PAINTED ROCK
in the tone and conduct of affairs in that particular portion of Texas. They often spoke of it in Painted Rock, and invariably related the history to any stranger. They told it me, for instance, within twenty-four hours of my reaching the place, and I owned, as I stood liquor to those assembled in the American House, that it was a romance.
Pillsbury told the yarn, and told it fairly well, for Pillsbury had seen a great deal of the West and knew life. He was a gambler, and reckoned honest. He never killed anybody if he could help it, and was thus known to be peaceful and on the side of law and order.
"Ginger Gillett don't trouble me none," he said. "I'm for Ginger every time. The Marshal of thishyer City hez to be a man, and he wuz sent here by a special Prov'dence, or I know nothin' of Prov'dence, boys. I play a fair game: I love honesty and righteousness. There's nothin' betwixt the lids o' the Bible that's down on faro. The word's never mentioned from Genesis to Revelations, for the Pharaoh that is spoke of so frequent was not a game of kyards but a king. A gospel-sharp
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