two. I'm that kind of a man that wouldn't string the meanest mistake the devil ever made without givin' him a trial."
"You give me a lot of trial this morning," says Long Jim.
I wasn't bringing up any argument; I was pulling them along with a mother's kind but firm hand, so I says to him: "Ah! I wasn't talking about _gentlemen_; I'd shoot a gentleman if he did or didn't look cross-eyed at me, just as I happened to feel. I'm talking about a man that's suspected of dirty work."
Now, when a man that's held you stiff at the end of a gun calls you a gentleman, you don't get very mad--just please remember my audience, when I tell you what I talked. Boys is boys, at any age; otherwise there wouldn't be no Knights Templars with tin swords nor a good many other things. I spoke grand, but they had it chalked down in their little books I was ready and willing to act grander. Had I struck any one or all of 'em, on the range, thinking of nothing special, and Fourth-o'-July'd to 'em like that, they would have give me the hee-hee. Howsomever, they was at present engaged in tryin' to hang a man; a job one-half of which they didn't like, and would dispose of the balance cheap, for cash. And I'd run over their little attempt to be pompous like a 'Gul engine. Position is everything, you bet your neck.