It was all I could do to keep from sympathizing with him.

He said he couldn't afford to retreat under fire, and then he told me how he had been trying to be a better man, and win the respect of the people--and I couldn't stand it any longer, and I rose up and shook my fist in his face and said: 'Lige Bemis, you disreputable, horse-stealing cow thief, what right have you to ask my help?
What right have you got to run for state senator, anyway ?' And, Martin, the brazen whelp reared back and looked me squarely in the eye and answered without blinking, 'Because, Phil Ward, I want the job.' What do you think of that for brass ?" The colonel slapped his campaign hat on his leg and laughed.

There was always, even to the last, something feminine in Martin Culpepper's face when he laughed--a kind of alternating personality of the other sex seemed to tiptoe up to his consciousness and peek out of his kind eyes.

As he laughed with Ward the colonel spoke: "Criminy, but that's like him.

He's over there talking to Gabe Carnine on the corner now.