Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/73

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

THE RISE OF GINGER GILLETT

improvements ain't no good. Ginger's gradual with everything but an immediate disturbance, and he's makin' law and morals popular where I never reckoned to see 'em stood for an instant."

He turned to me.

"You bein' a stranger, and likely from the East, which lets on to hev a monopoly of virtue, will see nothin' in Painted Rock to excite uncalled-for remarks if it was to occur in Boston. And the man that says different ez a liar."

The rest of the citizens there assembled said Pillsbury was no liar, but far more truthful than usual even in that moral city. And the meeting adjourned. Thereby I lost the rest of the story of the rise of Ginger Gillett till I had had the honour of being introduced to him. As a matter of fact I introduced myself without ceremony on the occasion of Keno Gedge arresting his own son before a killing had time to take place. As the riot happened in the American House, Pillsbury was in it of course, and when I came back from the gaol to which young Gedge had

61