boots"—the cowboys grinned when he mentioned them, all eyes on the offending tight leather—"and I'm here to tell you, Mr. Hughes, it's a whole lot harder to keep from shootin' than it is to shoot, sometimes."
"You said something, kid!" a gray-haired cowpuncher said, nodding in friendly endorsement through the smoke of his cigarette.
"And I'm goin' to tell you why I didn't pull my gun and stop their fun," Dunham said.
The cowboys leaned to hear him, some of them moving nearer. The Mexican cook, who had appeared to have such an indifferent ear for Dunham's conversation earlier in the day, stopped rattling his pans to come up behind the group and hear the tale this stranger, who seemed about to turn out somebody after all, was to tell.
Bill Dunham gave them the true story of the death and miraculous resurrection of Ira Ingram, described by Shad Brassfield as the fittified man. He told how Moore had laughed down his aspirations to a job with the revivified Ira's demand to be told who had numbered him with the dead, and how he had been met with the sally at the camp across the river. They heard him through with straight faces, although it cost them a mighty effort to make it, as Dunham could see.
"They throwed it up to me like I was the one that said the damn fool thing!" Bill complained.
There they let go and laughed, the younger ones rolling on the ground, even sedate, troubled Hughes shaking under the violent irruption of his mirth. Dunham felt so relieved to have it out of his craw, and so
