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Heart of the West

by O. Henry

April, 1999 [Etext #1725]

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HEART OF THE WEST

by O. Henry

CONTENTS

I. Hearts and Crosses

II. The Ransom of Mack

III. Telemachus, Friend

IV. The Handbook of Hymen

V. The Pimienta Pancakes

VI. Seats of the Haughty

VII. Hygeia at the Solito

VIII. An Afternoon Miracle

IX. The Higher Abdication

X. Cupid a la Carte

XI. The Caballero's Way

XII. The Sphinx Apple

XIII. The Missing Chord

XIV. A Call Loan

XV. The Princess and the Puma

XVI. The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

XVII. Christmas by Injunction

XVIII. A Chaparral Prince

XIX. The Reformation of Calliope

HEART OF THE WEST

HEARTS AND CROSSES

Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went

for anything he usually--but this is not Baldy's story. He poured out

a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second.

Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire.

"I'd be king if I was you," said Baldy, so positively that his holster

creaked and his spurs rattled.

Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson, and made further

disorder in his straw-coloured hair. The tonsorial recourse being

without avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful

Baldy.

"If a man marries a queen, it oughtn't to make him a two-spot,"

declared Webb, epitomising his grievances.

"Sure not," said Baldy, sympathetic, still thirsty, and genuinely

solicitous concerning the relative value of the cards. "By rights

you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal. The cards have

been stacked on you--I'll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager."

"What?" asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes.

"You're a prince-consort."

"Go easy," said Webb. "I never blackguarded you none."

"It's a title," explained Baldy, "up among the picture-cards; but it

don't take no tricks. I'll tell you, Webb. It's a brand they're got

for certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch

dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be

queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation

ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand

Custodian of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to

appear in photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir-

apparent. That ain't any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you're a prince-

consort; and if I was you, I'd start a interregnum or a habeus corpus

or somethin'; and I'd be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the

deck."

Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.

"Baldy," said Webb, solemnly, "me and you punched cows in the same

outfit for years. We been runnin' on the same range, and ridin' the

same trails since we was boys. I wouldn't talk about my family affairs

to nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I

married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I

don't amount to a knot in a stake rope."

"When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas," continued

Baldy with Satanic sweetness, "you was some tallow. You had as much to

say on the ranch as he did."

"I did," admitted Webb, "up to the time he found out I was tryin' to

get my rope over Santa's head. Then he kept me out on the range as far

from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced

to call Santa the 'cattle queen.' I'm boss of the cattle--that's all.

She 'tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can't

sell even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa's the

'queen'; and I'm Mr. Nobody."

"I'd be king if I was you," repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. "When

a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her--on the hoof--

dressed--dried--corned--any old way from the chaparral to the packing-

house. Lots of folks thinks it's funny, Webb, that you don't have the

say-so on the Nopalito. I ain't reflectin' none on Miz Yeager--she's

the finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next Christmas--but

a man ought to be boss of his own camp."

The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask of wounded

melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and

guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose

leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But

his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers

forbade the comparison.

"What was that you called me, Baldy?" he asked. "What kind of a

concert was it?"

"A 'consort,'" corrected Baldy--"a 'prince-consort.' It's a kind of

short-card pseudonym. You come in sort of between Jack-high and a

four-card flush."

Webb Yeager sighed, and gathered the strap of his Winchester scabbard

from the floor.

"I'm ridin' back to the ranch to-day," he said half-heartedly. "I've

got to start a bunch of beeves for San Antone in the morning."

"I'm your company as far as Dry Lake," announced Baldy. "I've got a

round-up camp on the San Marcos cuttin' out two-year-olds."

The two /companeros/ mounted their ponies and trotted away from the

little railroad settlement, where they had foregathered in the thirsty

morning.

At Dry Lake, where their routes diverged, they reined up for a parting

cigarette. For miles they had ridden in silence save for the soft drum

of the ponies' hoofs on the matted mesquite grass, and the rattle of

the chaparral against their wooden stirrups. But in Texas discourse is

seldom continuous. You may fill in a mile, a meal, and a murder

between your paragraphs without detriment to your thesis. So, without

apology, Webb offered an addendum to the conversation that had begun

ten miles away.

"You remember, yourself, Baldy, that there was a time when Santa

wasn't quite so independent. You remember the days when old McAllister

was keepin' us apart, and how she used to send me the sign that she

wanted to see me? Old man Mac promised to make me look like a colander

if I ever come in gun-shot of the ranch. You remember the sign she

used to send, Baldy--the heart with a cross inside of it?"

"Me?" cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness. "You old sugar-stealing

coyote! Don't I remember! Why, you dad-blamed old long-horned turtle-

dove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious about them hiroglyphs. The

'gizzard-and-crossbones' we used to call it. We used to see 'em on

truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was marked in charcoal on

the sacks of flour and in lead-pencil on the newspapers. I see one of

'em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old man McAllister

sent out from the ranch--danged if I didn't."

"Santa's father," explained Webb gently, "got her to promise that she

wouldn't write to me or send me any word. That heart-and-cross sign

was her scheme. Whenever she wanted to see me in particular she

managed to put that mark on somethin' at the ranch that she knew I'd

see. And I never laid eyes on it but what I burnt the wind for the

ranch the same night. I used to see her in that coma mott back of the

little horse-corral."

"We knowed it," chanted Baldy; "but we never let on. We was all for

you. We knowed why you always kept that fast paint in camp. And when

we see that gizzard-and-crossbones figured out on the truck from the

ranch we knowed old Pinto was goin' to eat up miles that night instead

of grass. You remember Scurry--that educated horse-wrangler we had--

the college fellow that tangle-foot drove to the range? Whenever

Scurry saw that come-meet-your-honey brand on anything from the ranch,

he'd wave his hand like that, and say, 'Our friend Lee Andrews will

again swim the Hell's point to-night.'"

"The last time Santa sent me the sign," said Webb, "was once when she

was sick. I noticed it as soon as I hit camp, and I galloped Pinto

forty mile that night. She wasn't at the coma mott. I went to the

house; and old McAllister met me at the door. 'Did you come here to

get killed?' says he; 'I'll disoblige you for once. I just started a

Mexican to bring you. Santa wants you. Go in that room and see her.

And then come out here and see me.'

"Santa was lyin' in bed pretty sick. But she gives out a kind of a

smile, and her hand and mine lock horns, and I sets down by the bed--

mud and spurs and chaps and all. 'I've heard you ridin' across the

grass for hours, Webb,' she says. 'I was sure you'd come. You saw the

sign?' she whispers. 'The minute I hit camp,' says I. ''Twas marked on

the bag of potatoes and onions.' 'They're always together,' says she,

soft like--'always together in life.' 'They go well together,' I says,

'in a stew.' 'I mean hearts and crosses,' says Santa. 'Our sign--to

love and to suffer--that's what they mean.'

"And there was old Doc Musgrove amusin' himself with whisky and a

palm-leaf fan. And by and by Santa goes to sleep; and Doc feels her

forehead; and he says to me: 'You're not such a bad febrifuge. But

you'd better slide out now; for the diagnosis don't call for you in

regular doses. The little lady'll be all right when she wakes up.'

"I seen old McAllister outside. 'She's asleep,' says I. 'And now you

can start in with your colander-work. Take your time; for I left my

gun on my saddle-horn.'

"Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: 'Pumpin' lead into the best ranch-

boss in West Texas don't seem to me good business policy. I don't know

where I could get as good a one. It's the son-in-law idea, Webb, that

makes me admire for to use you as a target. You ain't my idea for a

member of the family. But I can use you on the Nopalito if you'll keep

outside of a radius with the ranch-house in the middle of it. You go

upstairs and lay down on a cot, and when you get some sleep we'll talk

it over.'"

Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his saddle-

horn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anxious to be off.

The two men shook hands with Western ceremony.

"/Adios/, Baldy," said Webb, "I'm glad I seen you and had this talk."

With a pounding rush that sounded like the rise of a covey of quail,

the riders sped away toward different points of the compass. A hundred

yards on his route Baldy reined in on the top of a bare knoll, and

emitted a yell. He swayed on his horse; had he been on foot, the earth

would have risen and conquered him; but in the saddle he was a master

of equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and despised the centre of

gravity.

Webb turned in his saddle at the signal.

"If I was you," came Baldy's strident and perverting tones, "I'd be

king!"

At eight o'clock on the following morning Bud Turner rolled from his

saddle in front of the Nopalito ranch-house, and stumbled with

whizzing rowels toward the gallery. Bud was in charge of the bunch of

beef-cattle that was to strike the trail that morning for San Antonio.

Mrs. Yeager was on the gallery watering a cluster of hyacinths growing

in a red earthenware jar.

"King" McAllister had bequeathed to his daughter many of his strong

characteristics--his resolution, his gay courage, his contumacious

self-reliance, his pride as a reigning monarch of hoofs and horns.

/Allegro/ and /fortissimo/ had been McAllister's temp and tone. In

Santa they survived, transposed to the feminine key. Substantially,

she preserved the image of the mother who had been summoned to wander

in other and less finite green pastures long before the waxing herds

of kine had conferred royalty upon the house. She had her mother's

slim, strong figure and grave, soft prettiness that relieved in her

the severity of the imperious McAllister eye and the McAllister air of

royal independence.

Webb stood on one end of the gallery giving orders to two or three

sub-bosses of various camps and outfits who had ridden in for

instructions.

"Morning," said Bud briefly. "Where do you want them beeves to go in

town--to Barber's, as usual?"

Now, to answer that had been the prerogative of the queen. All the

reins of business--buying, selling, and banking--had been held by her

capable fingers. The handling of cattle had been entrusted fully to

her husband. In the days of "King" McAllister, Santa had been his

secretary and helper; and she had continued her work with wisdom and

profit. But before she could reply, the prince-consort spake up with

calm decision:

"You drive that bunch to Zimmerman and Nesbit's pens. I spoke to

Zimmerman about it some time ago."

Bud turned on his high boot-heels.

"Wait!" called Santa quickly. She looked at her husband with surprise

in her steady gray eyes.

"Why, what do you mean, Webb?" she asked, with a small wrinkle

gathering between her brows. "I never deal with Zimmerman and Nesbit.

Barber has handled every head of stock from this ranch in that market

for five years. I'm not going to take the business out of his hands."

She faced Bud Turner. "Deliver those cattle to Barber," she concluded

positively.

Bud gazed impartially at the water-jar hanging on the gallery, stood

on his other leg, and chewed a mesquite-leaf.

"I want this bunch of beeves to go to Zimmerman and Nesbit," said

Webb, with a frosty light in his blue eyes.

"Nonsense," said Santa impatiently. "You'd better start on, Bud, so as

to noon at the Little Elm water-hole. Tell Barber we'll have another

lot of culls ready in about a month."

Bud allowed a hesitating eye to steal upward and meet Webb's. Webb saw

apology in his look, and fancied he saw commiseration.

"You deliver them cattle," he said grimly, "to--"

"Barber," finished Santa sharply. "Let that settle it. Is there

anything else you are waiting for, Bud?"

"No, m'm," said Bud. But before going he lingered while a cow's tail

could have switched thrice; for man is man's ally; and even the

Philistines must have blushed when they took Samson in the way they

did.

"You hear your boss!" cried Webb sardonically. He took off his hat,

and bowed until it touched the floor before his wife.

"Webb," said Santa rebukingly, "you're acting mighty foolish to-day."

"Court fool, your Majesty," said Webb, in his slow tones, which had

changed their quality. "What else can you expect? Let me tell you. I

was a man before I married a cattle-queen. What am I now? The

laughing-stock of the camps. I'll be a man again."

Santa looked at him closely.

"Don't be unreasonable, Webb," she said calmly. "You haven't been

slighted in any way. Do I ever interfere in your management of the

cattle? I know the business side of the ranch much better than you do.

I learned it from Dad. Be sensible."

"Kingdoms and queendoms," said Webb, "don't suit me unless I am in the

pictures, too. I punch the cattle and you wear the crown. All right.

I'd rather be High Lord Chancellor of a cow-camp than the eight-spot

in a queen-high flush. It's your ranch; and Barber gets the beeves."

Webb's horse was tied to the rack. He walked into the house and

brought out his roll of blankets that he never took with him except on

long rides, and his "slicker," and his longest stake-rope of plaited

raw-hide. These he began to tie deliberately upon his saddle. Santa, a

little pale, followed him.

Webb swung up into the saddle. His serious, smooth face was without

expression except for a stubborn light that smouldered in his eyes.

"There's a herd of cows and calves," said he, "near the Hondo water-

hole on the Frio that ought to be moved away from timber. Lobos have

killed three of the calves. I forgot to leave orders. You'd better

tell Simms to attend to it."

Santa laid a hand on the horse's bridle, and looked her husband in the

eye.

"Are you going to leave me, Webb?" she asked quietly.

"I am going to be a man again," he answered.

"I wish you success in a praiseworthy attempt," she said, with a

sudden coldness. She turned and walked directly into the house.

Webb Yeager rode to the southeast as straight as the topography of

West Texas permitted. And when he reached the horizon he might have

ridden on into blue space as far as knowledge of him on the Nopalito

went. And the days, with Sundays at their head, formed into hebdomadal

squads; and the weeks, captained by the full moon, closed ranks into

menstrual companies crying "Tempus fugit" on their banners; and the

months marched on toward the vast camp-ground of the years; but Webb

Yeager came no more to the dominions of his queen.

One day a being named Bartholomew, a sheep-man--and therefore of

little account--from the lower Rio Grande country, rode in sight of

the Nopalito ranch-house, and felt hunger assail him. /Ex

consuetudine/ he was soon seated at the mid-day dining table of that

hospitable kingdom. Talk like water gushed from him: he might have

been smitten with Aaron's rod--that is your gentle shepherd when an

audience is vouchsafed him whose ears are not overgrown with wool.

"Missis Yeager," he babbled, "I see a man the other day on the Rancho

Seco down in Hidalgo County by your name--Webb Yeager was his. He'd

just been engaged as manager. He was a tall, light-haired man, not

saying much. Perhaps he was some kin of yours, do you think?"

"A husband," said Santa cordially. "The Seco has done well. Mr. Yeager

is one of the best stockmen in the West."

The dropping out of a prince-consort rarely disorganises a monarchy.

Queen Santa had appointed as /mayordomo/ of the ranch a trusty

subject, named Ramsay, who had been one of her father's faithful

vassals. And there was scarcely a ripple on the Nopalito ranch save

when the gulf-breeze created undulations in the grass of its wide

acres.

For several years the Nopalito had been making experiments with an

English breed of cattle that looked down with aristocratic contempt

upon the Texas long-horns. The experiments were found satisfactory;

and a pasture had been set aside for the blue-bloods. The fame of them

had gone forth into the chaparral and pear as far as men ride in

saddles. Other ranches woke up, rubbed their eyes, and looked with new

dissatisfaction upon the long-horns.

As a consequence, one day a sunburned, capable, silk-kerchiefed

nonchalant youth, garnished with revolvers, and attended by three

Mexican /vaqueros/, alighted at the Nopalito ranch and presented the

following business-like epistle to the queen thereof:

Mrs. Yeager--The Nopalito Ranch:

Dear Madam:

I am instructed by the owners of the Rancho Seco to purchase 100

head of two and three-year-old cows of the Sussex breed owned by

you. If you can fill the order please deliver the cattle to the

bearer; and a check will be forwarded to you at once.

Respectfully,

Webster Yeager,

Manager the Rancho Seco.

Business is business, even--very scantily did it escape being written

"especially"--in a kingdom.

That night the 100 head of cattle were driven up from the pasture and

penned in a corral near the ranch-house for delivery in the morning.

When night closed down and the house was still, did Santa Yeager throw

herself down, clasping that formal note to her bosom, weeping, and

calling out a name that pride (either in one or the other) had kept

from her lips many a day? Or did she file the letter, in her business

way, retaining her royal balance and strength?

Wonder, if you will; but royalty is sacred; and there is a veil. But

this much you shall learn:

At midnight Santa slipped softly out of the ranch-house, clothed in

something dark and plain. She paused for a moment under the live-oak

trees. The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale

orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable, flying mist. But the

mock-bird whistled on every bough of vantage; leagues of flowers

scented the air; and a kindergarten of little shadowy rabbits leaped

and played in an open space near by. Santa turned her face to the

southeast and threw three kisses thitherward; for there was none to

see.

Then she sped silently to the blacksmith-shop, fifty yards away; and

what she did there can only be surmised. But the forge glowed red; and

there was a faint hammering such as Cupid might make when he sharpens

his arrow-points.

Later she came forth with a queer-shaped, handled thing in one hand,

and a portable furnace, such as are seen in branding-camps, in the

other. To the corral where the Sussex cattle were penned she sped with

these things swiftly in the moonlight.

She opened the gate and slipped inside the corral. The Sussex cattle

were mostly a dark red. But among this bunch was one that was milky

white--notable among the others.

And now Santa shook from her shoulder something that we had not seen

before--a rope lasso. She freed the loop of it, coiling the length in

her left hand, and plunged into the thick of the cattle.

The white cow was her object. She swung the lasso, which caught one

horn and slipped off. The next throw encircled the forefeet and the

animal fell heavily. Santa made for it like a panther; but it

scrambled up and dashed against her, knocking her over like a blade of

grass.

Again she made her cast, while the aroused cattle milled around the

four sides of the corral in a plunging mass. This throw was fair; the

white cow came to earth again; and before it could rise Santa had made

the lasso fast around a post of the corral with a swift and simple

knot, and had leaped upon the cow again with the rawhide hobbles.

In one minute the feet of the animal were tied (no record-breaking

deed) and Santa leaned against the corral for the same space of time,

panting and lax.

And then she ran swiftly to her furnace at the gate and brought the

branding-iron, queerly shaped and white-hot.

The bellow of the outraged white cow, as the iron was applied, should

have stirred the slumbering auricular nerves and consciences of the

near-by subjects of the Nopalito, but it did not. And it was amid the

deepest nocturnal silence that Santa ran like a lapwing back to the

ranch-house and there fell upon a cot and sobbed--sobbed as though

queens had hearts as simple ranchmen's wives have, and as though she

would gladly make kings of prince-consorts, should they ride back

again from over the hills and far away.

In the morning the capable, revolvered youth and his /vaqueros/ set

forth, driving the bunch of Sussex cattle across the prairies to the

Rancho Seco. Ninety miles it was; a six days' journey, grazing and

watering the animals on the way.

The beasts arrived at Rancho Seco one evening at dusk; and were

received and counted by the foreman of the ranch.

The next morning at eight o'clock a horseman loped out of the brush to

the Nopalito ranch-house. He dismounted stiffly, and strode, with

whizzing spurs, to the house. His horse gave a great sigh and swayed

foam-streaked, with down-drooping head and closed eyes.

But waste not your pity upon Belshazzar, the flea-bitten sorrel.

To-day, in Nopalito horse-pasture he survives, pampered, beloved,

unridden, cherished record-holder of long-distance rides.

The horseman stumbled into the house. Two arms fell around his neck,

and someone cried out in the voice of woman and queen alike: "Webb--

oh, Webb!"

"I was a skunk," said Webb Yeager.

"Hush," said Santa, "did you see it?"

"I saw it," said Webb.

What they meant God knows; and you shall know, if you rightly read the

primer of events.

"Be the cattle-queen," said Webb; "and overlook it if you can. I was a

mangy, sheep-stealing coyote."

"Hush!" said Santa again, laying her fingers upon his mouth. "There's

no queen here. Do you know who I am? I am Santa Yeager, First Lady of

the Bedchamber. Come here."

She dragged him from the gallery into the room to the right. There

stood a cradle with an infant in it--a red, ribald, unintelligible,

babbling, beautiful infant, sputtering at life in an unseemly manner.

"There's no queen on this ranch," said Santa again. "Look at the king.

He's got your eyes, Webb. Down on your knees and look at his

Highness."

But jingling rowels sounded on the gallery, and Bud Turner stumbled

there again with the same query that he had brought, lacking a few

days, a year ago.

"'Morning. Them beeves is just turned out on the trail. Shall I drive

'em to Barber's, or--"

He saw Webb and stopped, open-mouthed.

"Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!" shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the air

with his fists.

"You hear your boss, Bud," said Webb Yeager, with a broad grin--just

as he had said a year ago.

And that is all, except that when old man Quinn, owner of the Rancho

Seco, went out to look over the herd of Sussex cattle that he had

bought from the Nopalito ranch, he asked his new manager:

"What's the Nopalito ranch brand, Wilson?"

"X Bar Y," said Wilson.

"I thought so," said Quinn. "But look at that white heifer there;

she's got another brand--a heart with a cross inside of it. What brand

is that?"

THE RANSOM OF MACK

Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold

mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say "old" Mack; but he wasn't

old. Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old.

"Andy," he says to me, "I'm tired of hustling. You and me have been

working hard together for three years. Say we knock off for a while,

and spend some of this idle money we've coaxed our way."

"The proposition hits me just right," says I. "Let's be nabobs for a

while and see how it feels. What'll we do--take in the Niagara Falls,

or buck at faro?"

"For a good many years," says Mack, "I've thought that if I ever had

extravagant money I'd rent a two-room cabin somewhere, hire a Chinaman

to cook, and sit in my stocking feet and read Buckle's History of

Civilisation."

"That sounds self-indulgent and gratifying without vulgar

ostentation," says I; "and I don't see how money could be better

invested. Give me a cuckoo clock and a Sep Winner's Self-Instructor

for the Banjo, and I'll join you."

