It's the God's truth I'm telling ye
when I say that I haven't had a scrimmage with me hands since I
came here. The only idea this forsaken country has of exchanging
compliments is with a knife in the dark." He shook his flaming
head regretfully at the deplorably lost condition of a country
where the shillalah was unknown as a social institution.
"If I wasn't tied up with this Valdez bunch I'd get out
to-morrow, and sometimes I have half a mind to pull out anyhow.
If you've never been associated, me lad, with half a dozen most
divilishly polite senors, each one of them watching the others
out of the corner of his slant eyes for fear they are going to
betray him or assassinate him first, you'll never know the joys
of life in this peaceful and contented land of indolence. Life's
loaded to the guards with uncertainties, so eat, drink, and be
merry, for to-morrow you hang, or your friend will carve ye in
the back with a knife, me old priest used to say, or something
like it. 'Tis certain he must have had in mind the
Spanish-American, my son."
"Which is why you're here, you old fraud," smiled Bucky. "You've
got to grumble, of course, but you couldn't be dragged away while
there's a chance of a row.
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