"Why didn't you let Abe pack him?" a man asked, as the big cowboy, stooping gently, put the inert head and shoulders to the boards and slowly lowered the limp legs. He straightened, and, with a red handkerchief, whipped the dust from his shirt. Then, he hitched up his white goatskin chaps and looked into the face of his questioner and smiled.
"Well, Tommy, Abe here ain't never had to carry a souse yet, an' I guess he won't have to so long as I'm around an' healthy. That right, Abe?"
He reached out a hand and the sorrel, intelligent ears forward in inquiry, moved closer by a step to smell the fingers; then, allowed them to scratch the white patch on his nose.
A chuckle of surprise greeted the man's remark.
"Why, Bruce, to hear you talk anybody'd think that you close-herded your morals continual; that you was a 'Aid S'city' wagon boss; that lips that touch liquor should never--"
"I ain't said nothin' to make you think that, Tommy Clary," the other replied, laughing at the upturned face of his challenger, who was short and pug-nosed and possessed of a mouth that refused to do anything but smile; who was completely over-shadowed and rendered top-heavy by a hat of astonishing proportions. "I drink," he went on, "like th' rest of us damn fools, but I don't think it's smart to do it. I think it is pretty much all nonsense, an' I think that when you drink you ought to associate with drinkin' folks an' let th' ones who have better sense alone.
"That's why I never ride Abe to town when I figure I'm goin' to be doin' any hellin' around; that's why, if I have got drunk by mistake when I had him here, I've slept in town instead of goin' home. Abe, you see, Tommy, has got a good deal of white man in him for a horse. He'd carry me all right if I was drunk, if I asked him to; but I won't, because he's such a _good_ horse that he ought to always have a mighty good man on his middle. When a man's drunk, he ain't good ... for nothin'. Like this here"--with a contemptuous movement of one booted foot to indicate the huddle of a figure which lay in the lamplight.
"No, I don't make no claim to bein' a saint, Tommy. Good Lord, _hombre_, do you think, if I thought I was right decent all th' time, all through, I'd ever be seen swapping lies with any such ugly outcast as you are?"