A week afterwards me and Mack hits this small town of Pina, about

thirty miles out from Denver, and finds an elegant two-room house that

just suits us. We deposited half-a-peck of money in the Pina bank and

shook hands with every one of the 340 citizens in the town. We brought

along the Chinaman and the cuckoo clock and Buckle and the Instructor

with us from Denver; and they made the cabin seem like home at once.

Never believe it when they tell you riches don't bring happiness. If

you could have seen old Mack sitting in his rocking-chair with his

blue-yarn sock feet up in the window and absorbing in that Buckle

stuff through his specs you'd have seen a picture of content that

would have made Rockefeller jealous. And I was learning to pick out

"Old Zip Coon" on the banjo, and the cuckoo was on time with his

remarks, and Ah Sing was messing up the atmosphere with the handsomest

smell of ham and eggs that ever laid the honeysuckle in the shade.

When it got too dark to make out Buckle's nonsense and the notes in

the Instructor, me and Mack would light our pipes and talk about

science and pearl diving and sciatica and Egypt and spelling and fish

and trade-winds and leather and gratitude and eagles, and a lot of

subjects that we'd never had time to explain our sentiments about

before.

One evening Mack spoke up and asked me if I was much apprised in the

habits and policies of women folks.

"Why, yes," says I, in a tone of voice; "I know 'em from Alfred to

Omaha. The feminine nature and similitude," says I, "is as plain to my

sight as the Rocky Mountains is to a blue-eyed burro. I'm onto all

their little side-steps and punctual discrepancies."

"I tell you, Andy," says Mack, with a kind of sigh, "I never had the

least amount of intersection with their predispositions. Maybe I might

have had a proneness in respect to their vicinity, but I never took

the time. I made my own living since I was fourteen; and I never

seemed to get my ratiocinations equipped with the sentiments usually

depicted toward the sect. I sometimes wish I had," says old Mack.

"They're an adverse study," says I, "and adapted to points of view.

Although they vary in rationale, I have found 'em quite often

obviously differing from each other in divergences of contrast."

"It seems to me," goes on Mack, "that a man had better take 'em in and

secure his inspirations of the sect when he's young and so

preordained. I let my chance go by; and I guess I'm too old now to go

hopping into the curriculum."

"Oh, I don't know," I tells him. "Maybe you better credit yourself

with a barrel of money and a lot of emancipation from a quantity of

uncontent. Still, I don't regret my knowledge of 'em," I says. "It

takes a man who understands the symptoms and by-plays of women-folks

to take care of himself in this world."

We stayed on in Pina because we liked the place. Some folks might

enjoy their money with noise and rapture and locomotion; but me and

Mack we had had plenty of turmoils and hotel towels. The people were

friendly; Ah Sing got the swing of the grub we liked; Mack and Buckle

were as thick as two body-snatchers, and I was hitting out a cordial

resemblance to "Buffalo Gals, Can't You Come Out To-night," on the

banjo.

One day I got a telegram from Speight, the man that was working on a

mine I had an interest in out in New Mexico. I had to go out there;

and I was gone two months. I was anxious to get back to Pina and enjoy

life once more.

When I struck the cabin I nearly fainted. Mack was standing in the

door; and if angels ever wept, I saw no reason why they should be

smiling then.

That man was a spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he was

the great telescope in the Lick Observatory. He had on a coat and

shiny shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium as

big as an order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was

smirking and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid

with colic.

"Hello, Andy," says Mack, out of his face. "Glad to see you back.

Things have happened since you went away."

"I know it," says I, "and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made

you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this

presumptuous kind of ribaldry?"

"Why, Andy," says he, "they've elected me justice of the peace since

you left."

I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the

peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged.

Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack kind of

half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled and

bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by.

"No hope for you," says I, "if you've got the Mary-Jane infirmity at

your age. I thought it wasn't going to take on you. And patent leather

shoes! All this in two little short months!"

"I'm going to marry the young lady who just passed to-night," says

Mack, in a kind of flutter.

"I forgot something at the post-office," says I, and walked away

quick.

I overtook that young woman a hundred yards away. I raised my hat and

told her my name. She was about nineteen; and young for her age. She

blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from

the "Two Orphans."

"I understand you are to be married to-night," I said.

"Correct," says she. "You got any objections?"

"Listen, sissy," I begins.

"My name is Miss Rebosa Redd," says she in a pained way.

"I know it," says I. "Now, Rebosa, I'm old enough to have owed money

to your father. And that old, specious, dressed-up, garbled, sea-sick

ptomaine prancing about avidiously like an irremediable turkey gobbler

with patent leather shoes on is my best friend. Why did you go and get

him invested in this marriage business?"

"Why, he was the only chance there was," answers Miss Rebosa.

"Nay," says I, giving a sickening look of admiration at her complexion

and style of features; "with your beauty you might pick any kind of a

man. Listen, Rebosa. Old Mack ain't the man you want. He was twenty-

two when you was /nee/ Reed, as the papers say. This bursting into

bloom won't last with him. He's all ventilated with oldness and

rectitude and decay. Old Mack's down with a case of Indian summer. He

overlooked his bet when he was young; and now he's suing Nature for

the interest on the promissory note he took from Cupid instead of the

cash. Rebosa, are you bent on having this marriage occur?"

"Why, sure I am," says she, oscillating the pansies on her hat, "and

so is somebody else, I reckon."

"What time is it to take place?" I asks.

"At six o'clock," says she.

I made up my mind right away what to do. I'd save old Mack if I could.

To have a good, seasoned, ineligible man like that turn chicken for a

girl that hadn't quit eating slate pencils and buttoning in the back

was more than I could look on with easiness.

"Rebosa," says I, earnest, drawing upon my display of knowledge

concerning the feminine intuitions of reason--"ain't there a young man

in Pina--a nice young man that you think a heap of?"

"Yep," says Rebosa, nodding her pansies--"Sure there is! What do you

think! Gracious!"

"Does he like you?" I asks. "How does he stand in the matter?"

"Crazy," says Rebosa. "Ma has to wet down the front steps to keep him

from sitting there all the time. But I guess that'll be all over after

to-night," she winds up with a sigh.

"Rebosa," says I, "you don't really experience any of this adoration

called love for old Mack, do you?"

"Lord! no," says the girl, shaking her head. "I think he's as dry as a

lava bed. The idea!"

"Who is this young man that you like, Rebosa?" I inquires.

"It's Eddie Bayles," says she. "He clerks in Crosby's grocery. But he

don't make but thirty-five a month. Ella Noakes was wild about him

once."

"Old Mack tells me," I says, "that he's going to marry you at six

o'clock this evening."

"That's the time," says she. "It's to be at our house."

"Rebosa," says I, "listen to me. If Eddie Bayles had a thousand

dollars cash--a thousand dollars, mind you, would buy him a store of

his own--if you and Eddie had that much to excuse matrimony on, would

you consent to marry him this evening at five o'clock?"

The girl looks at me a minute; and I can see these inaudible

cogitations going on inside of her, as women will.

"A thousand dollars?" says she. "Of course I would."

"Come on," says I. "We'll go and see Eddie."

We went up to Crosby's store and called Eddie outside. He looked to be

estimable and freckled; and he had chills and fever when I made my

proposition.

"At five o'clock?" says he, "for a thousand dollars? Please don't wake

me up! Well, you /are/ the rich uncle retired from the spice business

in India! I'll buy out old Crosby and run the store myself."

We went inside and got old man Crosby apart and explained it. I wrote

my check for a thousand dollars and handed it to him. If Eddie and

Rebosa married each other at five he was to turn the money over to

them.

And then I gave 'em my blessing, and went to wander in the wildwood

for a season. I sat on a log and made cogitations on life and old age

and the zodiac and the ways of women and all the disorder that goes

with a lifetime. I passed myself congratulations that I had probably

saved my old friend Mack from his attack of Indian summer. I knew when

he got well of it and shed his infatuation and his patent leather

shoes, he would feel grateful. "To keep old Mack disinvolved," thinks

I, "from relapses like this, is worth more than a thousand dollars."

And most of all I was glad that I'd made a study of women, and wasn't

to be deceived any by their means of conceit and evolution.

It must have been half-past five when I got back home. I stepped in;

and there sat old Mack on the back of his neck in his old clothes with

his blue socks on the window and the History of Civilisation propped

up on his knees.

"This don't look like getting ready for a wedding at six," I says, to

seem innocent.

"Oh," says Mack, reaching for his tobacco, "that was postponed back to

five o'clock. They sent me over a note saying the hour had been

changed. It's all over now. What made you stay away so long, Andy?"

"You heard about the wedding?" I asks.

"I operated it," says he. "I told you I was justice of the peace. The

preacher is off East to visit his folks, and I'm the only one in town

that can perform the dispensations of marriage. I promised Eddie and

Rebosa a month ago I'd marry 'em. He's a busy lad; and he'll have a

grocery of his own some day."

"He will," says I.

"There was lots of women at the wedding," says Mack, smoking up. "But

I didn't seem to get any ideas from 'em. I wish I was informed in the

structure of their attainments like you said you was."

"That was two months ago," says I, reaching up for the banjo.

III

TELEMACHUS, FRIEND

Returning from a hunting trip, I waited at the little town of Los

Pinos, in New Mexico, for the south-bound train, which was one hour

late. I sat on the porch of the Summit House and discussed the

functions of life with Telemachus Hicks, the hotel proprietor.

Perceiving that personalities were not out of order, I asked him what

species of beast had long ago twisted and mutilated his left ear.

Being a hunter, I was concerned in the evils that may befall one in

the pursuit of game.

"That ear," says Hicks, "is the relic of true friendship."

"An accident?" I persisted.

"No friendship is an accident," said Telemachus; and I was silent.

"The only perfect case of true friendship I ever knew," went on my

host, "was a cordial intent between a Connecticut man and a monkey.

The monkey climbed palms in Barranquilla and threw down cocoanuts to

the man. The man sawed them in two and made dippers, which he sold for

two /reales/ each and bought rum. The monkey drank the milk of the

nuts. Through each being satisfied with his own share of the graft,

they lived like brothers.

"But in the case of human beings, friendship is a transitory art,

subject to discontinuance without further notice.

"I had a friend once, of the entitlement of Paisley Fish, that I

imagined was sealed to me for an endless space of time. Side by side

for seven years we had mined, ranched, sold patent churns, herded

sheep, took photographs and other things, built wire fences, and

picked prunes. Thinks I, neither homocide nor flattery nor riches nor

sophistry nor drink can make trouble between me and Paisley Fish. We

was friends an amount you could hardly guess at. We was friends in

business, and we let our amicable qualities lap over and season our

hours of recreation and folly. We certainly had days of Damon and

nights of Pythias.

"One summer me and Paisley gallops down into these San Andres

mountains for the purpose of a month's surcease and levity, dressed in

the natural store habiliments of man. We hit this town of Los Pinos,

which certainly was a roof-garden spot of the world, and flowing with

condensed milk and honey. It had a street or two, and air, and hens,

and a eating-house; and that was enough for us.

"We strikes the town after supper-time, and we concludes to sample

whatever efficacy there is in this eating-house down by the railroad

tracks. By the time we had set down and pried up our plates with a

knife from the red oil-cloth, along intrudes Widow Jessup with the hot

biscuit and the fried liver.

"Now, there was a woman that would have tempted an anchovy to forget

his vows. She was not so small as she was large; and a kind of welcome

air seemed to mitigate her vicinity. The pink of her face was the /in

hoc signo/ of a culinary temper and a warm disposition, and her smile

would have brought out the dogwood blossoms in December.

"Widow Jessup talks to us a lot of garrulousness about the climate and

history and Tennyson and prunes and the scarcity of mutton, and

finally wants to know where we came from.

"'Spring Valley,' says I.

"'Big Spring Valley,' chips in Paisley, out of a lot of potatoes and

knuckle-bone of ham in his mouth.

"That was the first sign I noticed that the old /fidus Diogenes/

business between me and Paisley Fish was ended forever. He knew how I

hated a talkative person, and yet he stampedes into the conversation

with his amendments and addendums of syntax. On the map it was Big

Spring Valley; but I had heard Paisley himself call it Spring Valley a

thousand times.

"Without saying any more, we went out after supper and set on the

railroad track. We had been pardners too long not to know what was

going on in each other's mind.

"'I reckon you understand,' says Paisley, 'that I've made up my mind

to accrue that widow woman as part and parcel in and to my

hereditaments forever, both domestic, sociable, legal, and otherwise,

until death us do part.'

"'Why, yes,' says I, 'I read it between the lines, though you only

spoke one. And I suppose you are aware,' says I, 'that I have a

movement on foot that leads up to the widow's changing her name to

Hicks, and leaves you writing to the society column to inquire whether

the best man wears a japonica or seamless socks at the wedding!'

"'There'll be some hiatuses in your program,' says Paisley, chewing up

a piece of a railroad tie. 'I'd give in to you,' says he, 'in 'most

any respect if it was secular affairs, but this is not so. The smiles

of woman,' goes on Paisley, 'is the whirlpool of Squills and

Chalybeates, into which vortex the good ship Friendship is often drawn

and dismembered. I'd assault a bear that was annoying you,' says

Paisley, 'or I'd endorse your note, or rub the place between your

shoulder-blades with opodeldoc the same as ever; but there my sense of

etiquette ceases. In this fracas with Mrs. Jessup we play it alone.

I've notified you fair.'

"And then I collaborates with myself, and offers the following

resolutions and by-laws:

"'Friendship between man and man,' says I, 'is an ancient historical

virtue enacted in the days when men had to protect each other against

lizards with eighty-foot tails and flying turtles. And they've kept up

the habit to this day, and stand by each other till the bellboy comes

up and tells them the animals are not really there. I've often heard,'

I says, 'about ladies stepping in and breaking up a friendship between

men. Why should that be? I'll tell you, Paisley, the first sight and

hot biscuit of Mrs. Jessup appears to have inserted a oscillation into

each of our bosoms. Let the best man of us have her. I'll play you a

square game, and won't do any underhanded work. I'll do all of my

courting of her in your presence, so you will have an equal

opportunity. With that arrangement I don't see why our steamboat of

friendship should fall overboard in the medicinal whirlpools you speak

of, whichever of us wins out.'

"'Good old hoss!' says Paisley, shaking my hand. 'And I'll do the

same,' says he. 'We'll court the lady synonymously, and without any of

the prudery and bloodshed usual to such occasions. And we'll be

friends still, win or lose.'

"At one side of Mrs. Jessup's eating-house was a bench under some

trees where she used to sit in the breeze after the south-bound had

been fed and gone. And there me and Paisley used to congregate after

supper and make partial payments on our respects to the lady of our

choice. And we was so honorable and circuitous in our calls that if

one of us got there first we waited for the other before beginning any

gallivantery.

"The first evening that Mrs. Jessup knew about our arrangement I got

to the bench before Paisley did. Supper was just over, and Mrs. Jessup

was out there with a fresh pink dress on, and almost cool enough to

handle.

"I sat down by her and made a few specifications about the moral

surface of nature as set forth by the landscape and the contiguous

perspective. That evening was surely a case in point. The moon was

attending to business in the section of sky where it belonged, and the

trees was making shadows on the ground according to science and

nature, and there was a kind of conspicuous hullabaloo going on in the

bushes between the bullbats and the orioles and the jack-rabbits and

other feathered insects of the forest. And the wind out of the

mountains was singing like a Jew's-harp in the pile of old tomato-cans

by the railroad track.

"I felt a kind of sensation in my left side--something like dough

rising in a crock by the fire. Mrs. Jessup had moved up closer.

"'Oh, Mr. Hicks,' says she, 'when one is alone in the world, don't

they feel it more aggravated on a beautiful night like this?'

"I rose up off the bench at once.

"'Excuse me, ma'am,' says I, 'but I'll have to wait till Paisley comes

before I can give a audible hearing to leading questions like that.'

"And then I explained to her how we was friends cinctured by years of

embarrassment and travel and complicity, and how we had agreed to take

no advantage of each other in any of the more mushy walks of life,

such as might be fomented by sentiment and proximity. Mrs. Jessup

appears to think serious about the matter for a minute, and then she

breaks into a species of laughter that makes the wildwood resound.

"In a few minutes Paisley drops around, with oil of bergamot on his

hair, and sits on the other side of Mrs. Jessup, and inaugurates a sad

tale of adventure in which him and Pieface Lumley has a skinning-match

of dead cows in '95 for a silver-mounted saddle in the Santa Rita

valley during the nine months' drought.

"Now, from the start of that courtship I had Paisley Fish hobbled and

tied to a post. Each one of us had a different system of reaching out

for the easy places in the female heart. Paisley's scheme was to

petrify 'em with wonderful relations of events that he had either come

across personally or in large print. I think he must have got his idea

of subjugation from one of Shakespeare's shows I see once called

'Othello.' There is a coloured man in it who acquires a duke's

daughter by disbursing to her a mixture of the talk turned out by

Rider Haggard, Lew Dockstader, and Dr. Parkhurst. But that style of

courting don't work well off the stage.

"Now, I give you my own recipe for inveigling a woman into that state

of affairs when she can be referred to as '/nee/ Jones.' Learn how to

pick up her hand and hold it, and she's yours. It ain't so easy. Some

men grab at it so much like they was going to set a dislocation of the

shoulder that you can smell the arnica and hear 'em tearing off

bandages. Some take it up like a hot horseshoe, and hold it off at

arm's length like a druggist pouring tincture of asafoetida in a

bottle. And most of 'em catch hold of it and drag it right out before

the lady's eyes like a boy finding a baseball in the grass, without

giving her a chance to forget that the hand is growing on the end of

her arm. Them ways are all wrong.

"I'll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in the

back yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on

a fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn't got a thing in his hand,

and that the cat don't see him, and that he don't see the cat. That's

the idea. Never drag her hand out where she'll have to take notice of

it. Don't let her know that you think she knows you have the least

idea she is aware you are holding her hand. That was my rule of

tactics; and as far as Paisley's serenade about hostilities and

misadventure went, he might as well have been reading to her a time-

table of the Sunday trains that stop at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.

"One night when I beat Paisley to the bench by one pipeful, my

friendship gets subsidised for a minute, and I asks Mrs. Jessup if she

didn't think a 'H' was easier to write than a 'J.' In a second her

head was mashing the oleander flower in my button-hole, and I leaned

over and--but I didn't.

"'If you don't mind,' says I, standing up, 'we'll wait for Paisley to

come before finishing this. I've never done anything dishonourable yet

to our friendship, and this won't be quite fair.'

"'Mr. Hicks,' says Mrs. Jessup, looking at me peculiar in the dark,

'if it wasn't for but one thing, I'd ask you to hike yourself down the

gulch and never disresume your visits to my house.'

"'And what is that, ma'am?' I asks.

"'You are too good a friend not to make a good husband,' says she.

"In five minutes Paisley was on his side of Mrs. Jessup.

"'In Silver City, in the summer of '98,' he begins, 'I see Jim

Batholomew chew off a Chinaman's ear in the Blue Light Saloon on

account of a crossbarred muslin shirt that--what was that noise?'

"I had resumed matters again with Mrs. Jessup right where we had left

off.

"'Mrs. Jessup,' says I, 'has promised to make it Hicks. And this is

another of the same sort.'

"Paisley winds his feet round a leg of the bench and kind of groans.

"'Lem,' says he, 'we been friends for seven years. Would you mind not

kissing Mrs. Jessup quite so loud? I'd do the same for you.'

"'All right,' says I. 'The other kind will do as well.'

"'This Chinaman,' goes on Paisley, 'was the one that shot a man named

Mullins in the spring of '97, and that was--'

"Paisley interrupted himself again.

"'Lem,' says he, 'if you was a true friend you wouldn't hug Mrs.

Jessup quite so hard. I felt the bench shake all over just then. You

know you told me you would give me an even chance as long as there was

any.'

"'Mr. Man,' says Mrs. Jessup, turning around to Paisley, 'if you was

to drop in to the celebration of mine and Mr. Hicks's silver wedding,

twenty-five years from now, do you think you could get it into that

Hubbard squash you call your head that you are /nix cum rous/ in this

business? I've put up with you a long time because you was Mr. Hicks's

friend; but it seems to me it's time for you to wear the willow and

trot off down the hill.'

"'Mrs. Jessup,' says I, without losing my grasp on the situation as

fiance, 'Mr. Paisley is my friend, and I offered him a square deal and

a equal opportunity as long as there was a chance.'

"'A chance!' says she. 'Well, he may think he has a chance; but I hope

he won't think he's got a cinch, after what he's been next to all the

evening.'

"Well, a month afterwards me and Mrs. Jessup was married in the Los

Pinos Methodist Church; and the whole town closed up to see the

performance.

"When we lined up in front and the preacher was beginning to sing out

his rituals and observances, I looks around and misses Paisley. I

calls time on the preacher. 'Paisley ain't here,' says I. 'We've got

to wait for Paisley. A friend once, a friend always--that's Telemachus

Hicks,' says I. Mrs. Jessup's eyes snapped some; but the preacher

holds up the incantations according to instructions.

"In a few minutes Paisley gallops up the aisle, putting on a cuff as

he comes. He explains that the only dry-goods store in town was closed

for the wedding, and he couldn't get the kind of a boiled shirt that

his taste called for until he had broke open the back window of the

store and helped himself. Then he ranges up on the other side of the

bride, and the wedding goes on. I always imagined that Paisley

calculated as a last chance that the preacher might marry him to the

widow by mistake.

"After the proceedings was over we had tea and jerked antelope and

canned apricots, and then the populace hiked itself away. Last of all

Paisley shook me by the hand and told me I'd acted square and on the

level with him and he was proud to call me a friend.

