' The
Swede bristles up and says: 'That sounds like fighting talk!' I says:
'Your hearing is perfect.' I left him thinking hard."
"Pete's brother-in-law? That reminds me," I said. "Pete was telling me
about him just--I mean during his lunch hour; but he had to go to work
again just at the beginning of something that sounded good--about the
time he was going to kill a bright lawyer. What was that?"
The glass was drained and Ma Pettengill eyed the inconsiderable remains
of the ham with something like repugnance. She averted her face from it,
lay back in the armchair she had chosen, and rolled a cigarette, while I
brought a hassock for the jewelled slippers and the scarlet silken
ankles, so ill-befitting one of her age. The cigarette was presently
burning.
"I guess Pete's b'other-in-law, as he calls him, won't come into these
parts again. He had a kind of narrow squeak this last time. Pete done
something pretty raw, even for this liberal-minded community. He got
scared about it himself and left the country for a couple of
months--looking for his brother-in-law, he said. He beat it up North and
got in with a bunch of other Injins that was being took down to New York
City to advertise a railroad, Pete looking like what folks think an
Injin ought to look when he's dressed for the part.
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