Then come the kicks. What a howl they did raise, shorely. But
it didn't do no manner of good. Texas Pete didn't do nothin' but
sit there and smoke, with a kind of sulky gleam in one corner of
his eye. He didn't even take the trouble to answer, but his
Winchester lay across his lap. There wasn't no humour in the
situation for him.
"How much is your water for humans?" asks one emigrant.
"Can't you read that sign?" Texas Pete asks him.
"But you don't mean two bits a head for HUMANS!" yells the man.
"Why, you can get whisky for that!"
"You can read the sign, can't you?" insists Texas Pete.
"I can read it all right?" says the man, tryin' a new deal, "but
they tell me not to believe more'n half I read."
But that don't go; and Mr. Emigrant shells out with the rest.
I didn't blame them for raisin' their howl. Why, at that time
the regular water holes was chargin' five cents a head from the
government freighters, and the motto was always "Hold up Uncle
Sam," at that. Once in a while some outfit would get mad and go
chargin' off dry; but it was a long, long way to the Springs, and
mighty hot and dusty. Texas Pete and his one lonesome water hole
shorely did a big business.
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