"The preacher had a small house on the side of the street that he'd

fixed up to rent; and he allowed me and Mrs. Hicks to occupy it till

the ten-forty train the next morning, when we was going on a bridal

tour to El Paso. His wife had decorated it all up with hollyhocks and

poison ivy, and it looked real festal and bowery.

"About ten o'clock that night I sets down in the front door and pulls

off my boots a while in the cool breeze, while Mrs. Hicks was fixing

around in the room. Right soon the light went out inside; and I sat

there a while reverberating over old times and scenes. And then I

heard Mrs. Hicks call out, 'Ain't you coming in soon, Lem?'

"'Well, well!' says I, kind of rousing up. 'Durn me if I wasn't

waiting for old Paisley to--'

"But when I got that far," concluded Telemachus Hicks, "I thought

somebody had shot this left ear of mine off with a forty-five. But it

turned out to be only a lick from a broomhandle in the hands of Mrs.

Hicks."

THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN

'Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that

the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of

the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can't

tell me why our college professors shouldn't be transferred to the

meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they

could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the

main office what kind of weather to expect. But there's the other side

of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather

furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.

We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line

prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a

line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in

the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army

through a peace conference.

Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and

stops to eat three cans of greengages, and leave us a newspaper of

modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the

weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom

of the deck was "warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes."

That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me

and Idaho moved camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain,

thinking it was only a November flurry. But after falling three foot

on a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we was snowed in.

We got in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub

enough for two months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they

thought proper.

If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men up

in a eighteen by twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature won't

stand it.

When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each

other's jokes and praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and

called bread. At the end of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of a

edict to me. Says he:

"I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the

bottom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the

spears compared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that

emanates out of your organs of conversation. The kind of half-

masticated noises that you emit every day puts me in mind of a cow's

cud, only she's lady enough to keep hers to herself, and you ain't."

"Mr. Green," says I, "you having been a friend of mine once, I have

some hesitations in confessing to you that if I had my choice for

society between you and a common yellow, three-legged cur pup, one of

the inmates of this here cabin would be wagging a tail just at

present."

This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speaking

to one another. We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks

his grub on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. The snow

is up to the windows, and we have to keep a fire all day.

You see me and Idaho never had any education beyond reading and doing

"if John had three apples and James five" on a slate. We never felt

any special need for a university degree, though we had acquired a

species of intrinsic intelligence in knocking around the world that we

could use in emergencies. But, snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter

Roots, we felt for the first time that if we had studied Homer or

Greek and fractions and the higher branches of information, we'd have

had some resources in the line of meditation and private thought. I've

seen them Eastern college fellows working in camps all through the

West, and I never noticed but what education was less of a drawback to

'em than you would think. Why, once over on Snake River, when Andrew

McWilliams' saddle horse got the botts, he sent a buckboard ten miles

for one of these strangers that claimed to be a botanist. But that

horse died.

One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick on top of a little

shelf that was too high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I

started toward 'em, but caught Idaho's eye. He speaks for the first

time in a week.

"Don't burn your fingers," says he. "In spite of the fact that you're

only fit to be the companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I'll give you a

square deal. And that's more than your parents did when they turned

you loose in the world with the sociability of a rattle-snake and the

bedside manner of a frozen turnip. I'll play you a game of seven-up,

the winner to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the

other."

We played; and Idaho won. He picked up his book; and I took mine. Then

each of us got on his side of the house and went to reading.

I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as I was that book. And

Idaho took at his like a kid looks at a stick of candy.

Mine was a little book about five by six inches called "Herkimer's

Handbook of Indispensable Information." I may be wrong, but I think

that was the greatest book that ever was written. I've got it to-day;

and I can stump you or any man fifty times in five minutes with the

information in it. Talk about Solomon or the New York /Tribune/!

Herkimer had cases on both of 'em. That man must have put in fifty

years and travelled a million miles to find out all that stuff. There

was the population of all cities in it, and the way to tell a girl's

age, and the number of teeth a camel has. It told you the longest

tunnel in the world, the number of the stars, how long it takes for

chicken pox to break out, what a lady's neck ought to measure, the

veto powers of Governors, the dates of the Roman aqueducts, how many

pounds of rice going without three beers a day would buy, the average

annual temperature of Augusta, Maine, the quantity of seed required to

plant an acre of carrots in drills, antidotes for poisons, the number

of hairs on a blond lady's head, how to preserve eggs, the height of

all the mountains in the world, and the dates of all wars and battles,

and how to restore drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the number of

tacks in a pound, and how to make dynamite and flowers and beds, and

what to do before the doctor comes--and a hundred times as many things

besides. If there was anything Herkimer didn't know I didn't miss it

out of the book.

I sat and read that book for four hours. All the wonders of education

was compressed in it. I forgot the snow, and I forgot that me and old

Idaho was on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading away

with a kind of partly soft and partly mysterious look shining through

his tan-bark whiskers.

"Idaho," says I, "what kind of a book is yours?"

Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any

slander or malignity.

"Why," says he, "this here seems to be a volume by Homer K. M."

"Homer K. M. what?" I asks.

"Why, just Homer K. M.," says he.

"You're a liar," says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put

me up a tree. "No man is going 'round signing books with his initials.

If it's Homer K. M. Spoopendyke, or Homer K. M. McSweeney, or Homer K.

M. Jones, why don't you say so like a man instead of biting off the

end of it like a calf chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothes-

line?"

"I put it to you straight, Sandy," says Idaho, quiet. "It's a poem

book," says he, "by Homer K. M. I couldn't get colour out of it at

first, but there's a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn't have missed

this book for a pair of red blankets."

"You're welcome to it," says I. "What I want is a disinterested

statement of facts for the mind to work on, and that's what I seem to

find in the book I've drawn."

"What you've got," says Idaho, "is statistics, the lowest grade of

information that exists. They'll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.'s

system of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular

toast is 'nothing doing,' and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps

it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an

invitation to split a quart. But it's poetry," says Idaho, "and I have

sensations of scorn for that truck of yours that tries to convey sense

in feet and inches. When it comes to explaining the instinct of

philosophy through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your man beat

by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measurement, and average annual

rainfall."

So that's the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the

excitement we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us

with a fine lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if

you had stepped up to me suddenly and said: "Sanderson Pratt, what

would it cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-

eight tin at nine dollars and fifty cents per box?" I'd have told you

as quick as light could travel the length of a spade handle at the

rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles per second. How many

can do it? You wake up 'most any man you know in the middle of the

night, and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human

skeleton exclusive of the teeth, or what percentage of the vote of the

Nebraska Legislature overrules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and

see.

About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry book I didn't exactly

know. Idaho boosted the wine-agent every time he opened his mouth; but

I wasn't so sure.

This Homer K. M., from what leaked out of his libretto through Idaho,

seemed to me to be a kind of a dog who looked at life like it was a

tin can tied to his tail. After running himself half to death, he sits

down, hangs his tongue out, and looks at the can and says:

"Oh, well, since we can't shake the growler, let's get it filled at

the corner, and all have a drink on me."

Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I never hear of Persia

producing anything worth mentioning unless it was Turkish rugs and

Maltese cats.

That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was a habit of ours to

sell out quick and keep moving. We unloaded our grubstaker for eight

thousand dollars apiece; and then we drifted down to this little town

of Rosa, on the Salmon river, to rest up, and get some human grub, and

have our whiskers harvested.

Rosa was no mining-camp. It laid in the valley, and was as free of

uproar and pestilence as one of them rural towns in the country. There

was a three-mile trolley line champing its bit in the environs; and me

and Idaho spent a week riding on one of the cars, dropping off at

nights at the Sunset View Hotel. Being now well read as well as

travelled, we was soon /pro re nata/ with the best society in Rosa,

and was invited out to the most dressed-up and high-toned

entertainments. It was at a piano recital and quail-eating contest in

the city hall, for the benefit of the fire company, that me and Idaho

first met Mrs. De Ormond Sampson, the queen of Rosa society.

Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only two-story house in town.

It was painted yellow, and whichever way you looked from you could see

it as plain as egg on the chin of an O'Grady on a Friday. Twenty-two

men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was trying to stake a claim on that

yellow house.

There was a dance after the song books and quail bones had been raked

out of the Hall. Twenty-three of the bunch galloped over to Mrs.

Sampson and asked for a dance. I side-stepped the two-step, and asked

permission to escort her home. That's where I made a hit.

On the way home says she:

"Ain't the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. Pratt?"

"For the chance they've got," says I, "they're humping themselves in a

mighty creditable way. That big one you see is sixty-six million miles

distant. It took thirty-six years for its light to reach us. With an

eighteen-foot telescope you can see forty-three millions of 'em,

including them of the thirteenth magnitude, which, if one was to go

out now, you would keep on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years."

"My!" says Mrs. Sampson. "I never knew that before. How warm it is!

I'm as damp as I can be from dancing so much."

"That's easy to account for," says I, "when you happen to know that

you've got two million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one

of your perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch long, was

placed end to end, they would reach a distance of seven miles."

"Lawsy!" says Mrs. Sampson. "It sounds like an irrigation ditch you

was describing, Mr. Pratt. How do you get all this knowledge of

information?"

"From observation, Mrs. Sampson," I tells her. "I keep my eyes open

when I go about the world."

"Mr. Pratt," says she, "I always did admire a man of education. There

are so few scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that

it is a real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. I'd be

gratified to have you call at my house whenever you feel so inclined."

And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow

house. Every Tuesday and Friday evening I used to go there and tell

her about the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, and

compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay Lutherans of

the town got every minute of the rest of the week that they could.

I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on Mrs. Sampson with

old K. M.'s rules of courtship till one afternoon when I was on my way

over to take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady coming

down the lane that led to her house. Her eyes was snapping, and her

hat made a dangerous dip over one eye.

"Mr. Pratt," she opens up, "this Mr. Green is a friend of yours, I

believe."

"For nine years," says I.

"Cut him out," says she. "He's no gentleman!"

"Why ma'am," says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountains, with

asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I

never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was

a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance

and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, I've found him

impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years

of Idaho's society, Mrs. Sampson," I winds up, "I should hate to

impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed."

"It's right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "to take

up the curmudgeons in your friend's behalf; but it don't alter the

fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle

the ignominy of any lady."

"Why, now, now, now!" says I. "Old Idaho do that! I could believe it

of myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a

blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snow-bound in the

mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry,

which may have corrupted his demeanour."

"It has," says Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been

reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls

Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her

poetry."

"Then Idaho has struck a new book," says I, "for the one he had was by

a man who writes under the /nom de plume/ of K. M."

"He'd better have stuck to it," says Mrs. Sampson, "whatever it was.

And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and

on 'em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see

her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a

moment that I'd skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of

wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down

under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but

I'm not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising

Cain in any such style as that. And of course he'd bring his book of

verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics

alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn't

kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And

what do you think of your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?"

"Well, 'm," says I, "it may be that Idaho's invitation was a kind of

poetry, and meant no harm. May be it belonged to the class of rhymes

they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent

through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they

don't say. I'd be glad on Idaho's account if you'd overlook it," says

I, "and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to

the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like

this, Mrs. Sampson," I goes on, "we should let our thoughts dwell

accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the

equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen

thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine

degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet."

"Oh, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "it's such a comfort to hear you

say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a

Ruby's poetry!"

"Let us sit on this log at the roadside," says I, "and forget the

inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of

ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found.

In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics

more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old.

At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three

thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth,

near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet

eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut,

compress it above the wound. A man's leg contains thirty bones. The

Tower of London was burned in 1841."

"Go on, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson. "Them ideas is so original and

soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be."

But it wasn't till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to

me out of Herkimer.

One night I was waked up by folks hollering "Fire!" all around. I

jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene.

When I see it was Mrs. Sampson's house, I gave forth a kind of yell,

and I was there in two minutes.

The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every

masculine, feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and

barking and getting in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to

get away from six firemen who were holding him. They was telling him

the whole place was on fire down-stairs, and no man could go in it and

come out alive.

"Where's Mrs. Sampson?" I asks.

"She hasn't been seen," says one of the firemen. "She sleeps up-

stairs. We've tried to get in, but we can't, and our company hasn't

got any ladders yet."

I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls the Handbook

out of my inside pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands

--I reckon I was some daffy with the sensation of excitement.

"Herky, old boy," I says to it, as I flipped over the pages, "you

ain't ever lied to me yet, and you ain't ever throwed me down at a

scratch yet. Tell me what, old boy, tell me what!" says I.

I turned to "What to do in Case of Accidents," on page 117. I run my

finger down the page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never

overlooked anything! It said:

Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.--There is nothing better

than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye.

I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was

running by.

"Here," says I, giving him some money, "run to the drug store and

bring a dollar's worth of flaxseed. Hurry, and you'll get another one

for yourself. Now," I sings out to the crowd, "we'll have Mrs.

Sampson!" And I throws away my coat and hat.

Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It's sure death,

they say, to go in the house, for the floors was beginning to fall

through.

"How in blazes," I sings out, kind of laughing yet, but not feeling

like it, "do you expect me to put flaxseed in a eye without the eye?"

I jabbed each elbow in a fireman's face, kicked the bark off of one

citizen's shin, and tripped the other one with a side hold. And then I

busted into the house. If I die first I'll write you a letter and tell

you if it's any worse down there than the inside of that yellow house

was; but don't believe it yet. I was a heap more cooked than the

hurry-up orders of broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The

fire and smoke had me down on the floor twice, and was about to shame

Herkimer, but the firemen helped me with their little stream of water,

and I got to Mrs. Sampson's room. She'd lost conscientiousness from

the smoke, so I wrapped her in the bed clothes and got her on my

shoulder. Well, the floors wasn't as bad as they said, or I never

could have done it--not by no means.

I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the

grass. Then, of course, every one of them other twenty-two plaintiff's

to the lady's hand crowded around with tin dippers of water ready to

save her. And up runs the boy with the flaxseed.

I unwrapped the covers from Mrs. Sampson's head. She opened her eyes

and says:

"Is that you, Mr. Pratt?"

"S-s-sh," says I. "Don't talk till you've had the remedy."

I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, gentle, and breaks

the bag of flaxseed with the other hand; and as easy as I could I

bends over and slips three or four of the seeds in the outer corner of

her eye.

Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts around, and grabs

at Mrs. Sampson's pulse, and wants to know what I mean by any such

sandblasted nonsense.

"Well, old Jalap and Jerusalem oakseed," says I, "I'm no regular

practitioner, but I'll show you my authority, anyway."

They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Handbook.

"Look on page 117," says I, "at the remedy for suffocation by smoke or

gas. Flaxseed in the outer corner of the eye, it says. I don't know

whether it works as a smoke consumer or whether it hikes the compound

gastro-hippopotamus nerve into action, but Herkimer says it, and he

was called to the case first. If you want to make it a consultation,

there's no objection."

Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means of his specs and a

fireman's lantern.

"Well, Mr. Pratt," says he, "you evidently got on the wrong line in

reading your diagnosis. The recipe for suffocation says: 'Get the

patient into fresh air as quickly as possible, and place in a

reclining position.' The flaxseed remedy is for 'Dust and Cinders in

the Eye,' on the line above. But, after all--"

"See here," interrupts Mrs. Sampson, "I reckon I've got something to

say in this consultation. That flaxseed done me more good than

anything I ever tried." And then she raises up her head and lays it

back on my arm again, and says: "Put some in the other eye, Sandy

dear."

And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, or any other day,

you'd see a fine new yellow house with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs.

Sampson, embellishing and adorning it. And if you was to step inside

you'd see on the marble-top centre table in the parlour "Herkimer's

Handbook of Indispensable Information," all rebound in red morocco,

and ready to be consulted on any subject pertaining to human happiness

and wisdom.

THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES

While we were rounding up a bunch of the Triangle-O cattle in the Frio

bottoms a projecting branch of a dead mesquite caught my wooden

stirrup and gave my ankle a wrench that laid me up in camp for a week.

On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub

wagon, and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson

Odom, the camp cook. Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny,

with customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein he was

bereaved, for the greater portion of his time, of an audience.

Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud's obmutescence.

Betimes I was stirred by invalid longings for something to eat that

did not come under the caption of "grub." I had visions of the

maternal pantry "deep as first love, and wild with all regret," and

then I asked:

"Jud, can you make pancakes?"

Jud laid down his six-shooter, with which he was preparing to pound an

antelope steak, and stood over me in what I felt to be a menacing

attitude. He further endorsed my impression that his pose was

resentful by fixing upon me with his light blue eyes a look of cold

suspicion.

"Say, you," he said, with candid, though not excessive, choler, "did

you mean that straight, or was you trying to throw the gaff into me?

Some of the boys been telling you about me and that pancake racket?"

"No, Jud," I said, sincerely, "I meant it. It seems to me I'd swap my

pony and saddle for a stack of buttered brown pancakes with some first

crop, open kettle, New Orleans sweetening. Was there a story about

pancakes?"

Jud was mollified at once when he saw that I had not been dealing in

allusions. He brought some mysterious bags and tin boxes from the grub

wagon and set them in the shade of the hackberry where I lay reclined.

I watched him as he began to arrange them leisurely and untie their

many strings.

"No, not a story," said Jud, as he worked, "but just the logical

disclosures in the case of me and that pink-eyed snoozer from Mired

Mule Canada and Miss Willella Learight. I don't mind telling you.

"I was punching then for old Bill Toomey, on the San Miguel. One day I

gets all ensnared up in aspirations for to eat some canned grub that

hasn't ever mooed or baaed or grunted or been in peck measures. So, I

gets on my bronc and pushes the wind for Uncle Emsley Telfair's store

at the Pimienta Crossing on the Nueces.

"About three in the afternoon I throwed my bridle rein over a mesquite

limb and walked the last twenty yards into Uncle Emsley's store. I got

up on the counter and told Uncle Emsley that the signs pointed to the

devastation of the fruit crop of the world. In a minute I had a bag of

crackers and a long-handled spoon, with an open can each of apricots

and pineapples and cherries and greengages beside of me with Uncle

Emsley busy chopping away with the hatchet at the yellow clings. I was

feeling like Adam before the apple stampede, and was digging my spurs

into the side of the counter and working with my twenty-four-inch

spoon when I happened to look out of the window into the yard of Uncle

Emsley's house, which was next to the store.

"There was a girl standing there--an imported girl with fixings on--

philandering with a croquet maul and amusing herself by watching my

style of encouraging the fruit canning industry.

"I slid off the counter and delivered up my shovel to Uncle Emsley.

"'That's my niece,' says he; 'Miss Willella Learight, down from

Palestine on a visit. Do you want that I should make you acquainted?'

"'The Holy Land,' I says to myself, my thoughts milling some as I

tried to run 'em into the corral. 'Why not? There was sure angels in

Pales--Why, yes, Uncle Emsley,' I says out loud, 'I'd be awful edified

to meet Miss Learight.'

"So Uncle Emsley took me out in the yard and gave us each other's

entitlements.

"I never was shy about women. I never could understand why some men

who can break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark, get

all left-handed and full of perspiration and excuses when they see a

bold of calico draped around what belongs to it. Inside of eight

minutes me and Miss Willella was aggravating the croquet balls around

as amiable as second cousins. She gave me a dig about the quantity of

canned fruit I had eaten, and I got back at her, flat-footed, about

how a certain lady named Eve started the fruit trouble in the first

free-grass pasture--'Over in Palestine, wasn't it?' says I, as easy

and pat as roping a one-year-old.

"That was how I acquired cordiality for the proximities of Miss

Willella Learight; and the disposition grew larger as time passed. She

was stopping at Pimienta Crossing for her health, which was very good,

and for the climate, which was forty per cent. hotter than Palestine.

I rode over to see her once every week for a while; and then I figured

it out that if I doubled the number of trips I would see her twice as

often.

"One week I slipped in a third trip; and that's where the pancakes and

the pink-eyed snoozer busted into the game.

"That evening, while I set on the counter with a peach and two damsons

in my mouth, I asked Uncle Emsley how Miss Willella was.

"'Why,' says Uncle Emsley, 'she's gone riding with Jackson Bird, the

sheep man from over at Mired Mule Canada.'

"I swallowed the peach seed and the two damson seeds. I guess somebody

held the counter by the bridle while I got off; and then I walked out

straight ahead till I butted against the mesquite where my roan was

tied.

"'She's gone riding,' I whisper in my bronc's ear, 'with Birdstone

Jack, the hired mule from Sheep Man's Canada. Did you get that, old

Leather-and-Gallops?'

"That bronc of mine wept, in his way. He'd been raised a cow pony and

he didn't care for snoozers.

"I went back and said to Uncle Emsley: 'Did you say a sheep man?'

"'I said a sheep man,' says Uncle Emsley again. 'You must have heard

tell of Jackson Bird. He's got eight sections of grazing and four

thousand head of the finest Merinos south of the Arctic Circle.'

"I went out and sat on the ground in the shade of the store and leaned

against a prickly pear. I sifted sand into my boots with unthinking

hands while I soliloquised a quantity about this bird with the Jackson

plumage to his name.

"I never had believed in harming sheep men. I see one, one day,

reading a Latin grammar on hossback, and I never touched him! They

never irritated me like they do most cowmen. You wouldn't go to work

now, and impair and disfigure snoozers, would you, that eat on tables

and wear little shoes and speak to you on subjects? I had always let

'em pass, just as you would a jack-rabbit; with a polite word and a

guess about the weather, but no stopping to swap canteens. I never

thought it was worth while to be hostile with a snoozer. And because

I'd been lenient, and let 'em live, here was one going around riding

with Miss Willella Learight!

