For a moment the signs promised hugely of smoke and flying lead and sudden death, and the interest of Dodge was awakened. Later, when the episode had been thoroughly searched, it grew to be the popular conclusion that the affair was wholly of the surface. Mr. Allison himself said that he was saved in a manner occult, and not to be understood, and explained how his intuitions warned him of a pending peril. Had it not been for those warning impressions, which he insisted came from guardian spirits interested for his safety, Mr. Allison held that the business might have taken on a serious not to say a sanguinary hue.
Cimarron Bill declined the theory of guardian spirits as maintained by Mr. Allison; he took the blame of that gentleman's escape upon himself.
"Clay never got no speritual hunch," said Cimarron. "Which it was my own ontimely cur'osity that give him warnin'. I'm in the Long Branch at the time, an' nacherally, after gettin' Bat's word, I keep protroodin' my head a whole lot, expectin' every minute's goin' to be Clay's next; an' he ups an' notices it."
Mr. Short joined with Cimarron, and expressed a skepticism as to Mr. Allison having been bucklered by disembodied influences.
"I never did go a foot," concluded Mr. Short, "on speritualism, with its table-tippin' an' its ghost-dancin'. Cimarron's argument sounds a heap more feasible. In my opinion, Clay saw thar was a hen on by Cimarron's face."
"You can gamble a handful of reds," remarked Cimarron Bill, disgustedly, "he sees it in my face. Which it'll be a lesson to me to hide myse'f the next time one of them Las Animas terrors comes bulgin' into camp, ontil Bat's added him to the list. I shore won't sp'ile another sech a layout by bein' prematoorly inquisitive that a-way."
"Well," returned Mr. Masterson, with whom Mr. Short and Cimarron Bill were in talk, "whether Clay was saved by spirits, or by just his own horse sense, I'm glad it ended as it did."
The chances favour the assumption that, had Mr. Masterson been up and about, the trouble would have had no beginning. In that event he would have been more or less in the company of Mr. Allison. Such a spectacle, while it might not instruct the mean intelligence of the Ground Owl, would have at least advised his caution. He would have gained therefrom some glint of Mr. Allison's position in the world, and refrained from insults which, when the latter reviewed them by the light of liquor afterwards obtained, sent him on the wretched Ground Owl's trail.