Then I turned, and he was trying to stand off old King.

But King wasn't that sort; he yelled to us to move up and make room, and then took down his whip and started up.

Pochette pirouetted out of the way, and stood holding to the low plank railing while he went on saying things that, properly pronounced, must have been very blasphemous.
King paid about as much attention to him as he would to a good-sized prairie-dog chittering beside its burrow.

I reckon he knew Pochette pretty well.

He got his rig in place and climbed down and went to his horses' heads.
"Now, shove off, dammit," he ordered, just as if no one had been near bursting a blood-vessel within ten feet of him.
Pochette gulped, worked the point of his beard up and down like a villain in a second-rate melodrama, and shoved off.