"An hour by sun they come loping back, and stopped at Uncle Emsley's

gate. The sheep person helped her off; and they stood throwing each

other sentences all sprightful and sagacious for a while. And then

this feathered Jackson flies up in his saddle and raises his little

stewpot of a hat, and trots off in the direction of his mutton ranch.

By this time I had turned the sand out of my boots and unpinned myself

from the prickly pear; and by the time he gets half a mile out of

Pimienta, I singlefoots up beside him on my bronc.

"I said that snoozer was pink-eyed, but he wasn't. His seeing

arrangement was grey enough, but his eye-lashes was pink and his hair

was sandy, and that gave you the idea. Sheep man?--he wasn't more than

a lamb man, anyhow--a little thing with his neck involved in a yellow

silk handkerchief, and shoes tied up in bowknots.

"'Afternoon!' says I to him. 'You now ride with a equestrian who is

commonly called Dead-Moral-Certainty Judson, on account of the way I

shoot. When I want a stranger to know me I always introduce myself

before the draw, for I never did like to shake hands with ghosts.'

"'Ah,' says he, just like that--'Ah, I'm glad to know you, Mr. Judson.

I'm Jackson Bird, from over at Mired Mule Ranch.'

"Just then one of my eyes saw a roadrunner skipping down the hill with

a young tarantula in his bill, and the other eye noticed a rabbit-hawk

sitting on a dead limb in a water-elm. I popped over one after the

other with my forty-five, just to show him. 'Two out of three,' says

I. 'Birds just naturally seem to draw my fire wherever I go.'

"'Nice shooting,' says the sheep man, without a flutter. 'But don't

you sometimes ever miss the third shot? Elegant fine rain that was

last week for the young grass, Mr. Judson?' says he.

"'Willie,' says I, riding over close to his palfrey, 'your infatuated

parents may have denounced you by the name of Jackson, but you sure

moulted into a twittering Willie--let us slough off this here analysis

of rain and the elements, and get down to talk that is outside the

vocabulary of parrots. That is a bad habit you have got of riding with

young ladies over at Pimienta. I've known birds,' says I, 'to be

served on toast for less than that. Miss Willella,' says I, 'don't

ever want any nest made out of sheep's wool by a tomtit of the

Jacksonian branch of ornithology. Now, are you going to quit, or do

you wish for to gallop up against this Dead-Moral-Certainty attachment

to my name, which is good for two hyphens and at least one set of

funeral obsequies?'

"Jackson Bird flushed up some, and then he laughed.

"'Why, Mr. Judson,' says he, 'you've got the wrong idea. I've called

on Miss Learight a few times; but not for the purpose you imagine. My

object is purely a gastronomical one.'

"I reached for my gun.

"'Any coyote,' says I, 'that would boast of dishonourable--'

"'Wait a minute,' says this Bird, 'till I explain. What would I do

with a wife? If you ever saw that ranch of mine! I do my own cooking

and mending. Eating--that's all the pleasure I get out of sheep

raising. Mr. Judson, did you ever taste the pancakes that Miss

Learight makes?'

"'Me? No,' I told him. 'I never was advised that she was up to any

culinary manoeuvres.'

"'They're golden sunshine,' says he, 'honey-browned by the ambrosial

fires of Epicurus. I'd give two years of my life to get the recipe for

making them pancakes. That's what I went to see Miss Learight for,'

says Jackson Bird, 'but I haven't been able to get it from her. It's

an old recipe that's been in the family for seventy-five years. They

hand it down from one generation to another, but they don't give it

away to outsiders. If I could get that recipe, so I could make them

pancakes for myself on my ranch, I'd be a happy man,' says Bird.

"'Are you sure,' I says to him, 'that it ain't the hand that mixes the

pancakes that you're after?'

"'Sure,' says Jackson. 'Miss Learight is a mighty nice girl, but I can

assure you my intentions go no further than the gastro--' but he seen

my hand going down to my holster and he changed his similitude--'than

the desire to procure a copy of the pancake recipe,' he finishes.

"'You ain't such a bad little man,' says I, trying to be fair. 'I was

thinking some of making orphans of your sheep, but I'll let you fly

away this time. But you stick to pancakes,' says I, 'as close as the

middle one of a stack; and don't go and mistake sentiments for syrup,

or there'll be singing at your ranch, and you won't hear it.'

"'To convince you that I am sincere,' says the sheep man, 'I'll ask

you to help me. Miss Learight and you being closer friends, maybe she

would do for you what she wouldn't for me. If you will get me a copy

of that pancake recipe, I give you my word that I'll never call upon

her again.'

"'That's fair,' I says, and I shook hands with Jackson Bird. 'I'll get

it for you if I can, and glad to oblige.' And he turned off down the

big pear flat on the Piedra, in the direction of Mired Mule; and I

steered northwest for old Bill Toomey's ranch.

"It was five days afterward when I got another chance to ride over to

Pimienta. Miss Willella and me passed a gratifying evening at Uncle

Emsley's. She sang some, and exasperated the piano quite a lot with

quotations from the operas. I gave imitations of a rattlesnake, and

told her about Snaky McFee's new way of skinning cows, and described

the trip I made to Saint Louis once. We was getting along in one

another's estimations fine. Thinks I, if Jackson Bird can now be

persuaded to migrate, I win. I recollect his promise about the pancake

receipt, and I thinks I will persuade it from Miss Willella and give

it to him; and then if I catches Birdie off of Mired Mule again, I'll

make him hop the twig.

"So, along about ten o'clock, I put on a wheedling smile and says to

Miss Willella: 'Now, if there's anything I do like better than the

sight of a red steer on green grass it's the taste of a nice hot

pancake smothered in sugar-house molasses.'

"Miss Willella gives a little jump on the piano stool, and looked at

me curious.

"'Yes,' says she, 'they're real nice. What did you say was the name of

that street in Saint Louis, Mr. Odom, where you lost your hat?'

"'Pancake Avenue,' says I, with a wink, to show her that I was on

about the family receipt, and couldn't be side-corralled off of the

subject. 'Come, now, Miss Willella,' I says; 'let's hear how you make

'em. Pancakes is just whirling in my head like wagon wheels. Start her

off, now--pound of flour, eight dozen eggs, and so on. How does the

catalogue of constituents run?'

"'Excuse me for a moment, please,' says Miss Willella, and she gives

me a quick kind of sideways look, and slides off the stool. She ambled

out into the other room, and directly Uncle Emsley comes in in his

shirt sleeves, with a pitcher of water. He turns around to get a glass

on the table, and I see a forty-five in his hip pocket. 'Great post-

holes!' thinks I, 'but here's a family thinks a heap of cooking

receipts, protecting it with firearms. I've known outfits that

wouldn't do that much by a family feud.'

"'Drink this here down,' says Uncle Emsley, handing me the glass of

water. 'You've rid too far to-day, Jud, and got yourself over-excited.

Try to think about something else now.'

"'Do you know how to make them pancakes, Uncle Emsley?' I asked.

"'Well, I'm not as apprised in the anatomy of them as some,' says

Uncle Emsley, 'but I reckon you take a sifter of plaster of Paris and

a little dough and saleratus and corn meal, and mix 'em with eggs and

buttermilk as usual. Is old Bill going to ship beeves to Kansas City

again this spring, Jud?'

"That was all the pancake specifications I could get that night. I

didn't wonder that Jackson Bird found it uphill work. So I dropped the

subject and talked with Uncle Emsley for a while about hollow-horn and

cyclones. And then Miss Willella came and said 'Good-night,' and I hit

the breeze for the ranch.

"About a week afterward I met Jackson Bird riding out of Pimienta as I

rode in, and we stopped on the road for a few frivolous remarks.

"'Got the bill of particulars for them flapjacks yet?' I asked him.

"'Well, no,' says Jackson. 'I don't seem to have any success in

getting hold of it. Did you try?'

"'I did,' says I, 'and 'twas like trying to dig a prairie dog out of

his hole with a peanut hull. That pancake receipt must be a

jookalorum, the way they hold on to it.'

"'I'm most ready to give it up,' says Jackson, so discouraged in his

pronunciations that I felt sorry for him; 'but I did want to know how

to make them pancakes to eat on my lonely ranch,' says he. 'I lie

awake at nights thinking how good they are.'

"'You keep on trying for it,' I tells him, 'and I'll do the same. One

of us is bound to get a rope over its horns before long. Well, so-

long, Jacksy.'

"You see, by this time we were on the peacefullest of terms. When I

saw that he wasn't after Miss Willella, I had more endurable

contemplations of that sandy-haired snoozer. In order to help out the

ambitions of his appetite I kept on trying to get that receipt from

Miss Willella. But every time I would say 'pancakes' she would get

sort of remote and fidgety about the eye, and try to change the

subject. If I held her to it she would slide out and round up Uncle

Emsley with his pitcher of water and hip-pocket howitzer.

"One day I galloped over to the store with a fine bunch of blue

verbenas that I cut out of a herd of wild flowers over on Poisoned Dog

Prairie. Uncle Emsley looked at 'em with one eye shut and says:

"'Haven't ye heard the news?'

"'Cattle up?' I asks.

"'Willella and Jackson Bird was married in Palestine yesterday,' says

he. 'Just got a letter this morning.'

"I dropped them flowers in a cracker-barrel, and let the news trickle

in my ears and down toward my upper left-hand shirt pocket until it

got to my feet.

"'Would you mind saying that over again once more, Uncle Emsley?' says

I. 'Maybe my hearing has got wrong, and you only said that prime

heifers was 4.80 on the hoof, or something like that.'

"'Married yesterday,' says Uncle Emsley, 'and gone to Waco and Niagara

Falls on a wedding tour. Why, didn't you see none of the signs all

along? Jackson Bird has been courting Willella ever since that day he

took her out riding.'

"'Then,' says I, in a kind of yell, 'what was all this zizzaparoola he

gives me about pancakes? Tell me /that/.'

"When I said 'pancakes' Uncle Emsley sort of dodged and stepped back.

"'Somebody's been dealing me pancakes from the bottom of the deck,' I

says, 'and I'll find out. I believe you know. Talk up,' says I, 'or

we'll mix a panful of batter right here.'

"I slid over the counter after Uncle Emsley. He grabbed at his gun,

but it was in a drawer, and he missed it two inches. I got him by the

front of his shirt and shoved him in a corner.

"'Talk pancakes,' says I, 'or be made into one. Does Miss Willella

make 'em?'

"'She never made one in her life and I never saw one,' says Uncle

Emsley, soothing. 'Calm down now, Jud--calm down. You've got excited,

and that wound in your head is contaminating your sense of

intelligence. Try not to think about pancakes.'

"'Uncle Emsley,' says I, 'I'm not wounded in the head except so far as

my natural cognitive instincts run to runts. Jackson Bird told me he

was calling on Miss Willella for the purpose of finding out her system

of producing pancakes, and he asked me to help him get the bill of

lading of the ingredients. I done so, with the results as you see.

Have I been sodded down with Johnson grass by a pink-eyed snoozer, or

what?'

"'Slack up your grip in my dress shirt,' says Uncle Emsley, 'and I'll

tell you. Yes, it looks like Jackson Bird has gone and humbugged you

some. The day after he went riding with Willella he came back and told

me and her to watch out for you whenever you got to talking about

pancakes. He said you was in camp once where they was cooking

flapjacks, and one of the fellows cut you over the head with a frying

pan. Jackson said that whenever you got overhot or excited that wound

hurt you and made you kind of crazy, and you went raving about

pancakes. He told us to just get you worked off of the subject and

soothed down, and you wouldn't be dangerous. So, me and Willella done

the best by you we knew how. Well, well,' says Uncle Emsley, 'that

Jackson Bird is sure a seldom kind of a snoozer.'"

During the progress of Jud's story he had been slowly but deftly

combining certain portions of the contents of his sacks and cans.

Toward the close of it he set before me the finished product--a pair

of red-hot, rich-hued pancakes on a tin plate. From some secret

hoarding he also brought a lump of excellent butter and a bottle of

golden syrup.

"How long ago did these things happen?" I asked him.

"Three years," said Jud. "They're living on the Mired Mule Ranch now.

But I haven't seen either of 'em since. They say Jackson Bird was

fixing his ranch up fine with rocking chairs and window curtains all

the time he was putting me up the pancake tree. Oh, I got over it

after a while. But the boys kept the racket up."

"Did you make these cakes by the famous recipe?" I asked.

"Didn't I tell you there wasn't no receipt?" said Jud. "The boys

hollered pancakes till they got pancake hungry, and I cut this recipe

out of a newspaper. How does the truck taste?"

"They're delicious," I answered. "Why don't you have some, too, Jud?"

I was sure I heard a sigh.

"Me?" said Jud. "I don't ever eat 'em."

SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY

Golden by day and silver by night, a new trail now leads to us across

the Indian Ocean. Dusky kings and princes have found our Bombay of the

West; and few be their trails that do not lead down to Broadway on

their journey for to admire and for to see.

If chance should ever lead you near a hotel that transiently shelters

some one of these splendid touring grandees, I counsel you to seek

Lucullus Polk among the republican tuft-hunters that besiege its

entrances. He will be there. You will know him by his red, alert,

Wellington-nosed face, by his manner of nervous caution mingled with

determination, by his assumed promoter's or broker's air of busy

impatience, and by his bright-red necktie, gallantly redressing the

wrongs of his maltreated blue serge suit, like a battle standard still

waving above a lost cause. I found him profitable; and so may you.

When you do look for him, look among the light-horse troop of Bedouins

that besiege the picket-line of the travelling potentate's guards and

secretaries--among the wild-eyed genii of Arabian Afternoons that

gather to make astounding and egregrious demands upon the prince's

coffers.

I first saw Mr. Polk coming down the steps of the hotel at which

sojourned His Highness the Gaekwar of Baroda, most enlightened of the

Mahratta princes, who, of late, ate bread and salt in our Metropolis

of the Occident.

Lucullus moved rapidly, as though propelled by some potent moral force

that imminently threatened to become physical. Behind him closely

followed the impetus--a hotel detective, if ever white Alpine hat,

hawk's nose, implacable watch chain, and loud refinement of manner

spoke the truth. A brace of uniformed porters at his heels preserved

the smooth decorum of the hotel, repudiating by their air of

disengagement any suspicion that they formed a reserve squad of

ejectment.

Safe on the sidewalk, Lucullus Polk turned and shook a freckled fist

at the caravansary. And, to my joy, he began to breathe deep invective

in strange words:

"Rides in howdays, does he?" he cried loudly and sneeringly. "Rides on

elephants in howdahs and calls himself a prince! Kings--yah! Comes

over here and talks horse till you would think he was a president; and

then goes home and rides in a private dining-room strapped onto an

elephant. Well, well, well!"

The ejecting committee quietly retired. The scorner of princes turned

to me and snapped his fingers.

"What do you think of that?" he shouted derisively. "The Gaekwar of

Baroda rides in an elephant in a howdah! And there's old Bikram

Shamsher Jang scorching up and down the pig-paths of Khatmandu on a

motor-cycle. Wouldn't that maharajah you? And the Shah of Persia, that

ought to have been Muley-on-the-spot for at least three, he's got the

palanquin habit. And that funny-hat prince from Korea--wouldn't you

think he could afford to amble around on a milk-white palfrey once in

a dynasty or two? Nothing doing! His idea of a Balaklava charge is to

tuck his skirts under him and do his mile in six days over the hog-

wallows of Seoul in a bull-cart. That's the kind of visiting

potentates that come to this country now. It's a hard deal, friend."

I murmured a few words of sympathy. But it was uncomprehending, for I

did not know his grievance against the rulers who flash, meteor-like,

now and then upon our shores.

"The last one I sold," continued the displeased one, "was to that

three-horse-tailed Turkish pasha that came over a year ago. Five

hundred dollars he paid for it, easy. I says to his executioner or

secretary--he was a kind of a Jew or a Chinaman--'His Turkey Gibbets

is fond of horses, then?'

"'Him?' says the secretary. 'Well, no. He's got a big, fat wife in the

harem named Bad Dora that he don't like. I believe he intends to

saddle her up and ride her up and down the board-walk in the Bulbul

Gardens a few times every day. You haven't got a pair of extra-long

spurs you could throw in on the deal, have you?' Yes, sir; there's

mighty few real rough-riders among the royal sports these days."

As soon as Lucullus Polk got cool enough I picked him up, and with no

greater effort than you would employ in persuading a drowning man to

clutch a straw, I inveigled him into accompanying me to a cool corner

in a dim cafe.

And it came to pass that man-servants set before us brewage; and

Lucullus Polk spake unto me, relating the wherefores of his

beleaguering the antechambers of the princes of the earth.

"Did you ever hear of the S.A. & A.P. Railroad in Texas? Well, that

don't stand for Samaritan Actor's Aid Philanthropy. I was down that

way managing a summer bunch of the gum and syntax-chewers that play

the Idlewild Parks in the Western hamlets. Of course, we went to

pieces when the soubrette ran away with a prominent barber of

Beeville. I don't know what became of the rest of the company. I

believe there were some salaries due; and the last I saw of the troupe

was when I told them that forty-three cents was all the treasury

contained. I say I never saw any of them after that; but I heard them

for about twenty minutes. I didn't have time to look back. But after

dark I came out of the woods and struck the S.A. & A.P. agent for

means of transportation. He at once extended to me the courtesies of

the entire railroad, kindly warning me, however, not to get aboard any

of the rolling stock.

"About ten the next morning I steps off the ties into a village that

calls itself Atascosa City. I bought a thirty-cent breakfast and a

ten-cent cigar, and stood on the Main Street jingling the three

pennies in my pocket--dead broke. A man in Texas with only three cents

in his pocket is no better off than a man that has no money and owes

two cents.

"One of luck's favourite tricks is to soak a man for his last dollar

so quick that he don't have time to look it. There I was in a swell

St. Louis tailor-made, blue-and-green plaid suit, and an eighteen-

carat sulphate-of-copper scarf-pin, with no hope in sight except the

two great Texas industries, the cotton fields and grading new

railroads. I never picked cotton, and I never cottoned to a pick, so

the outlook had ultramarine edges.

"All of a sudden, while I was standing on the edge of the wooden

sidewalk, down out of the sky falls two fine gold watches in the

middle of the street. One hits a chunk of mud and sticks. The other

falls hard and flies open, making a fine drizzle of little springs and

screws and wheels. I looks up for a balloon or an airship; but not

seeing any, I steps off the sidewalk to investigate.

"But I hear a couple of yells and see two men running up the street in

leather overalls and high-heeled boots and cartwheel hats. One man is

six or eight feet high, with open-plumbed joints and a heartbroken

cast of countenance. He picks up the watch that has stuck in the mud.

The other man, who is little, with pink hair and white eyes, goes for

the empty case, and says, 'I win.' Then the elevated pessimist goes

down under his leather leg-holsters and hands a handful of twenty-

dollar gold pieces to his albino friend. I don't know how much money

it was; it looked as big as an earthquake-relief fund to me.

"'I'll have this here case filled up with works,' says Shorty, 'and

throw you again for five hundred.'

"'I'm your company,' says the high man. 'I'll meet you at the Smoked

Dog Saloon an hour from now.'

"The little man hustles away with a kind of Swiss movement toward a

jewelry store. The heartbroken person stoops over and takes a

telescopic view of my haberdashery.

"'Them's a mighty slick outfit of habiliments you have got on, Mr.

Man,' says he. 'I'll bet a hoss you never acquired the right, title,

and interest in and to them clothes in Atascosa City.'

"'Why, no,' says I, being ready enough to exchange personalities with

this moneyed monument of melancholy. 'I had this suit tailored from a

special line of coatericks, vestures, and pantings in St. Louis. Would

you mind putting me sane,' says I, 'on this watch-throwing contest?

I've been used to seeing time-pieces treated with more politeness and

esteem--except women's watches, of course, which by nature they abuse

by cracking walnuts with 'em and having 'em taken showing in tintype

pictures.'

"'Me and George,' he explains, 'are up from the ranch, having a spell

of fun. Up to last month we owned four sections of watered grazing

down on the San Miguel. But along comes one of these oil prospectors

and begins to bore. He strikes a gusher that flows out twenty thousand

--or maybe it was twenty million--barrels of oil a day. And me and

George gets one hundred and fifty thousand dollars--seventy-five

thousand dollars apiece--for the land. So now and then we saddles up

and hits the breeze for Atascosa City for a few days of excitement and

damage. Here's a little bunch of the /dinero/ that I drawed out of the

bank this morning,' says he, and shows a roll of twenties and fifties

as big around as a sleeping-car pillow. The yellowbacks glowed like a

sunset on the gable end of John D.'s barn. My knees got weak, and I

sat down on the edge of the board sidewalk.

"'You must have knocked around a right smart,' goes on this oil

Grease-us. 'I shouldn't be surprised if you have saw towns more

livelier than what Atascosa City is. Sometimes it seems to me that

there ought to be some more ways of having a good time than there is

here, 'specially when you've got plenty of money and don't mind

spending it.'

"Then this Mother Cary's chick of the desert sits down by me and we

hold a conversationfest. It seems that he was money-poor. He'd lived

in ranch camps all his life; and he confessed to me that his supreme

idea of luxury was to ride into camp, tired out from a round-up, eat a

peck of Mexican beans, hobble his brains with a pint of raw whisky,

and go to sleep with his boots for a pillow. When this barge-load of

unexpected money came to him and his pink but perky partner, George,

and they hied themselves to this clump of outhouses called Atascosa

City, you know what happened to them. They had money to buy anything

they wanted; but they didn't know what to want. Their ideas of

spendthriftiness were limited to three--whisky, saddles, and gold

watches. If there was anything else in the world to throw away

fortunes on, they had never heard about it. So, when they wanted to

have a hot time, they'd ride into town and get a city directory and

stand in front of the principal saloon and call up the population

alphabetically for free drinks. Then they would order three or four

new California saddles from the storekeeper, and play crack-loo on the

sidewalk with twenty-dollar gold pieces. Betting who could throw his

gold watch the farthest was an inspiration of George's; but even that

was getting to be monotonous.

