timid an' ignorant I takes good advice. It's in the Oriental.
Thar's that old gray cimmaron hibernatin' about the bar whose name is
Jeffords.

"'"Be you-all conversant with that gun you packs?" asks Jeffords.

"'I feels the hot blush mountin' in my tender cheeks, but I concedes I
ain't. "Pard," I replies, "speakin' confidenshul an' between gent an'
gent, this yere weepon is plumb novel to me."

"'"Which I allows as much," he says, "from the egreegious way you
fidges with it. Now let me pass you-all a p'inter from the peaks of
experience. You caper back to the tavern an' take that weepon off. Or
what's as well, you pass it across to the barkeep. If you-all goes
romancin' 'round with hardware at your belt it's even money it'll get
you beefed. Allers remember while in Arizona that you'll never get
plugged--onless by inadvertence--as long as you wander about in
onheeled innocence. No gunless gent gets downed; sech is the
onbreakable roole."

"'After that I goes guiltless of arms; I ain't hungerin' for
immortality abrupt.

"'Old Jeffords is shore right; in the Southwest if you aims to b'ar a
charmed life, never wear a six-shooter. This maxim goes anywhere this
side of the Mississippi; east of that mighty river it's the other way.

"'Bein' nimble-blooded in them days, I'm a heap arduous about the
dance-hall. I gets infatyooated with the good fellowship of that
hurdygurdy; an' even after I leaves Tucson an' is camped some miles
away, I saddles up every other evenin', rides in an', as says the poet,
"shakes ontirin' laig even into the wee small hours."

"'Right yere, gents,' an' Dave pauses like he's prounced on by a solemn
thought, 'I don't reckon I has to caution none of you-all not to go
repeatin' these mem'ries of gay days done an' gone, where my wife
Tucson Jennie cuts their trail. I ain't afraid of Jennie; she's a
kind, troo he'pmeet; but ever since that onfortunate entanglement with
the English towerist lady her suspicions sets up nervous in their
blankets at the mere mention of frivolities wherein she hears my name.
I asks you, tharfore, not to go sayin' things to feed her doubts. With
Tucson Jennie, my first business is to live down my past.'

"'You-all can bet,' says Texas Thompson, while his brow clouds, 'that I
learns enough while enjoyin' the advantages of livin' with my former
wife to make sech requests sooperfluous in my case. Speshully since if
it ain't for what the neighbours done tells t