“‘Hold on for a moment,’ said I, ‘I am willin’ to lend you them guns, but I ain’t goin’ to know what you ‘r’ goin’ to do with them, no sir; but of course you can have the guns.’” Here my friend’s face lightened pleasantly, and he continued: 

“Well, you may easily believe I felt surprised next day when Fowler come ridin’ in, and, says he, ‘Simpson, here’s your guns!’ He had shot them two men!  ‘Well, Fowler,’ says I, ’if I had known them men was after you, I’d never have let them have them guns nohow,’ says I. That wasn’t true, for I did know it, but there was no cause to tell him that.”  I murmured my approval of such prudence, and Simpson continued, his eyes gradually brightening with the light of agreeable reminiscence: 

“Well, they up and they took Fowler before the justice of the peace.  The justice of the peace was a Turk.”

“Now, Simpson, what do you mean by that?” I interrupted: 

“Well, he come from Turkey,” said Simpson, and I again sank back, wondering briefly what particular variety of Mediterranean outcast had drifted down to New Mexico to be made a justice of the peace.  Simpson laughed and continued: 

“That Fowler was a funny fellow.  The Turk, he committed Fowler, and Fowler, he riz up and knocked him down and tromped all over him and made him let him go!”

“That was an appeal to a higher law,” I observed.  Simpson assented cheerily, and continued: 

“Well, that Turk, he got nervous for fear Fowler he was goin’ to kill him, and so he comes to me and offers me twenty-five dollars a day to protect him from Fowler; and I went to Fowler, and ‘Fowler,’ says I, ’that Turk’s offered me twenty-five dollars a day to protect him from you.  Now, I ain’t goin’ to get shot for no twenty-five dollars a day, and if you are goin’ to kill the Turk, just say so and go and do it; but if you ain’t goin’ to kill the Turk, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t earn that twenty-five dollars a day!’ and Fowler, says he, ’I ain’t goin’ to touch the Turk; you just go right ahead and protect him.’”

So Simpson “protected” the Turk from the imaginary danger of Fowler, for about a week, at twenty-five dollars a day.  Then one evening he happened to go out and met Fowler, “and,” said he, “the moment I saw him I knowed he felt mean, for he begun to shoot at my feet,” which certainly did seem to offer presumptive evidence of meanness.  Simpson continued: 

“I didn’t have no gun, so I just had to stand there and take it util something distracted his attention, and I went off home to get my gun and kill him, but I wanted to do it perfectly lawful; so I went up to the mayor (he was playin’ poker with one of the judges), and says I to him, ‘Mr. Mayor,’ says I, ‘I am goin’ to shoot Fowler.  And the mayor he riz out of his chair and he took me by the hand, and says he, ’Mr. Simpson, if you do I will stand by you;’ and the judge, he says, ’I’ll go on your bond.’”