"Was I on to the opportunity? Listen.

"In thirty minutes I had dashed off a word picture of metropolitan

joys that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney

Island with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an

agreement that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in

and to the aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which was

his name, was to pay all expenses for a month. At the end of that

time, if I had made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was

to pay me one thousand dollars. And then, to clinch the bargain, we

called the roll of Atascosa City and put all of its citizens except

the ladies and minors under the table, except one man named Horace

Westervelt St. Clair. Just for that we bought a couple of hatfuls of

cheap silver watches and egged him out of town with 'em. We wound up

by dragging the harness-maker out of bed and setting him to work on

three new saddles; and then we went to sleep across the railroad track

at the depot, just to annoy the S.A. & A.P. Think of having seventy-

five thousand dollars and trying to avoid the disgrace of dying rich

in a town like that!

"The next day George, who was married or something, started back to

the ranch. Me and Solly, as I now called him, prepared to shake off

our moth balls and wing our way against the arc-lights of the joyous

and tuneful East.

"'No way-stops,' says I to Solly, 'except long enough to get you

barbered and haberdashed. This is no Texas feet shampetter,' says I,

'where you eat chili-concarne-con-huevos and then holler "Whoopee!"

across the plaza. We're now going against the real high life. We're

going to mingle with the set that carries a Spitz, wears spats, and

hits the ground in high spots.'

"Solly puts six thousand dollars in century bills in one pocket of his

brown ducks, and bills of lading for ten thousand dollars on Eastern

banks in another. Then I resume diplomatic relations with the S.A. &

A.P., and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route

to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.

"We stopped in San Antonio long enough for Solly to buy some clothes,

and eight rounds of drinks for the guests and employees of the Menger

Hotel, and order four Mexican saddles with silver trimmings and white

Angora /suaderos/ to be shipped down to the ranch. From there we made

a big jump to St. Louis. We got there in time for dinner; and I put

our thumb-prints on the register of the most expensive hotel in the

city.

"'Now,' says I to Solly, with a wink at myself, 'here's the first

dinner-station we've struck where we can get a real good plate of

beans.' And while he was up in his room trying to draw water out of

the gas-pipe, I got one finger in the buttonhole of the head waiter's

Tuxedo, drew him apart, inserted a two-dollar bill, and closed him up

again.

"'Frankoyse,' says I, 'I have a pal here for dinner that's been

subsisting for years on cereals and short stogies. You see the chef

and order a dinner for us such as you serve to Dave Francis and the

general passenger agent of the Iron Mountain when they eat here. We've

got more than Bernhardt's tent full of money; and we want the nose-

bags crammed with all the Chief Deveries /de cuisine/. Object is no

expense. Now, show us.'

"At six o'clock me and Solly sat down to dinner. Spread! There's

nothing been seen like it since the Cambon snack. It was all served at

once. The chef called it /dinnay a la poker/. It's a famous thing

among the gormands of the West. The dinner comes in threes of a kind.

There was guinea-fowls, guinea-pigs, and Guinness's stout; roast veal,

mock turtle soup, and chicken pate; shad-roe, caviar, and tapioca;

canvas-back duck, canvas-back ham, and cotton-tail rabbit;

Philadelphia capon, fried snails, and sloe-gin--and so on, in threes.

The idea was that you eat nearly all you can of them, and then the

waiter takes away the discard and gives you pears to fill on.

"I was sure Solly would be tickled to death with these hands, after

the bobtail flushes he'd been eating on the ranch; and I was a little

anxious that he should, for I didn't remember his having honoured my

efforts with a smile since we left Atascosa City.

"We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd

there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics,

the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so

fast that strangers often think they are discussing water-colours; and

that has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre. And

over in the corner was a fine brass band playing; and now, thinks I,

Solly will become conscious of the spiritual oats of life nourishing

and exhilarating his system. But /nong, mong frang/.

"He gazed across the table at me. There was four square yards of it,

looking like the path of a cyclone that has wandered through a stock-

yard, a poultry-farm, a vegetable-garden, and an Irish linen mill.

Solly gets up and comes around to me.

"'Luke,' says he, 'I'm pretty hungry after our ride. I thought you

said they had some beans here. I'm going out and get something I can

eat. You can stay and monkey with this artificial layout of grub if

you want to.'

"'Wait a minute,' says I.

"I called the waiter, and slapped 'S. Mills' on the back of the check

for thirteen dollars and fifty cents.

"'What do you mean,' says I, 'by serving gentlemen with a lot of truck

only suitable for deck-hands on a Mississippi steamboat? We're going

out to get something decent to eat.'

"I walked up the street with the unhappy plainsman. He saw a saddle-

shop open, and some of the sadness faded from his eyes. We went in,

and he ordered and paid for two more saddles--one with a solid silver

horn and nails and ornaments and a six-inch border of rhinestones and

imitation rubies around the flaps. The other one had to have a gold-

mounted horn, quadruple-plated stirrups, and the leather inlaid with

silver beadwork wherever it would stand it. Eleven hundred dollars the

two cost him.

"Then he goes out and heads toward the river, following his nose. In a

little side street, where there was no street and no sidewalks and no

houses, he finds what he is looking for. We go into a shanty and sit

on high stools among stevedores and boatmen, and eat beans with tin

spoons. Yes, sir, beans--beans boiled with salt pork.

"'I kind of thought we'd strike some over this way,' says Solly.

"'Delightful,' says I, 'That stylish hotel grub may appeal to some;

but for me, give me the husky /table d'goat.'

"When we had succumbed to the beans I leads him out of the tarpaulin-

steam under a lamp post and pulls out a daily paper with the amusement

column folded out.

"'But now, what ho for a merry round of pleasure,' says I. 'Here's one

of Hall Caine's shows, and a stock-yard company in "Hamlet," and

skating at the Hollowhorn Rink, and Sarah Bernhardt, and the Shapely

Syrens Burlesque Company. I should think, now, that the Shapely--'

"But what does this healthy, wealthy, and wise man do but reach his

arms up to the second-story windows and gape noisily.

"'Reckon I'll be going to bed,' says he; 'it's about my time. St.

Louis is a kind of quiet place, ain't it?'

"'Oh, yes,' says I; 'ever since the railroads ran in here the town's

been practically ruined. And the building-and-loan associations and

the fair have about killed it. Guess we might as well go to bed. Wait

till you see Chicago, though. Shall we get tickets for the Big Breeze

to-morrow?'

"'Mought as well,' says Solly. 'I reckon all these towns are about

alike.'

"Well, maybe the wise cicerone and personal conductor didn't fall hard

in Chicago! Loolooville-on-the-Lake is supposed to have one or two

things in it calculated to keep the rural visitor awake after the

curfew rings. But not for the grass-fed man of the pampas! I tried him

with theatres, rides in automobiles, sails on the lake, champagne

suppers, and all those little inventions that hold the simple life in

check; but in vain. Solly grew sadder day by day. And I got fearful

about my salary, and knew I must play my trump card. So I mentioned

New York to him, and informed him that these Western towns were no

more than gateways to the great walled city of the whirling dervishes.

"After I bought the tickets I missed Solly. I knew his habits by then;

so in a couple of hours I found him in a saddle-shop. They had some

new ideas there in the way of trees and girths that had strayed down

from the Canadian mounted police; and Solly was so interested that he

almost looked reconciled to live. He invested about nine hundred

dollars in there.

"At the depot I telegraphed a cigar-store man I knew in New York to

meet me at the Twenty-third Street ferry with a list of all the

saddle-stores in the city. I wanted to know where to look for Solly

when he got lost.

"Now I'll tell you what happened in New York. I says to myself:

'Friend Heherezade, you want to get busy and make Bagdad look pretty

to the sad sultan of the sour countenance, or it'll be the bowstring

for yours.' But I never had any doubt I could do it.

"I began with him like you'd feed a starving man. I showed him the

horse-cars on Broadway and the Staten Island ferry-boats. And then I

piled up the sensations on him, but always keeping a lot of warmer

ones up my sleeve.

"At the end of the third day he looked like a composite picture of

five thousand orphans too late to catch a picnic steamboat, and I was

wilting down a collar every two hours wondering how I could please him

and whether I was going to get my thou. He went to sleep looking at

the Brooklyn Bridge; he disregarded the sky-scrapers above the third

story; it took three ushers to wake him up at the liveliest vaudeville

in town.

"Once I thought I had him. I nailed a pair of cuffs on him one morning

before he was awake; and I dragged him that evening to the palm-cage

of one of the biggest hotels in the city--to see the Johnnies and the

Alice-sit-by-the-hours. They were out in numerous quantities, with the

fat of the land showing in their clothes. While we were looking them

over, Solly divested himself of a fearful, rusty kind of laugh--like

moving a folding bed with one roller broken. It was his first in two

weeks, and it gave me hope.

"'Right you are,' says I. 'They're a funny lot of post-cards, aren't

they?'

"'Oh, I wasn't thinking of them dudes and culls on the hoof,' says he.

'I was thinking of the time me and George put sheep-dip in Horsehead

Johnson's whisky. I wish I was back in Atascosa City,' says he.

"I felt a cold chill run down my back. 'Me to play and mate in one

move,' says I to myself.

"I made Solly promise to stay in the cafe for half an hour and I hiked

out in a cab to Lolabelle Delatour's flat on Forty-third Street. I

knew her well. She was a chorus-girl in a Broadway musical comedy.

"'Jane,' says I when I found her, 'I've got a friend from Texas here.

He's all right, but--well, he carries weight. I'd like to give him a

little whirl after the show this evening--bubbles, you know, and a

buzz out to a casino for the whitebait and pickled walnuts. Is it a

go?'

"'Can he sing?' asks Lolabelle.

"'You know,' says I, 'that I wouldn't take him away from home unless

his notes were good. He's got pots of money--bean-pots full of it.'

"'Bring him around after the second act,' says Lolabelle, 'and I'll

examine his credentials and securities.'

"So about ten o'clock that evening I led Solly to Miss Delatour's

dressing-room, and her maid let us in. In ten minutes in comes

Lolabelle, fresh from the stage, looking stunning in the costume she

wears when she steps from the ranks of the lady grenadiers and says to

the king, 'Welcome to our May-day revels.' And you can bet it wasn't

the way she spoke the lines that got her the part.

"As soon as Solly saw her he got up and walked straight out through

the stage entrance into the street. I followed him. Lolabelle wasn't

paying my salary. I wondered whether anybody was.

"'Luke,' says Solly, outside, 'that was an awful mistake. We must have

got into the lady's private room. I hope I'm gentleman enough to do

anything possible in the way of apologies. Do you reckon she'd ever

forgive us?'

"'She may forget it,' says I. 'Of course it was a mistake. Let's go

find some beans.'

"That's the way it went. But pretty soon afterward Solly failed to

show up at dinner-time for several days. I cornered him. He confessed

that he had found a restaurant on Third Avenue where they cooked beans

in Texas style. I made him take me there. The minute I set foot inside

the door I threw up my hands.

"There was a young woman at the desk, and Solly introduced me to her.

And then we sat down and had beans.

"Yes, sir, sitting at the desk was the kind of a young woman that can

catch any man in the world as easy as lifting a finger. There's a way

of doing it. She knew. I saw her working it. She was healthy-looking

and plain dressed. She had her hair drawn back from her forehead and

face--no curls or frizzes; that's the way she looked. Now I'll tell

you the way they work the game; it's simple. When she wants a man, she

manages it so that every time he looks at her he finds her looking at

him. That's all.

"The next evening Solly was to go to Coney Island with me at seven. At

eight o'clock he hadn't showed up. I went out and found a cab. I felt

sure there was something wrong.

"'Drive to the Back Home Restaurant on Third Avenue,' says I. 'And if

I don't find what I want there, take in these saddle-shops.' I handed

him the list.

"'Boss,' says the cabby, 'I et a steak in that restaurant once. If

you're real hungry, I advise you to try the saddle-shops first.'

"'I'm a detective,' says I, 'and I don't eat. Hurry up!'

"As soon as I got to the restaurant I felt in the lines of my palms

that I should beware of a tall, red, damfool man, and I was going to

lose a sum of money.

"Solly wasn't there. Neither was the smooth-haired lady.

"I waited; and in an hour they came in a cab and got out, hand in

hand. I asked Solly to step around the corner for a few words. He was

grinning clear across his face; but I had not administered the grin.

"'She's the greatest that ever sniffed the breeze,' says he.

"'Congrats,' says I. 'I'd like to have my thousand now, if you

please.'

"'Well, Luke,' says he, 'I don't know that I've had such a skyhoodlin'

fine time under your tutelage and dispensation. But I'll do the best I

can for you--I'll do the best I can,' he repeats. 'Me and Miss Skinner

was married an hour ago. We're leaving for Texas in the morning.'

"'Great!' says I. 'Consider yourself covered with rice and Congress

gaiters. But don't let's tie so many satin bows on our business

relations that we lose sight of 'em. How about my honorarium?'

"'Missis Mills,' says he, 'has taken possession of my money and papers

except six bits. I told her what I'd agreed to give you; but she says

it's an irreligious and illegal contract, and she won't pay a cent of

it. But I ain't going to see you treated unfair,' says he. 'I've got

eighty-seven saddles on the ranch what I've bought on this trip; and

when I get back I'm going to pick out the best six in the lot and send

'em to you.'"

"And did he?" I asked, when Lucullus ceased talking.

"He did. And they are fit for kings to ride on. The six he sent me

must have cost him three thousand dollars. But where is the market for

'em? Who would buy one except one of these rajahs and princes of Asia

and Africa? I've got 'em all on the list. I know every tan royal dub

and smoked princerino from Mindanao to the Caspian Sea."

"It's a long time between customers," I ventured.

"They're coming faster," said Polk. "Nowadays, when one of the

murdering mutts gets civilised enough to abolish suttee and quit using

his whiskers for a napkin, he calls himself the Roosevelt of the East,

and comes over to investigate our Chautauquas and cocktails. I'll

place 'em all yet. Now look here."

From an inside pocket he drew a tightly folded newspaper with much-

worn edges, and indicated a paragraph.

"Read that," said the saddler to royalty. The paragraph ran thus:

His Highness Seyyid Feysal bin Turkee, Imam of Muskat, is one of

the most progressive and enlightened rulers of the Old World. His

stables contain more than a thousand horses of the purest Persian

breeds. It is said that this powerful prince contemplates a visit

to the United States at an early date.

"There!" said Mr. Polk triumphantly. "My best saddle is as good as

sold--the one with turquoises set in the rim of the cantle. Have you

three dollars that you could loan me for a short time?"

It happened that I had; and I did.

If this should meet the eye of the Imam of Muskat, may it quicken his

whim to visit the land of the free! Otherwise I fear that I shall be

longer than a short time separated from my dollars three.

VII

HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO

If you are knowing in the chronicles of the ring you will recall to

mind an event in the early 'nineties when, for a minute and sundry odd

seconds, a champion and a "would-be" faced each other on the alien

side of an international river. So brief a conflict had rarely imposed

upon the fair promise of true sport. The reporters made what they

could of it, but, divested of padding, the action was sadly fugacious.

The champion merely smote his victim, turned his back upon him,

remarking, "I know what I done to dat stiff," and extended an arm like

a ship's mast for his glove to be removed.

Which accounts for a trainload of extremely disgusted gentlemen in an

uproar of fancy vests and neck-wear being spilled from their pullmans

in San Antonio in the early morning following the fight. Which also

partly accounts for the unhappy predicament in which "Cricket" McGuire

found himself as he tumbled from his car and sat upon the depot

platform, torn by a spasm of that hollow, racking cough so familiar to

San Antonian ears. At that time, in the uncertain light of dawn, that

way passed Curtis Raidler, the Nueces County cattleman--may his shadow

never measure under six foot two.

The cattleman, out this early to catch the south-bound for his ranch

station, stopped at the side of the distressed patron of sport, and

spoke in the kindly drawl of his ilk and region, "Got it pretty bad,

bud?"

"Cricket" McGuire, ex-feather-weight prizefighter, tout, jockey,

follower of the "ponies," all-round sport, and manipulator of the gum

balls and walnut shells, looked up pugnaciously at the imputation cast

by "bud."

"G'wan," he rasped, "telegraph pole. I didn't ring for yer."

Another paroxysm wrung him, and he leaned limply against a convenient

baggage truck. Raidler waited patiently, glancing around at the white

hats, short overcoats, and big cigars thronging the platform. "You're

from the No'th, ain't you, bud?" he asked when the other was partially

recovered. "Come down to see the fight?"

"Fight!" snapped McGuire. "Puss-in-the-corner! 'Twas a hypodermic

injection. Handed him just one like a squirt of dope, and he's asleep,

and no tanbark needed in front of his residence. Fight!" He rattled a

bit, coughed, and went on, hardly addressing the cattleman, but rather

for the relief of voicing his troubles. "No more dead sure t'ings for

me. But Rus Sage himself would have snatched at it. Five to one dat de

boy from Cork wouldn't stay t'ree rounds is what I invested in. Put my

last cent on, and could already smell the sawdust in dat all-night

joint of Jimmy Delaney's on T'irty-seventh Street I was goin' to buy.

And den--say, telegraph pole, what a gazaboo a guy is to put his whole

roll on one turn of the gaboozlum!"

"You're plenty right," said the big cattleman; "more 'specially when

you lose. Son, you get up and light out for a hotel. You got a mighty

bad cough. Had it long?"

"Lungs," said McGuire comprehensively. "I got it. The croaker says

I'll come to time for six months longer--maybe a year if I hold my

gait. I wanted to settle down and take care of myself. Dat's why I

speculated on dat five to one perhaps. I had a t'ousand iron dollars

saved up. If I winned I was goin' to buy Delaney's cafe. Who'd a

t'ought dat stiff would take a nap in de foist round--say?"

"It's a hard deal," commented Raidler, looking down at the diminutive

form of McGuire crumpled against the truck. "But you go to a hotel and

rest. There's the Menger and the Maverick, and--"

"And the Fi'th Av'noo, and the Waldorf-Astoria," mimicked McGuire.

"Told you I went broke. I'm on de bum proper. I've got one dime left.

Maybe a trip to Europe or a sail in me private yacht would fix me up--

pa-per!"

He flung his dime at a newsboy, got his /Express/, propped his back

against the truck, and was at once rapt in the account of his

Waterloo, as expanded by the ingenious press.

Curtis Raidler interrogated an enormous gold watch, and laid his hand

on McGuire's shoulder.

"Come on, bud," he said. "We got three minutes to catch the train."

Sarcasm seemed to be McGuire's vein.

"You ain't seen me cash in any chips or call a turn since I told you I

was broke, a minute ago, have you? Friend, chase yourself away."

"You're going down to my ranch," said the cattleman, "and stay till

you get well. Six months'll fix you good as new." He lifted McGuire

with one hand, and half-dragged him in the direction of the train.

"What about the money?" said McGuire, struggling weakly to escape.

"Money for what?" asked Raidler, puzzled. They eyed each other, not

understanding, for they touched only as at the gear of bevelled cog-

wheels--at right angles, and moving upon different axes.

Passengers on the south-bound saw them seated together, and wondered

at the conflux of two such antipodes. McGuire was five feet one, with

a countenance belonging to either Yokohama or Dublin. Bright-beady of

eye, bony of cheek and jaw, scarred, toughened, broken and reknit,

indestructible, grisly, gladiatorial as a hornet, he was a type

neither new nor unfamiliar. Raidler was the product of a different

soil. Six feet two in height, miles broad, and no deeper than a

crystal brook, he represented the union of the West and South. Few

accurate pictures of his kind have been made, for art galleries are so

small and the mutoscope is as yet unknown in Texas. After all, the

only possible medium of portrayal of Raidler's kind would be the

fresco--something high and simple and cool and unframed.

They were rolling southward on the International. The timber was

huddling into little, dense green motts at rare distances before the

inundation of the downright, vert prairies. This was the land of the

ranches; the domain of the kings of the kine.

McGuire sat, collapsed into his corner of the seat, receiving with

acid suspicion the conversation of the cattleman. What was the "game"

of this big "geezer" who was carrying him off? Altruism would have

been McGuire's last guess. "He ain't no farmer," thought the captive,

"and he ain't no con man, for sure. W'at's his lay? You trail in,

Cricket, and see how many cards he draws. You're up against it,

anyhow. You got a nickel and gallopin' consumption, and you better

lay low. Lay low and see w'at's his game."

At Rincon, a hundred miles from San Antonio, they left the train for a

buckboard which was waiting there for Raidler. In this they travelled

the thirty miles between the station and their destination. If

anything could, this drive should have stirred the acrimonious McGuire

to a sense of his ransom. They sped upon velvety wheels across an

exhilarant savanna. The pair of Spanish ponies struck a nimble,

tireless trot, which gait they occasionally relieved by a wild,

untrammelled gallop. The air was wine and seltzer, perfumed, as they

absorbed it, with the delicate redolence of prairie flowers. The road

perished, and the buckboard swam the uncharted billows of the grass

itself, steered by the practised hand of Raidler, to whom each tiny

distant mott of trees was a signboard, each convolution of the low

hills a voucher of course and distance. But McGuire reclined upon his

spine, seeing nothing but a desert, and receiving the cattleman's

advances with sullen distrust. "W'at's he up to?" was the burden of

his thoughts; "w'at kind of a gold brick has the big guy got to sell?"

