The grocery suffered;
through giving food and lodgment to clouds of unimpeachable witnesses
before the Land Commission and the District Court, "Mrs. Ros." found
herself losing money. Even the bar failed; there was a party of
"Blue Mass" employees who drank at the opposite fonda, and cursed the
Roscommon claim over the liquor. The calm, mechanical indifference with
which Roscommon had served his customers was gone. The towel was no
longer used after its perfunctory fashion; the counter remained unwiped;
the disks of countless glasses marked its surface, and indicated other
preoccupation on the part of the proprietor. The keen grey eyes of the
claimant of the "Red-Rock Rancho" were always on the lookout for friend
or enemy.
Garcia comes next. That gentleman's inborn talent for historic
misrepresentation culminated unpleasantly through a defective memory;
a year or two after he had sworn in his application for the "Rancho,"
being engaged in another case, some trifling inconsistency was
discovered in his statements, which had the effect of throwing the
weight of evidence to the party who had paid him most, but was instantly
detected by the weaker party.
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