said he
kept it mainly for show. Derringers, he said, was better and
surer--because you could work 'em around in your pocket while the
other fellow was getting his gun out, and before he was ready for
business you could shoot him right through your pants. Later on, it
was that very way Santa Fe shot Hart. But he always was friendly with
Hart till he did shoot him; and it was more his backing than anything
else--'specially when it come to the kindergarten--that made Cherry's
plan for helping Hart out go through.

When the game was stopped, and the boys was all listening, Cherry told
about the hole Hart was in and allowed it was a deep one; and he said
it was only fair--Hart having done good turns for most everybody, one
time and another--his friends should be willing to take some trouble
to get him out of it. Hart's aunt, he said, come from a quiet part of
Vermont, and likely would be jolted bad when she struck Palomitas if
things was going the ordinary way--she being elderly, and like enough
a little set in her ways, and not used much to crazy drunks, and
shooting-matches, and such kinds of lively carryings-on. But she'd
only stay one day, or at most a day and a half--Hart having agreed to
take her right back East himself, if she couldn't be got rid of no
other way--and that gave 'em a chance to fix things so her feelings
wouldn't be hurt, though doing it was going to be hard on all hands.
And then, having got the boys worked up wondering what he was driving
at, Cherry went ahead and said he wanted 'em to agree--just for the
little while Hart's aunt was going to stay there--to run Palomitas
like it was a regular back-East Sunday-school town. He knew he was
asking a good deal, he said, but he did ask it--and he appealed to the
better feelings of the gentlemen assembled around that faro-table to
do that much to get Bill Hart out of his hole. Then Cherry said he
wasn't nobody's orator, but he guessed he'd made clear what he wanted
to lay before the meeting; and he said he was much obliged, and had
pleasure in setting up drinks for the crowd.

As was to be expected of 'em, all the boys--knowing Hart for a
square-acting man, and liking him--tumbled right off to Cherry's plan.
Santa Fe said--this was after they'd had their drinks--he s'posed he
was chairman of the meeting, and he guessed he spoke the sense of the
meeting when he allowed Mr. Cherry's scheme was about the only way out
for their esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Ha