McGuire was only applying the measure of the streets he had walked to

a range bounded by the horizon and the fourth dimension.

A week before, while riding the prairies, Raidler had come upon a sick

and weakling calf deserted and bawling. Without dismounting he had

reached and slung the distressed bossy across his saddle, and dropped

it at the ranch for the boys to attend to. It was impossible for

McGuire to know or comprehend that, in the eyes of the cattleman, his

case and that of the calf were identical in interest and demand upon

his assistance. A creature was ill and helpless; he had the power to

render aid--these were the only postulates required for the cattleman

to act. They formed his system of logic and the most of his creed.

McGuire was the seventh invalid whom Raidler had picked up thus

casually in San Antonio, where so many thousand go for the ozone that

is said to linger about its contracted streets. Five of them had been

guests of Solito Ranch until they had been able to leave, cured or

better, and exhausting the vocabulary of tearful gratitude. One came

too late, but rested very comfortably, at last, under a ratama tree in

the garden.

So, then, it was no surprise to the ranchhold when the buckboard spun

to the door, and Raidler took up his debile /protege/ like a handful

of rags and set him down upon the gallery.

McGuire looked upon things strange to him. The ranch-house was the

best in the country. It was built of brick hauled one hundred miles by

wagon, but it was of but one story, and its four rooms were completely

encircled by a mud floor "gallery." The miscellaneous setting of

horses, dogs, saddles, wagons, guns, and cow-punchers' paraphernalia

oppressed the metropolitan eyes of the wrecked sportsman.

"Well, here we are at home," said Raidler, cheeringly.

"It's a h--l of a looking place," said McGuire promptly, as he rolled

upon the gallery floor in a fit of coughing.

"We'll try to make it comfortable for you, buddy," said the cattleman

gently. "It ain't fine inside; but it's the outdoors, anyway, that'll

do you the most good. This'll be your room, in here. Anything we got,

you ask for it."

He led McGuire into the east room. The floor was bare and clean. White

curtains waved in the gulf breeze through the open windows. A big

willow rocker, two straight chairs, a long table covered with

newspapers, pipes, tobacco, spurs, and cartridges stood in the centre.

Some well-mounted heads of deer and one of an enormous black javeli

projected from the walls. A wide, cool cot-bed stood in a corner.

Nueces County people regarded this guest chamber as fit for a prince.

McGuire showed his eyeteeth at it. He took out his nickel and spun it

up to the ceiling.

"T'ought I was lyin' about the money, did ye? Well, you can frisk me

if you wanter. Dat's the last simoleon in the treasury. Who's goin' to

pay?"

The cattleman's clear grey eyes looked steadily from under his grizzly

brows into the huckleberry optics of his guest. After a little he said

simply, and not ungraciously, "I'll be much obliged to you, son, if

you won't mention money any more. Once was quite a plenty. Folks I ask

to my ranch don't have to pay anything, and they very scarcely ever

offers it. Supper'll be ready in half an hour. There's water in the

pitcher, and some, cooler, to drink, in that red jar hanging on the

gallery."

"Where's the bell?" asked McGuire, looking about.

"Bell for what?"

"Bell to ring for things. I can't--see here," he exploded in a sudden,

weak fury, "I never asked you to bring me here. I never held you up

for a cent. I never gave you a hard-luck story till you asked me. Here

I am fifty miles from a bellboy or a cocktail. I'm sick. I can't

hustle. Gee! but I'm up against it!" McGuire fell upon the cot and

sobbed shiveringly.

Raidler went to the door and called. A slender, bright-complexioned

Mexican youth about twenty came quickly. Raidler spoke to him in

Spanish.

"Ylario, it is in my mind that I promised you the position of

/vaquero/ on the San Carlos range at the fall /rodeo/."

"/Si, senor/, such was your goodness."

"Listen. This /senorito/ is my friend. He is very sick. Place yourself

at his side. Attend to his wants at all times. Have much patience and

care with him. And when he is well, or--and when he is well, instead

of /vaquero/ I will make you /mayordomo/ of the Rancho de las Piedras.

/Esta bueno/?"

"/Si, si--mil gracias, senor/." Ylario tried to kneel upon the floor

in his gratitude, but the cattleman kicked at him benevolently,

growling, "None of your opery-house antics, now."

Ten minutes later Ylario came from McGuire's room and stood before

Raidler.

"The little /senor/," he announced, "presents his compliments"

(Raidler credited Ylario with the preliminary) "and desires some

pounded ice, one hot bath, one gin feez-z, that the windows be all

closed, toast, one shave, one Newyorkheral', cigarettes, and to send

one telegram."

Raidler took a quart bottle of whisky from his medicine cabinet.

"Here, take him this," he said.

Thus was instituted the reign of terror at the Solito Ranch. For a few

weeks McGuire blustered and boasted and swaggered before the cow-

punchers who rode in for miles around to see this latest importation

of Raidler's. He was an absolutely new experience to them. He

explained to them all the intricate points of sparring and the tricks

of training and defence. He opened to their minds' view all the

indecorous life of a tagger after professional sports. His jargon of

slang was a continuous joy and surprise to them. His gestures, his

strange poses, his frank ribaldry of tongue and principle fascinated

them. He was like a being from a new world.

Strange to say, this new world he had entered did not exist to him. He

was an utter egoist of bricks and mortar. He had dropped out, he felt,

into open space for a time, and all it contained was an audience for

his reminiscences. Neither the limitless freedom of the prairie days

nor the grand hush of the close-drawn, spangled nights touched him.

All the hues of Aurora could not win him from the pink pages of a

sporting journal. "Get something for nothing," was his mission in

life; "Thirty-seventh" Street was his goal.

Nearly two months after his arrival he began to complain that he felt

worse. It was then that he became the ranch's incubus, its harpy, its

Old Man of the Sea. He shut himself in his room like some venomous

kobold or flibbertigibbet, whining, complaining, cursing, accusing.

The keynote of his plaint was that he had been inveigled into a

gehenna against his will; that he was dying of neglect and lack of

comforts. With all his dire protestations of increasing illness, to

the eye of others he remained unchanged. His currant-like eyes were as

bright and diabolic as ever; his voice was as rasping; his callous

face, with the skin drawn tense as a drum-head, had no flesh to lose.

A flush on his prominent cheek bones each afternoon hinted that a

clinical thermometer might have revealed a symptom, and percussion

might have established the fact that McGuire was breathing with only

one lung, but his appearance remained the same.

In constant attendance upon him was Ylario, whom the coming reward of

the /mayordomo/ship must have greatly stimulated, for McGuire chained

him to a bitter existence. The air--the man's only chance for life--he

commanded to be kept out by closed windows and drawn curtains. The

room was always blue and foul with cigarette smoke; whosoever entered

it must sit, suffocating, and listen to the imp's interminable

gasconade concerning his scandalous career.

The oddest thing of all was the relation existing between McGuire and

his benefactor. The attitude of the invalid toward the cattleman was

something like that of a peevish, perverse child toward an indulgent

parent. When Raidler would leave the ranch McGuire would fall into a

fit of malevolent, silent sullenness. When he returned, he would be

met by a string of violent and stinging reproaches. Raidler's attitude

toward his charge was quite inexplicable in its way. The cattleman

seemed actually to assume and feel the character assigned to him by

McGuire's intemperate accusations--the character of tyrant and guilty

oppressor. He seemed to have adopted the responsibility of the

fellow's condition, and he always met his tirades with a pacific,

patient, and even remorseful kindness that never altered.

One day Raidler said to him, "Try more air, son. You can have the

buckboard and a driver every day if you'll go. Try a week or two in

one of the cow camps. I'll fix you up plumb comfortable. The ground,

and the air next to it--them's the things to cure you. I knowed a man

from Philadelphy, sicker than you are, got lost on the Guadalupe, and

slept on the bare grass in sheep camps for two weeks. Well, sir, it

started him getting well, which he done. Close to the ground--that's

where the medicine in the air stays. Try a little hossback riding now.

There's a gentle pony--"

"What've I done to yer?" screamed McGuire. "Did I ever doublecross

yer? Did I ask you to bring me here? Drive me out to your camps if you

wanter; or stick a knife in me and save trouble. Ride! I can't lift my

feet. I couldn't sidestep a jab from a five-year-old kid. That's what

your d--d ranch has done for me. There's nothing to eat, nothing to

see, and nobody to talk to but a lot of Reubens who don't know a

punching bag from a lobster salad."

"It's a lonesome place, for certain," apologised Raidler abashedly.

"We got plenty, but it's rough enough. Anything you think of you want,

the boys'll ride up and fetch it down for you."

It was Chad Murchison, a cow-puncher from the Circle Bar outfit, who

first suggested that McGuire's illness was fraudulent. Chad had

brought a basket of grapes for him thirty miles, and four out of his

way, tied to his saddle-horn. After remaining in the smoke-tainted

room for a while, he emerged and bluntly confided his suspicions to

Raidler.

"His arm," said Chad, "is harder'n a diamond. He interduced me to what

he called a shore-perplexus punch, and 'twas like being kicked twice

by a mustang. He's playin' it low down on you, Curt. He ain't no

sicker'n I am. I hate to say it, but the runt's workin' you for range

and shelter."

The cattleman's ingenuous mind refused to entertain Chad's view of the

case, and when, later, he came to apply the test, doubt entered not

into his motives.

One day, about noon, two men drove up to the ranch, alighted, hitched,

and came in to dinner; standing and general invitations being the

custom of the country. One of them was a great San Antonio doctor,

whose costly services had been engaged by a wealthy cowman who had

been laid low by an accidental bullet. He was now being driven back to

the station to take the train back to town. After dinner Raidler took

him aside, pushed a twenty-dollar bill against his hand, and said:

"Doc, there's a young chap in that room I guess has got a bad case of

consumption. I'd like for you to look him over and see just how bad he

is, and if we can do anything for him."

"How much was that dinner I just ate, Mr. Raidler?" said the doctor

bluffly, looking over his spectacles. Raidler returned the money to

his pocket. The doctor immediately entered McGuire's room, and the

cattleman seated himself upon a heap of saddles on the gallery, ready

to reproach himself in the event the verdict should be unfavourable.

In ten minutes the doctor came briskly out. "Your man," he said

promptly, "is as sound as a new dollar. His lungs are better than

mine. Respiration, temperature, and pulse normal. Chest expansion four

inches. Not a sign of weakness anywhere. Of course I didn't examine

for the bacillus, but it isn't there. You can put my name to the

diagnosis. Even cigarettes and a vilely close room haven't hurt him.

Coughs, does he? Well, you tell him it isn't necessary. You asked if

there is anything we could do for him. Well, I advise you to set him

digging post-holes or breaking mustangs. There's our team ready. Good-

day, sir." And like a puff of wholesome, blustery wind the doctor was

off.

Raidler reached out and plucked a leaf from a mesquite bush by the

railing, and began chewing it thoughtfully.

The branding season was at hand, and the next morning Ross Hargis,

foreman of the outfit, was mustering his force of some twenty-five men

at the ranch, ready to start for the San Carlos range, where the work

was to begin. By six o'clock the horses were all saddled, the grub

wagon ready, and the cow-punchers were swinging themselves upon their

mounts, when Raidler bade them wait. A boy was bringing up an extra

pony, bridled and saddled, to the gate. Raidler walked to McGuire's

room and threw open the door. McGuire was lying on his cot, not yet

dressed, smoking.

"Get up," said the cattleman, and his voice was clear and brassy, like

a bugle.

"How's that?" asked McGuire, a little startled.

"Get up and dress. I can stand a rattlesnake, but I hate a liar. Do I

have to tell you again?" He caught McGuire by the neck and stood him

on the floor.

"Say, friend," cried McGuire wildly, "are you bug-house? I'm sick--

see? I'll croak if I got to hustle. What've I done to yer?"--he began

his chronic whine--"I never asked yer to--"

"Put on your clothes," called Raidler in a rising tone.

Swearing, stumbling, shivering, keeping his amazed, shining eyes upon

the now menacing form of the aroused cattleman, McGuire managed to

tumble into his clothes. Then Raidler took him by the collar and

shoved him out and across the yard to the extra pony hitched at the

gate. The cow-punchers lolled in their saddles, open-mouthed.

"Take this man," said Raidler to Ross Hargis, "and put him to work.

Make him work hard, sleep hard, and eat hard. You boys know I done

what I could for him, and he was welcome. Yesterday the best doctor in

San Antone examined him, and says he's got the lungs of a burro and

the constitution of a steer. You know what to do with him, Ross."

Ross Hargis only smiled grimly.

"Aw," said McGuire, looking intently at Raidler, with a peculiar

expression upon his face, "the croaker said I was all right, did he?

Said I was fakin', did he? You put him onto me. You t'ought I wasn't

sick. You said I was a liar. Say, friend, I talked rough, I know, but

I didn't mean most of it. If you felt like I did--aw! I forgot--I

ain't sick, the croaker says. Well, friend, now I'll go work for yer.

Here's where you play even."

He sprang into the saddle easily as a bird, got the quirt from the

horn, and gave his pony a slash with it. "Cricket," who once brought

in Good Boy by a neck at Hawthorne--and a 10 to 1 shot--had his foot

in the stirrups again.

McGuire led the cavalcade as they dashed away for San Carlos, and the

cow-punchers gave a yell of applause as they closed in behind his

dust.

But in less than a mile he had lagged to the rear, and was last man

when they struck the patch of high chaparral below the horse pens.

Behind a clump of this he drew rein, and held a handkerchief to his

mouth. He took it away drenched with bright, arterial blood, and threw

it carefully into a clump of prickly pear. Then he slashed with his

quirt again, gasped "G'wan" to his astonished pony, and galloped after

the gang.

That night Raidler received a message from his old home in Alabama.

There had been a death in the family; an estate was to divide, and

they called for him to come. Daylight found him in the buckboard,

skimming the prairies for the station. It was two months before he

returned. When he arrived at the ranch house he found it well-nigh

deserted save for Ylario, who acted as a kind of steward during his

absence. Little by little the youth made him acquainted with the work

done while he was away. The branding camp, he was informed, was still

doing business. On account of many severe storms the cattle had been

badly scattered, and the branding had been accomplished but slowly.

The camp was now in the valley of the Guadalupe, twenty miles away.

"By the way," said Raidler, suddenly remembering, "that fellow I sent

along with them--McGuire--is he working yet?"

"I do not know," said Ylario. "Mans from the camp come verree few

times to the ranch. So plentee work with the leetle calves. They no

say. Oh, I think that fellow McGuire he dead much time ago."

"Dead!" said Raidler. "What you talking about?"

"Verree sick fellow, McGuire," replied Ylario, with a shrug of his

shoulder. "I theenk he no live one, two month when he go away."

"Shucks!" said Raidler. "He humbugged you, too, did he? The doctor

examined him and said he was sound as a mesquite knot."

"That doctor," said Ylario, smiling, "he tell you so? That doctor no

see McGuire."

"Talk up," ordered Raidler. "What the devil do you mean?"

"McGuire," continued the boy tranquilly, "he getting drink water

outside when that doctor come in room. That doctor take me and pound

me all over here with his fingers"--putting his hand to his chest--"I

not know for what. He put his ear here and here and here, and listen--

I not know for what. He put little glass stick in my mouth. He feel my

arm here. He make me count like whisper--so--twenty, /treinta/,

/cuarenta/. Who knows," concluded Ylario, with a deprecating spread of

his hands, "for what that doctor do those verree droll and such-like

things?"

"What horses are up?" asked Raidler shortly.

"Paisano is grazing out behind the little corral, /senor/."

"Saddle him for me at once."

Within a very few minutes the cattleman was mounted and away. Paisano,

well named after that ungainly but swift-running bird, struck into his

long lope that ate up the ground like a strip of macaroni. In two

hours and a quarter Raidler, from a gentle swell, saw the branding

camp by a water hole in the Guadalupe. Sick with expectancy of the

news he feared, he rode up, dismounted, and dropped Paisano's reins.

So gentle was his heart that at that moment he would have pleaded

guilty to the murder of McGuire.

The only being in the camp was the cook, who was just arranging the

hunks of barbecued beef, and distributing the tin coffee cups for

supper. Raidler evaded a direct question concerning the one subject in

his mind.

"Everything all right in camp, Pete?" he managed to inquire.

"So, so," said Pete, conservatively. "Grub give out twice. Wind

scattered the cattle, and we've had to rake the brush for forty mile.

I need a new coffee-pot. And the mosquitos is some more hellish than

common."

"The boys--all well?"

Pete was no optimist. Besides, inquiries concerning the health of cow-

punchers were not only superfluous, but bordered on flaccidity. It was

not like the boss to make them.

"What's left of 'em don't miss no calls to grub," the cook conceded.

"What's left of 'em?" repeated Raidler in a husky voice. Mechanically

he began to look around for McGuire's grave. He had in his mind a

white slab such as he had seen in the Alabama church-yard. But

immediately he knew that was foolish.

"Sure," said Pete; "what's left. Cow camps change in two months.

Some's gone."

Raidler nerved himself.

"That--chap--I sent along--McGuire--did--he--"

"Say," interrupted Pete, rising with a chunk of corn bread in each

hand, "that was a dirty shame, sending that poor, sick kid to a cow

camp. A doctor that couldn't tell he was graveyard meat ought to be

skinned with a cinch buckle. Game as he was, too--it's a scandal among

snakes--lemme tell you what he done. First night in camp the boys

started to initiate him in the leather breeches degree. Ross Hargis

busted him one swipe with his chaparreras, and what do you reckon the

poor child did? Got up, the little skeeter, and licked Ross. Licked

Ross Hargis. Licked him good. Hit him plenty and everywhere and hard.

Ross'd just get up and pick out a fresh place to lay down on agin.

"Then that McGuire goes off there and lays down with his head in the

grass and bleeds. A hem'ridge they calls it. He lays there eighteen

hours by the watch, and they can't budge him. Then Ross Hargis, who

loves any man who can lick him, goes to work and damns the doctors

from Greenland to Poland Chiny; and him and Green Branch Johnson they

gets McGuire into a tent, and spells each other feedin' him chopped

raw meat and whisky.

"But it looks like the kid ain't got no appetite to git well, for they

misses him from the tent in the night and finds him rootin' in the

grass, and likewise a drizzle fallin'. 'G'wan,' he says, 'lemme go and

die like I wanter. He said I was a liar and a fake and I was playin'

sick. Lemme alone.'

"Two weeks," went on the cook, "he laid around, not noticin' nobody,

and then--"

A sudden thunder filled the air, and a score of galloping centaurs

crashed through the brush into camp.

"Illustrious rattlesnakes!" exclaimed Pete, springing all ways at

once; "here's the boys come, and I'm an assassinated man if supper

ain't ready in three minutes."

But Raidler saw only one thing. A little, brown-faced, grinning chap,

springing from his saddle in the full light of the fire. McGuire was

not like that, and yet--

In another instant the cattleman was holding him by the hand and

shoulder.

"Son, son, how goes it?" was all he found to say.

"Close to the ground, says you," shouted McGuire, crunching Raidler's

fingers in a grip of steel; "and dat's where I found it--healt' and

strengt', and tumbled to what a cheap skate I been actin'. T'anks fer

kickin' me out, old man. And--say! de joke's on dat croaker, ain't it?

I looked t'rough the window and see him playin' tag on dat Dago kid's

solar plexus."

"You son of a tinker," growled the cattleman, "whyn't you talk up and

say the doctor never examined you?"

"Ah--g'wan!" said McGuire, with a flash of his old asperity, "nobody

can't bluff me. You never ast me. You made your spiel, and you t'rowed

me out, and I let it go at dat. And, say, friend, dis chasin' cows is

outer sight. Dis is de whitest bunch of sports I ever travelled with.

You'll let me stay, won't yer, old man?"

Raidler looked wonderingly toward Ross Hargis.

"That cussed little runt," remarked Ross tenderly, "is the

Jo-dartin'est hustler--and the hardest hitter in anybody's cow camp."

VIII

AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE

At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed

rangers sweltered in a little 'dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful

espionage upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican side.

Bud Dawson, proprietor of the Top Notch Saloon, had, on the evening

previous, violently ejected from his premises one Leandro Garcia, for

alleged violation of the Top Notch code of behaviour. Garcia had

mentioned twenty-four hours as a limit, by which time he would call

and collect a painful indemnity for personal satisfaction.

This Mexican, although a tremendous braggart, was thoroughly

courageous, and each side of the river respected him for one of these

attributes. He and a following of similar bravoes were addicted to the

pastime of retrieving towns from stagnation.

The day designated by Garcia for retribution was to be further

signalised on the American side by a cattlemen's convention, a bull

fight, and an old settlers' barbecue and picnic. Knowing the avenger

to be a man of his word, and believing it prudent to court peace while

three such gently social relaxations were in progress, Captain

McNulty, of the ranger company stationed there, detailed his

lieutenant and three men for duty at the end of the bridge. Their

instructions were to prevent the invasion of Garcia, either alone or

attended by his gang.

Travel was slight that sultry afternoon, and the rangers swore gently,

and mopped their brows in their convenient but close quarters. For an

hour no one had crossed save an old woman enveloped in a brown wrapper

and a black mantilla, driving before her a burro loaded with kindling

wood tied in small bundles for peddling. Then three shots were fired

down the street, the sound coming clear and snappy through the still

air.

The four rangers quickened from sprawling, symbolic figures of

indolence to alert life, but only one rose to his feet. Three turned

their eyes beseechingly but hopelessly upon the fourth, who had gotten

nimbly up and was buckling his cartridge-belt around him. The three

knew that Lieutenant Bob Buckley, in command, would allow no man of

them the privilege of investigating a row when he himself might go.

