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"That's where you are wrong," the judge broke in. "Thinking you can put it so you are choosing between two men."
"Well, judge," Skinner said. "Maybe us poor, simple, stupid common folks has to look at it that way. Us that sees more trees than forest."
"Yes, I suppose so," the judge said. He let his head hang forward; he gripped the neck of his whiskey bottle. "But maybe you have to see by now that the deputy here is only doing what the deputy here is going to have to do."
Skinner's red gargoyle's face grew redder still, and deep corrugations showed in his forehead. He took a deep breath. Then he shouted, "Yes, I can see it! But damned if I want to!" He swung around and stamped out the door.
"He's one for getting upset," Jameson commented. "That one."
"You know what I get to thinking about?" Bacon said. "I get to thinking back on the old days in Texas droving cattle up to the railroad. Didn't own a thing in the world but the clothes I had on and the saddle I sat. So nothing to worry about, and nothing but hard work day in and day out sort of purifies a man. No forests there," he said, smiling faintly at the judge. "It is the forests that wear a man down dead inside, Judge."
"It is the lot of the human race," the judge said. He raised his bottle and shook it. Staring at the bottle he said, "And it is terrible past the standing of it. But I have here the universal solvent. For wine is the color of blood and the texture of tears, and you can drink it to warm your belly and piss it out to get rid of it. And forget the whole damned mess that is too much for any man to face."
"That's not wine," Jameson said. "That's raw whiskey."
The judge looked at him with a bleared eye. "I will sleep in a cask of raw whiskey," he went on. "Wake me up and pump me out when everyone is dead." His voice shook, and his hand shook, holding the bottle. "What are deputies to me?" he said hoarsely. "Deputies or marshals. They are nothing, and I will not be a hypocrite to sentimentality when I can drink myself above it all. Wake me up when they have killed each other off! Miner and superintendent, vigilante and regulator, deputy and marshal. They are as dead leaves falling and nothing to me. Nothing!" he shouted. He banged the whiskey bottle down on the table top, raising it high and crashing it down again, his face twisting and twitching in drunken horror. "Nothing!" he shouted. "Nothing! Nothing!"
They watched him in awe at his grief, as he continued to cry "Nothing!" and bang the bottle. The Mexican's swollen, sleepy face appeared, a square below and to the right of that of Jameson, who whispered, "Listen to the dommed old bastard go!"