The agile, broad-chested lieutenant, without a change of expression in

his smooth, yellow-brown, melancholy face, shot the belt strap through

the guard of the buckle, hefted his sixes in their holsters as a belle

gives the finishing touches to her toilette, caught up his Winchester,

and dived for the door. There he paused long enough to caution his

comrades to maintain their watch upon the bridge, and then plunged

into the broiling highway.

The three relapsed into resigned inertia and plaintive comment.

"I've heard of fellows," grumbled Broncho Leathers, "what was wedded

to danger, but if Bob Buckley ain't committed bigamy with trouble, I'm

a son of a gun."

"Peculiarness of Bob is," inserted the Nueces Kid, "he ain't had

proper trainin'. He never learned how to git skeered. Now, a man ought

to be skeered enough when he tackles a fuss to hanker after readin'

his name on the list of survivors, anyway."

"Buckley," commented Ranger No. 3, who was a misguided Eastern man,

burdened with an education, "scraps in such a solemn manner that I

have been led to doubt its spontaneity. I'm not quite onto his system,

but he fights, like Tybalt, by the book of arithmetic."

"I never heard," mentioned Broncho, "about any of Dibble's ways of

mixin' scrappin' and cipherin'."

"Triggernometry?" suggested the Nueces infant.

"That's rather better than I hoped from you," nodded the Easterner,

approvingly. "The other meaning is that Buckley never goes into a

fight without giving away weight. He seems to dread taking the

slightest advantage. That's quite close to foolhardiness when you are

dealing with horse-thieves and fence-cutters who would ambush you any

night, and shoot you in the back if they could. Buckley's too full of

sand. He'll play Horatius and hold the bridge once too often some

day."

"I'm on there," drawled the Kid; "I mind that bridge gang in the

reader. Me, I go instructed for the other chap--Spurious Somebody--the

one that fought and pulled his freight, to fight 'em on some other

day."

"Anyway," summed up Broncho, "Bob's about the gamest man I ever see

along the Rio Bravo. Great Sam Houston! If she gets any hotter she'll

sizzle!" Broncho whacked at a scorpion with his four-pound Stetson

felt, and the three watchers relapsed into comfortless silence.

How well Bob Buckley had kept his secret, since these men, for two

years his side comrades in countless border raids and dangers, thus

spake of him, not knowing that he was the most arrant physical coward

in all that Rio Bravo country! Neither his friends nor his enemies had

suspected him of aught else than the finest courage. It was purely a

physical cowardice, and only by an extreme, grim effort of will had he

forced his craven body to do the bravest deeds. Scourging himself

always, as a monk whips his besetting sin, Buckley threw himself with

apparent recklessness into every danger, with the hope of some day

ridding himself of the despised affliction. But each successive test

brought no relief, and the ranger's face, by nature adapted to

cheerfulness and good-humour, became set to the guise of gloomy

melancholy. Thus, while the frontier admired his deeds, and his

prowess was celebrated in print and by word of mouth in many camp-

fires in the valley of the Bravo, his heart was sick within him. Only

himself knew of the horrible tightening of the chest, the dry mouth,

the weakening of the spine, the agony of the strung nerves--the never-

failing symptoms of his shameful malady.

One mere boy in his company was wont to enter a fray with a leg

perched flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging

from his lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever

invention. Buckley would have given a year's pay to attain that devil-

may-care method. Once the debonair youth said to him: "Buck, you go

into a scrap like it was a funeral. Not," he added, with a

complimentary wave of his tin cup, "but what it generally is."

Buckley's conscience was of the New England order with Western

adjustments, and he continued to get his rebellious body into as many

difficulties as possible; wherefore, on that sultry afternoon he chose

to drive his own protesting limbs to investigation of that sudden

alarm that had startled the peace and dignity of the State.

Two squares down the street stood the Top Notch Saloon. Here Buckley

came upon signs of recent upheaval. A few curious spectators pressed

about its front entrance, grinding beneath their heels the fragments

of a plate-glass window. Inside, Buckley found Bud Dawson utterly

ignoring a bullet wound in his shoulder, while he feelingly wept at

having to explain why he failed to drop the "blamed masquerooter," who

shot him. At the entrance of the ranger Bud turned appealingly to him

for confirmation of the devastation he might have dealt.

"You know, Buck, I'd 'a' plum got him, first rattle, if I'd thought a

minute. Come in a-masque-rootin', playin' female till he got the drop,

and turned loose. I never reached for a gun, thinkin' it was sure

Chihuahua Betty, or Mrs. Atwater, or anyhow one of the Mayfield girls

comin' a-gunnin', which they might, liable as not. I never thought of

that blamed Garcia until--"

"Garcia!" snapped Buckley. "How did he get over here?"

Bud's bartender took the ranger by the arm and led him to the side

door. There stood a patient grey burro cropping the grass along the

gutter, with a load of kindling wood tied across its back. On the

ground lay a black shawl and a voluminous brown dress.

"Masquerootin' in them things," called Bud, still resisting attempted

ministrations to his wounds. "Thought he was a lady till he gave a

yell and winged me."

"He went down this side street," said the bartender. "He was alone,

and he'll hide out till night when his gang comes over. You ought to

find him in that Mexican lay-out below the depot. He's got a girl down

there--Pancha Sales."

"How was he armed?" asked Buckley.

"Two pearl-handled sixes, and a knife."

"Keep this for me, Billy," said the ranger, handing over his

Winchester. Quixotic, perhaps, but it was Bob Buckley's way. Another

man--and a braver one--might have raised a posse to accompany him. It

was Buckley's rule to discard all preliminary advantage.

The Mexican had left behind him a wake of closed doors and an empty

street, but now people were beginning to emerge from their places of

refuge with assumed unconsciousness of anything having happened. Many

citizens who knew the ranger pointed out to him with alacrity the

course of Garcia's retreat.

As Buckley swung along upon the trail he felt the beginning of the

suffocating constriction about his throat, the cold sweat under the

brim of his hat, the old, shameful, dreaded sinking of his heart as it

went down, down, down in his bosom.

The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours

late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G.N. on the other side of

the river. Passengers for /Los Estados Unidos/ grumblingly sought

entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations,

for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them.

Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and

races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub

of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle,

Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played

at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed

their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height

only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the

sowers and the reapers--they who stampeded the dollars, and they who

rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the

people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already

there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.

On a side track near the mean little 'dobe depot stood a private car,

left there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an

ineffectual schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings,

connection with the next day's regular.

The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in it

and gringed to the conductor's hat-band slips would never have

recognised it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain

domestic touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public

servitude. The whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its

windows. From its fore end drooped in the torrid air the flag of

Mexico. From its rear projected the Stars and Stripes and a busy

stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its suggestion of culinary

comforts the general suggestion of privacy and ease. The beholder's

eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a

single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its entire

length--a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and genius.

Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the

name was that of "Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe." This, her

car, was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities,

and now headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory

advertisement, she would exhibit her "Marvellous Dominion and Fearless

Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as

they Coil and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied

Tremblers!"

One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This

quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth

of five nations; its architecture tent, /jacal/, and 'dobe; its

distractions the hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the

sudden stranger's store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable

fringe upon the old town's jowl rose a dense mass of trees,

surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small

stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the

great canon of the Rio Bravo del Norte.

In this sordid spot was condemned to remain for certain hours the

impotent transport of the Queen of the Serpent Tribe.

The front door of the car was open. Its forward end was curtained off

into a small reception-room. Here the admiring and propitiatory

reporters were wont to sit and transpose the music of Senorita

Alvarita's talk into the more florid key of the press. A picture of

Abraham Lincoln hung against a wall; one of a cluster of school-girls

grouped upon stone steps was in another place; a third was Easter

lilies in a blood-red frame. A neat carpet was under foot. A pitcher,

sweating cold drops, and a glass stood on a fragile stand. In a willow

rocker, reading a newspaper, sat Alvarita.

Spanish, you would say; Andalusian, or, better still, Basque; that

compound, like the diamond, of darkness and fire. Hair, the shade of

purple grapes viewed at midnight. Eyes, long, dusky, and disquieting

with their untroubled directness of gaze. Face, haughty and bold,

touched with a pretty insolence that gave it life. To hasten

conviction of her charm, but glance at the stacks of handbills in the

corner, green, and yellow, and white. Upon them you see an incompetent

presentment of the senorita in her professional garb and pose.

Irresistible, in black lace and yellow ribbons, she faces you; a blue

racer is spiralled upon each bare arm; coiled twice about her waist

and once about her neck, his horrid head close to hers, you perceive

Kuku, the great eleven-foot Asian python.

A hand drew aside the curtain that partitioned the car, and a middle-

aged, faded woman holding a knife and a half-peeled potato looked in

and said:

"Alviry, are you right busy?"

"I'm reading the home paper, ma. What do you think! that pale, tow-

headed Matilda Price got the most votes in the /News/ for the

prettiest girl in Gallipo--/lees/."

"Shush! She wouldn't of done it if /you'd/ been home, Alviry. Lord

knows, I hope we'll be there before fall's over. I'm tired gallopin'

round the world playin' we are dagoes, and givin' snake shows. But

that ain't what I wanted to say. That there biggest snake's gone

again. I've looked all over the car and can't find him. He must have

been gone an hour. I remember hearin' somethin' rustlin' along the

floor, but I thought it was you."

"Oh, blame that old rascal!" exclaimed the Queen, throwing down her

paper. "This is the third time he's got away. George never /will/

fasten down the lid to his box properly. I do believe he's /afraid/ of

Kuku. Now I've got to go hunt him."

"Better hurry; somebody might hurt him."

The Queen's teeth showed in a gleaming, contemptuous smile. "No

danger. When they see Kuku outside they simply scoot away and buy

bromides. There's a crick over between here and the river. That old

scamp'd swap his skin any time for a drink of running water. I guess

I'll find him there, all right."

A few minutes later Alvarita stopped upon the forward platform, ready

for her quest. Her handsome black skirt was shaped to the most recent

proclamation of fashion. Her spotless shirt-waist gladdened the eye in

that desert of sunshine, a swelling oasis, cool and fresh. A man's

split-straw hat sat firmly on her coiled, abundant hair. Beneath her

serene, round, impudent chin a man's four-in-hand tie was jauntily

knotted about a man's high, stiff collar. A parasol she carried, of

white silk, and its fringe was lace, yellowly genuine.

I will grant Gallipolis as to her costume, but firmly to Seville or

Valladolid I am held by her eyes; castanets, balconies, mantillas,

serenades, ambuscades, escapades--all these their dark depths

guaranteed.

"Ain't you afraid to go out alone, Alviry?" queried the Queen-mother

anxiously. "There's so many rough people about. Mebbe you'd better--"

"I never saw anything I was afraid of yet, ma. 'Specially people. And

men in particular. Don't you fret. I'll trot along back as soon as I

find that runaway scamp."

The dust lay thick upon the bare ground near the tracks. Alvarita's

eye soon discovered the serrated trail of the escaped python. It led

across the depot grounds and away down a smaller street in the

direction of the little canon, as predicted by her. A stillness and

lack of excitement in the neighbourhood encouraged the hope that, as

yet, the inhabitants were unaware that so formidable a guest traversed

their highways. The heat had driven them indoors, whence outdrifted

occasional shrill laughs, or the depressing whine of a maltreated

concertina. In the shade a few Mexican children, like vivified stolid

idols in clay, stared from their play, vision-struck and silent, as

Alvarita came and went. Here and there a woman peeped from a door and

stood dumb, reduced to silence by the aspect of the white silk

parasol.

A hundred yards and the limits of the town were passed, scattered

chaparral succeeding, and then a noble grove, overflowing the bijou

canon. Through this a small bright stream meandered. Park-like it was,

with a kind of cockney ruralness further endorsed by the waste papers

and rifled tins of picnickers. Up this stream, and down it, among its

pseudo-sylvan glades and depressions, wandered the bright and

unruffled Alvarita. Once she saw evidence of the recreant reptile's

progress in his distinctive trail across a spread of fine sand in the

arroyo. The living water was bound to lure him; he could not be far

away.

So sure was she of his immediate proximity that she perched herself to

idle for a time in the curve of a great creeper that looped down from

a giant water-elm. To reach this she climbed from the pathway a little

distance up the side of a steep and rugged incline. Around her

chaparral grew thick and high. A late-blooming ratama tree dispensed

from its yellow petals a sweet and persistent odour. Adown the ravine

rustled a seductive wind, melancholy with the taste of sodden, fallen

leaves.

Alvarita removed her hat, and undoing the oppressive convolutions of

her hair, began to slowly arrange it in two long, dusky plaits.

From the obscure depths of a thick clump of evergreen shrubs five feet

away, two small jewel-bright eyes were steadfastly regarding her.

Coiled there lay Kuku, the great python; Kuku, the magnificent, he of

the plated muzzle, the grooved lips, the eleven-foot stretch of

elegantly and brilliantly mottled skin. The great python was viewing

his mistress without a sound or motion to disclose his presence.

Perhaps the splendid truant forefelt his capture, but, screened by the

foliage, thought to prolong the delight of his escapade. What pleasure

it was, after the hot and dusty car, to lie thus, smelling the running

water, and feeling the agreeable roughness of the earth and stones

against his body! Soon, very soon the Queen would find him, and he,

powerless as a worm in her audacious hands, would be returned to the

dark chest in the narrow house that ran on wheels.

Alvarita heard a sudden crunching of the gravel below her. Turning her

head she saw a big, swarthy Mexican, with a daring and evil

expression, contemplating her with an ominous, dull eye.

"What do you want?" she asked as sharply as five hairpins between her

lips would permit, continuing to plait her hair, and looking him over

with placid contempt. The Mexican continued to gaze at her, and showed

his teeth in a white, jagged smile.

"I no hurt-y you, Senorita," he said.

"You bet you won't," answered the Queen, shaking back one finished,

massive plait. "But don't you think you'd better move on?"

"Not hurt-y you--no. But maybeso take one /beso/--one li'l kees, you

call him."

The man smiled again, and set his foot to ascend the slope. Alvarita

leaned swiftly and picked up a stone the size of a cocoanut.

"Vamoose, quick," she ordered peremptorily, "you /coon/!"

The red of insult burned through the Mexican's dark skin.

"/Hidalgo, Yo/!" he shot between his fangs. "I am not neg-r-ro!

/Diabla bonita/, for that you shall pay me."

He made two quick upward steps this time, but the stone, hurled by no

weak arm, struck him square in the chest. He staggered back to the

footway, swerved half around, and met another sight that drove all

thoughts of the girl from his head. She turned her eyes to see what

had diverted his interest. A man with red-brown, curling hair and a

melancholy, sunburned, smooth-shaven face was coming up the path,

twenty yards away. Around the Mexican's waist was buckled a pistol

belt with two empty holsters. He had laid aside his sixes--possibly in

the /jacal/ of the fair Pancha--and had forgotten them when the

passing of the fairer Alvarita had enticed him to her trail. His hands

now flew instinctively to the holsters, but finding the weapons gone,

he spread his fingers outward with the eloquent, abjuring, deprecating

Latin gesture, and stood like a rock. Seeing his plight, the newcomer

unbuckled his own belt containing two revolvers, threw it upon the

ground, and continued to advance.

"Splendid!" murmured Alvarita, with flashing eyes.

As Bob Buckley, according to the mad code of bravery that his

sensitive conscience imposed upon his cowardly nerves, abandoned his

guns and closed in upon his enemy, the old, inevitable nausea of

abject fear wrung him. His breath whistled through his constricted air

passages. His feet seemed like lumps of lead. His mouth was dry as

dust. His heart, congested with blood, hurt his ribs as it thumped

against them. The hot June day turned to moist November. And still he

advanced, spurred by a mandatory pride that strained its uttermost

against his weakling flesh.

The distance between the two men slowly lessened. The Mexican stood,

immovable, waiting. When scarce five yards separated them a little

shower of loosened gravel rattled down from above to the ranger's

feet. He glanced upward with instinctive caution. A pair of dark eyes,

brilliantly soft, and fierily tender, encountered and held his own.

The most fearful heart and the boldest one in all the Rio Bravo

country exchanged a silent and inscrutable communication. Alvarita,

still seated within her vine, leaned forward above the breast-high

chaparral. One hand was laid across her bosom. One great dark braid

curved forward over her shoulder. Her lips were parted; her face was

lit with what seemed but wonder--great and absolute wonder. Her eyes

lingered upon Buckley's. Let no one ask or presume to tell through

what subtle medium the miracle was performed. As by a lightning flash

two clouds will accomplish counterpoise and compensation of electric

surcharge, so on that eyeglance the man received his complement of

manhood, and the maid conceded what enriched her womanly grace by its

loss.

The Mexican, suddenly stirring, ventilated his attitude of apathetic

waiting by conjuring swiftly from his bootleg a long knife. Buckley

cast aside his hat, and laughed once aloud, like a happy school-boy at

a frolic. Then, empty-handed, he sprang nimbly, and Garcia met him

without default.

So soon was the engagement ended that disappointment imposed upon the

ranger's warlike ecstasy. Instead of dealing the traditional downward

stroke, the Mexican lunged straight with his knife. Buckley took the

precarious chance, and caught his wrist, fair and firm. Then he

delivered the good Saxon knock-out blow--always so pathetically

disastrous to the fistless Latin races--and Garcia was down and out,

with his head under a clump of prickly pears. The ranger looked up

again to the Queen of the Serpents.

Alvarita scrambled down to the path.

"I'm mighty glad I happened along when I did," said the ranger.

"He--he frightened me so!" cooed Alvarita.

They did not hear the long, low hiss of the python under the shrubs.

Wiliest of the beasts, no doubt he was expressing the humiliation he

felt at having so long dwelt in subjection to this trembling and

colouring mistress of his whom he had deemed so strong and potent and

fearsome.

Then came galloping to the spot the civic authorities; and to them the

ranger awarded the prostrate disturber of the peace, whom they bore

away limply across the saddle of one of their mounts. But Buckley and

Alvarita lingered.

Slowly, slowly they walked. The ranger regained his belt of weapons.

With a fine timidity she begged the indulgence of fingering the great

.45's, with little "Ohs" and "Ahs" of new-born, delicious shyness.

The /canoncito/ was growing dusky. Beyond its terminus in the river

bluff they could see the outer world yet suffused with the waning

glory of sunset.

A scream--a piercing scream of fright from Alvarita. Back she cowered,

and the ready, protecting arm of Buckley formed her refuge. What

terror so dire as to thus beset the close of the reign of the never-

before-daunted Queen?

Across the path there crawled a /caterpillar/--a horrid, fuzzy, two-

inch caterpillar! Truly, Kuku, thou went avenged. Thus abdicated the

Queen of the Serpent Tribe--/viva la reina/!

THE HIGHER ABDICATION

Curly the tramp sidled toward the free-lunch counter. He caught a

fleeting glance from the bartender's eye, and stood still, trying to

look like a business man who had just dined at the Menger and was

waiting for a friend who had promised to pick him up in his motor car.

Curly's histrionic powers were equal to the impersonation; but his

make-up was wanting.

The bartender rounded the bar in a casual way, looking up at the

ceiling as though he was pondering some intricate problem of

kalsomining, and then fell upon Curly so suddenly that the roadster

had no excuses ready. Irresistibly, but so composedly that it seemed

almost absendmindedness on his part, the dispenser of drinks pushed

Curly to the swinging doors and kicked him out, with a nonchalance

that almost amounted to sadness. That was the way of the Southwest.

Curly arose from the gutter leisurely. He felt no anger or resentment

toward his ejector. Fifteen years of tramphood spent out of the

twenty-two years of his life had hardened the fibres of his spirit.

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fell blunted from the

buckler of his armoured pride. With especial resignation did he suffer

contumely and injury at the hands of bartenders. Naturally, they were

his enemies; and unnaturally, they were often his friends. He had to

take his chances with them. But he had not yet learned to estimate

these cool, languid, Southwestern knights of the bungstarter, who had

the manners of an Earl of Pawtucket, and who, when they disapproved of

your presence, moved you with the silence and despatch of a chess

automaton advancing a pawn.

Curly stood for a few moments in the narrow, mesquite-paved street.

San Antonio puzzled and disturbed him. Three days he had been a non-

paying guest of the town, having dropped off there from a box car of

an I. & G.N. freight, because Greaser Johnny had told him in Des

Moines that the Alamo City was manna fallen, gathered, cooked, and

served free with cream and sugar. Curly had found the tip partly a

good one. There was hospitality in plenty of a careless, liberal,

irregular sort. But the town itself was a weight upon his spirits

after his experience with the rushing, business-like, systematised

cities of the North and East. Here he was often flung a dollar, but

too frequently a good-natured kick would follow it. Once a band of

hilarious cowboys had roped him on Military Plaza and dragged him

across the black soil until no respectable rag-bag would have stood

sponsor for his clothes. The winding, doubling streets, leading

nowhere, bewildered him. And then there was a little river, crooked as

a pot-hook, that crawled through the middle of the town, crossed by a

hundred little bridges so nearly alike that they got on Curly's

nerves. And the last bartender wore a number nine shoe.

The saloon stood on a corner. The hour was eight o'clock. Homefarers

and outgoers jostled Curly on the narrow stone sidewalk. Between the

buildings to his left he looked down a cleft that proclaimed itself

another thoroughfare. The alley was dark except for one patch of

light. Where there was light there were sure to be human beings. Where

there were human beings after nightfall in San Antonio there might be

food, and there was sure to be drink. So Curly headed for the light.

The illumination came from Schwegel's Cafe. On the sidewalk in front

of it Curly picked up an old envelope. It might have contained a check

for a million. It was empty; but the wanderer read the address, "Mr.

Otto Schwegel," and the name of the town and State. The postmark was

Detroit.

Curly entered the saloon. And now in the light it could be perceived

that he bore the stamp of many years of vagabondage. He had none of

the tidiness of the calculating and shrewd professional tramp. His

wardrobe represented the cast-off specimens of half a dozen fashions

and eras. Two factories had combined their efforts in providing shoes

for his feet. As you gazed at him there passed through your mind vague

impressions of mummies, wax figures, Russian exiles, and men lost on

desert islands. His face was covered almost to his eyes with a curly

brown beard that he kept trimmed short with a pocket-knife, and that

had furnished him with his /nom de route/. Light-blue eyes, full of

sullenness, fear, cunning, impudence, and fawning, witnessed the

stress that had been laid upon his soul.

The saloon was small, and in its atmosphere the odours of meat and

drink struggled for the ascendancy. The pig and the cabbage wrestled

with hydrogen and oxygen. Behind the bar Schwegel laboured with an

assistant whose epidermal pores showed no signs of being obstructed.

Hot weinerwurst and sauerkraut were being served to purchasers of

beer. Curly shuffled to the end of the bar, coughed hollowly, and told

Schwegel that he was a Detroit cabinet-maker out of a job.

It followed as the night the day that he got his schooner and lunch.

"Was you acquainted maybe with Heinrich Strauss in Detroit?" asked

Schwegel.

"Did I know Heinrich Strauss?" repeated Curly, affectionately. "Why,

say, 'Bo, I wish I had a dollar for every game of pinochle me and

Heine has played on Sunday afternoons."

More beer and a second plate of steaming food was set before the

diplomat. And then Curly, knowing to a fluid-drachm how far a "con"

game would go, shuffled out into the unpromising street.

And now he began to perceive the inconveniences of this stony Southern

town. There was none of the outdoor gaiety and brilliancy and music

that provided distraction even to the poorest in the cities of the

North. Here, even so early, the gloomy, rock-walled houses were closed

and barred against the murky dampness of the night. The streets were

mere fissures through which flowed grey wreaths of river mist. As he

walked he heard laughter and the chink of coin and chips behind

darkened windows, and music coming from every chink of wood and stone.

But the diversions were selfish; the day of popular pastimes had not

yet come to San Antonio.

But at length Curly, as he strayed, turned the sharp angle of another

lost street and came upon a rollicking band of stockmen from the

outlying ranches celebrating in the open in front of an ancient wooden

hotel. One great roisterer from the sheep country who had just

instigated a movement toward the bar, swept Curly in like a stray goat

with the rest of his flock. The princes of kine and wool hailed him as

a new zoological discovery, and uproariously strove to preserve him in

the diluted alcohol of their compliments and regards.

An hour afterward Curly staggered from the hotel barroom dismissed by

his fickle friends, whose interest in him had subsided as quickly as

it had risen. Full--stoked with alcoholic fuel and cargoed with food,

the only question remaining to disturb him was that of shelter and

bed.

A drizzling, cold Texas rain had begun to fall--an endless, lazy,

unintermittent downfall that lowered the spirits of men and raised a

reluctant steam from the warm stones of the streets and houses. Thus

comes the "norther" dousing gentle spring and amiable autumn with the

chilling salutes and adieux of coming and departing winter.

Curly followed his nose down the first tortuous street into which his

irresponsible feet conducted him. At the lower end of it, on the bank

of the serpentine stream, he perceived an open gate in a cemented rock

wall. Inside he saw camp fires and a row of low wooden sheds built

against three sides of the enclosing wall. He entered the enclosure.

Under the sheds many horses were champing at their oats and corn. Many

wagons and buckboards stood about with their teams' harness thrown

carelessly upon the shafts and doubletrees. Curly recognised the place

as a wagon-yard, such as is provided by merchants for their out-of-

town friends and customers. No one was in sight. No doubt the drivers

of those wagons were scattered about the town "seeing the elephant and

hearing the owl." In their haste to become patrons of the town's

dispensaries of mirth and good cheer the last ones to depart must have

left the great wooden gate swinging open.

Curly had satisfied the hunger of an anaconda and the thirst of a

camel, so he was neither in the mood nor the condition of an explorer.

He zigzagged his way to the first wagon that his eyesight

distinguished in the semi-darkness under the shed. It was a two-horse

wagon with a top of white canvas. The wagon was half filled with loose

piles of wool sacks, two or three great bundles of grey blankets, and

a number of bales, bundles, and boxes. A reasoning eye would have

estimated the load at once as ranch supplies, bound on the morrow for

some outlying hacienda. But to the drowsy intelligence of Curly they

represented only warmth and softness and protection against the cold

humidity of the night. After several unlucky efforts, at last he

conquered gravity so far as to climb over a wheel and pitch forward

upon the best and warmest bed he had fallen upon in many a day. Then

he became instinctively a burrowing animal, and dug his way like a

prairie-dog down among the sacks and blankets, hiding himself from the

cold air as snug and safe as a bear in his den. For three nights sleep

had visited Curly only in broken and shivering doses. So now, when

Morpheus condescended to pay him a call, Curly got such a strangle

hold on the mythological old gentleman that it was a wonder that

anyone else in the whole world got a wink of sleep that night.

Six cowpunchers of the Cibolo Ranch were waiting around the door of

the ranch store. Their ponies cropped grass near by, tied in the Texas

fashion--which is not tied at all. Their bridle reins had been dropped

to the earth, which is a more effectual way of securing them (such is

the power of habit and imagination) than you could devise out of a

half-inch rope and a live-oak tree.

These guardians of the cow lounged about, each with a brown cigarette

paper in his hand, and gently but unceasingly cursed Sam Revell, the

storekeeper. Sam stood in the door, snapping the red elastic bands on

his pink madras shirtsleeves and looking down affectionately at the

only pair of tan shoes within a forty-mile radius. His offence had

been serious, and he was divided between humble apology and admiration

for the beauty of his raiment. He had allowed the ranch stock of

"smoking" to become exhausted.

"I thought sure there was another case of it under the counter, boys,"

he explained. "But it happened to be catterdges."

"You've sure got a case of happenedicitis," said Poky Rodgers, fency

rider of the Largo Verde /potrero/. "Somebody ought to happen to give

you a knock on the head with the butt end of a quirt. I've rode in

nine miles for some tobacco; and it don't appear natural and seemly

that you ought to be allowed to live."

"The boys was smokin' cut plug and dried mesquite leaves mixed when I

left," sighed Mustang Taylor, horse wrangler of the Three Elm camp.

"They'll be lookin' for me back by nine. They'll be settin' up, with

their papers ready to roll a whiff of the real thing before bedtime.

And I've got to tell 'em that this pink-eyed, sheep-headed, sulphur-

footed, shirt-waisted son of a calico broncho, Sam Revell, hasn't got

no tobacco on hand."

Gregorio Falcon, Mexican vaquero and best thrower of the rope on the

Cibolo, pushed his heavy, silver-embroidered straw sombrero back upon

his thicket of jet black curls, and scraped the bottoms of his pockets

for a few crumbs of the precious weed.

"Ah, Don Samuel," he said, reproachfully, but with his touch of

Castilian manners, "escuse me. Dthey say dthe jackrabbeet and dthe

sheep have dthe most leetle /sesos/--how you call dthem--brain-es? Ah

don't believe dthat, Don Samuel--escuse me. Ah dthink people w'at

don't keep esmokin' tobacco, dthey--bot you weel escuse me, Don

Samuel."

"Now, what's the use of chewin' the rag, boys," said the untroubled

Sam, stooping over to rub the toes of his shoes with a red-and-yellow

handkerchief. "Ranse took the order for some more smokin' to San

Antone with him Tuesday. Pancho rode Ranse's hoss back yesterday; and

Ranse is goin' to drive the wagon back himself. There wa'n't much of a

load--just some woolsacks and blankets and nails and canned peaches

and a few things we was out of. I look for Ranse to roll in to-day

sure. He's an early starter and a hell-to-split driver, and he ought

to be here not far from sundown."

"What plugs is he drivin'?" asked Mustang Taylor, with a smack of hope

in his tones.

"The buckboard greys," said Sam.

"I'll wait a spell, then," said the wrangler. "Them plugs eat up a

trail like a road-runner swallowin' a whip snake. And you may bust me

open a can of greengage plums, Sam, while I'm waitin' for somethin'

better."

"Open me some yellow clings," ordered Poky Rodgers. "I'll wait, too."

The tobaccoless punchers arranged themselves comfortably on the steps

of the store. Inside Sam chopped open with a hatchet the tops of the

cans of fruit.

The store, a big, white wooden building like a barn, stood fifty yards

from the ranch-house. Beyond it were the horse corrals; and still

farther the wool sheds and the brush-topped shearing pens--for the

Rancho Cibolo raised both cattle and sheep. Behind the store, at a

little distance, were the grass-thatched /jacals/ of the Mexicans who

bestowed their allegiance upon the Cibolo.

The ranch-house was composed of four large rooms, with plastered adobe

walls, and a two-room wooden ell. A twenty-feet-wide "gallery"

circumvented the structure. It was set in a grove of immense live-oaks

and water-elms near a lake--a long, not very wide, and tremendously

deep lake in which at nightfall, great gars leaped to the surface and

plunged with the noise of hippopotamuses frolicking at their bath.

From the trees hung garlands and massive pendants of the melancholy

grey moss of the South. Indeed, the Cibolo ranch-house seemed more of

the South than of the West. It looked as if old "Kiowa" Truesdell

might have brought it with him from the lowlands of Mississippi when

he came to Texas with his rifle in the hollow of his arm in '55.

But, though he did not bring the family mansion, Truesdell did bring

something in the way of a family inheritance that was more lasting

than brick or stone. He brought one end of the Truesdell-Curtis family

feud. And when a Curtis bought the Rancho de los Olmos, sixteen miles

from the Cibolo, there were lively times on the pear flats and in the

chaparral thickets off the Southwest. In those days Truesdell cleaned

the brush of many a wolf and tiger cat and Mexican lion; and one or

two Curtises fell heirs to notches on his rifle stock. Also he buried

a brother with a Curtis bullet in him on the bank of the lake at

Cibolo. And then the Kiowa Indians made their last raid upon the

ranches between the Frio and the Rio Grande, and Truesdell at the head

of his rangers rid the earth of them to the last brave, earning his

sobriquet. Then came prosperity in the form of waxing herds and

broadening lands. And then old age and bitterness, when he sat, with

his great mane of hair as white as the Spanish-dagger blossoms and his

fierce, pale-blue eyes, on the shaded gallery at Cibolo, growling like

the pumas that he had slain. He snapped his fingers at old age; the

bitter taste to life did not come from that. The cup that stuck at his

lips was that his only son Ransom wanted to marry a Curtis, the last

youthful survivor of the other end of the feud.

For a while the only sounds to be heard at the store were the rattling

of the tin spoons and the gurgling intake of the juicy fruits by the

cowpunchers, the stamping of the grazing ponies, and the singing of a

doleful song by Sam as he contentedly brushed his stiff auburn hair

for the twentieth time that day before a crinkly mirror.

From the door of the store could be seen the irregular, sloping

stretch of prairie to the south, with its reaches of light-green,

billowy mesquite flats in the lower places, and its rises crowned with

nearly black masses of short chaparral. Through the mesquite flat

wound the ranch road that, five miles away, flowed into the old

government trail to San Antonio. The sun was so low that the gentlest

elevation cast its grey shadow miles into the green-gold sea of

sunshine.

That evening ears were quicker than eyes.

The Mexican held up a tawny finger to still the scraping of tin

against tin.

"One waggeen," said he, "cross dthe Arroyo Hondo. Ah hear dthe wheel.

Verree rockee place, dthe Hondo."

"You've got good ears, Gregorio," said Mustang Taylor. "I never heard

nothin' but the song-bird in the bush and the zephyr skallyhootin'

across the peaceful dell."

In ten minutes Taylor remarked: "I see the dust of a wagon risin'

right above the fur end of the flat."

"You have verree good eyes, senor," said Gregorio, smiling.

Two miles away they saw a faint cloud dimming the green ripples of the

mesquites. In twenty minutes they heard the clatter of the horses'

hoofs: in five minutes more the grey plugs dashed out of the thicket,

whickering for oats and drawing the light wagon behind them like a

toy.

From the /jacals/ came a cry of: "El Amo! El Amo!" Four Mexican youths

raced to unharness the greys. The cowpunchers gave a yell of greeting

and delight.

Ranse Truesdell, driving, threw the reins to the ground and laughed.

"It's under the wagon sheet, boys," he said. "I know what you're

waiting for. If Sam lets it run out again we'll use those yellow shoes

of his for a target. There's two cases. Pull 'em out and light up. I

know you all want a smoke."

After striking dry country Ranse had removed the wagon sheet from the

bows and thrown it over the goods in the wagon. Six pair of hasty

hands dragged it off and grabbled beneath the sacks and blankets for

the cases of tobacco.

Long Collins, tobacco messenger from the San Gabriel outfit, who rode

with the longest stirrups west of the Mississippi, delved with an arm

like the tongue of a wagon. He caught something harder than a blanket

and pulled out a fearful thing--a shapeless, muddy bunch of leather

tied together with wire and twine. From its ragged end, like the head

and claws of a disturbed turtle, protruded human toes.

"Who-ee!" yelled Long Collins. "Ranse, are you a-packin' around of

corpuses? Here's a--howlin' grasshoppers!"

Up from his long slumber popped Curly, like some vile worm from its

burrow. He clawed his way out and sat blinking like a disreputable,

drunken owl. His face was as bluish-red and puffed and seamed and

cross-lined as the cheapest round steak of the butcher. His eyes were

swollen slits; his nose a pickled beet; his hair would have made the

wildest thatch of a Jack-in-the-box look like the satin poll of a Cleo

de Merode. The rest of him was scarecrow done to the life.

Ranse jumped down from his seat and looked at his strange cargo with

wide-open eyes.

"Here, you maverick, what are you doing in my wagon? How did you get

in there?"

The punchers gathered around in delight. For the time they had

forgotten tobacco.

Curly looked around him slowly in every direction. He snarled like a

Scotch terrier through his ragged beard.

"Where is this?" he rasped through his parched throat. "It's a damn

farm in an old field. What'd you bring me here for--say? Did I say I

wanted to come here? What are you Reubs rubberin' at--hey? G'wan or

I'll punch some of yer faces."

"Drag him out, Collins," said Ranse.

Curly took a slide and felt the ground rise up and collide with his

shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering

from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted

out a case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began

to glow, bringing peace and forgiveness to Sam.

"How'd you come in my wagon?" repeated Ranse, this time in a voice

that drew a reply.

Curly recognised the tone. He had heard it used by freight brakemen

and large persons in blue carrying clubs.

"Me?" he growled. "Oh, was you talkin' to me? Why, I was on my way to

the Menger, but my valet had forgot to pack my pyjamas. So I crawled

into that wagon in the wagon-yard--see? I never told you to bring me

out to this bloomin' farm--see?"

"What is it, Mustang?" asked Poky Rodgers, almost forgetting to smoke

in his ecstasy. "What do it live on?"

"It's a galliwampus, Poky," said Mustang. "It's the thing that hollers

'willi-walloo' up in ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I don't

know if it bites."

"No, it ain't, Mustang," volunteered Long Collins. "Them galliwampuses

has fins on their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a

hicklesnifter. It lives under the ground and eats cherries. Don't

stand so close to it. It wipes out villages with one stroke of its

prehensile tail."

Sam, the cosmopolite, who called bartenders in San Antone by their

first name, stood in the door. He was a better zoologist.

"Well, ain't that a Willie for your whiskers?" he commented. "Where'd

you dig up the hobo, Ranse? Goin' to make an auditorium for

inbreviates out of the ranch?"

"Say," said Curly, from whose panoplied breast all shafts of wit fell

blunted. "Any of you kiddin' guys got a drink on you? Have your fun.

Say, I've been hittin' the stuff till I don't know straight up."

He turned to Ranse. "Say, you shanghaied me on your d--d old prairie

schooner--did I tell you to drive me to a farm? I want a drink. I'm

goin' all to little pieces. What's doin'?"

Ranse saw that the tramp's nerves were racking him. He despatched one

of the Mexican boys to the ranch-house for a glass of whisky. Curly

gulped it down; and into his eyes came a brief, grateful glow--as

human as the expression in the eye of a faithful setter dog.

"Thanky, boss," he said, quietly.

"You're thirty miles from a railroad, and forty miles from a saloon,"

said Ranse.

Curly fell back weakly against the steps.

"Since you are here," continued the ranchman, "come along with me. We

can't turn you out on the prairie. A rabbit might tear you to pieces."

He conducted Curly to a large shed where the ranch vehicles were kept.

There he spread out a canvas cot and brought blankets.

"I don't suppose you can sleep," said Ranse, "since you've been

pounding your ear for twenty-four hours. But you can camp here till

morning. I'll have Pedro fetch you up some grub."

"Sleep!" said Curly. "I can sleep a week. Say, sport, have you got a

coffin nail on you?"

Fifty miles had Ransom Truesdell driven that day. And yet this is what

he did.

Old "Kiowa" Truesdell sat in his great wicker chair reading by the

light of an immense oil lamp. Ranse laid a bundle of newspapers fresh

from town at his elbow.

"Back, Ranse?" said the old man, looking up.

"Son," old "Kiowa" continued, "I've been thinking all day about a

certain matter that we have talked about. I want you to tell me again.

I've lived for you. I've fought wolves and Indians and worse white men

to protect you. You never had any mother that you can remember. I've

taught you to shoot straight, ride hard, and live clean. Later on I've

worked to pile up dollars that'll be yours. You'll be a rich man,

Ranse, when my chunk goes out. I've made you. I've licked you into

shape like a leopard cat licks its cubs. You don't belong to yourself

--you've got to be a Truesdell first. Now, is there to be any more

nonsense about this Curtis girl?"

"I'll tell you once more," said Ranse, slowly. "As I am a Truesdell

and as you are my father, I'll never marry a Curtis."

"Good boy," said old "Kiowa." "You'd better go get some supper."

Ranse went to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Pedro, the Mexican

cook, sprang up to bring the food he was keeping warm in the stove.

"Just a cup of coffee, Pedro," he said, and drank it standing. And

then:

"There's a tramp on a cot in the wagon-shed. Take him something to

eat. Better make it enough for two."

Ranse walked out toward the /jacals/. A boy came running.

"Manuel, can you catch Vaminos, in the little pasture, for me?"

"Why not, senor? I saw him near the /puerta/ but two hours past. He

bears a drag-rope."

"Get him and saddle him as quick as you can."

"/Prontito, senor/."

Soon, mounted on Vaminos, Ranse leaned in the saddle, pressed with his

knees, and galloped eastward past the store, where sat Sam trying his

guitar in the moonlight.

Vaminos shall have a word--Vaminos the good dun horse. The Mexicans,

who have a hundred names for the colours of a horse, called him

/gruyo/. He was a mouse-coloured, slate-coloured, flea-bitten roan-

dun, if you can conceive it. Down his back from his mane to his tail

went a line of black. He would live forever; and surveyors have not

laid off as many miles in the world as he could travel in a day.

Eight miles east of the Cibolo ranch-house Ranse loosened the pressure

of his knees, and Vaminos stopped under a big ratama tree. The yellow

ratama blossoms showered fragrance that would have undone the roses of

France. The moon made the earth a great concave bowl with a crystal

sky for a lid. In a glade five jack-rabbits leaped and played together

like kittens. Eight miles farther east shone a faint star that

appeared to have dropped below the horizon. Night riders, who often

steered their course by it, knew it to be the light in the Rancho de

los Olmos.

In ten minutes Yenna Curtis galloped to the tree on her sorrel pony

Dancer. The two leaned and clasped hands heartily.

"I ought to have ridden nearer your home," said Ranse. "But you never

will let me."

Yenna laughed. And in the soft light you could see her strong white

teeth and fearless eyes. No sentimentality there, in spite of the

moonlight, the odour of the ratamas, and the admirable figure of Ranse

Truesdell, the lover. But she was there, eight miles from her home, to

meet him.

"How often have I told you, Ranse," she said, "that I am your half-way

girl? Always half-way."

"Well?" said Ranse, with a question in his tones.

"I did," said Yenna, with almost a sigh. "I told him after dinner when

I thought he would be in a good humour. Did you ever wake up a lion,

Ranse, with the mistaken idea that he would be a kitten? He almost

tore the ranch to pieces. It's all up. I love my daddy, Ranse, and I'm

afraid--I'm afraid of him too. He ordered me to promise that I'd never

marry a Truesdell. I promised. That's all. What luck did you have?"

"The same," said Ranse, slowly. "I promised him that his son would

never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn't go against him. He's mighty

old. I'm sorry, Yenna."

The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse's, on the

horn of his saddle.

"I never thought I'd like you better for giving me up," she said

ardently, "but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of the

house and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbour."

"Good-night," said Ranse. "Ride carefully over them badger holes."

They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in her

saddle and called clearly:

"Don't forget I'm your half-way girl, Ranse."

"Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps," muttered Ranse

vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo.

Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own

room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the

packet of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had

gone to Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it

savagely--as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both

his shins--as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an

envelope fell from somewhere--probably from where it had lodged in one

of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously.

Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican /jacals/.

"Tia Juana," he said, "I would like to talk with you a while."

An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled, rose

from a stool.

"Sit down," said Ranse, removing his hat and taking the one chair in

the /jacal/. "Who am I, Tia Juana?" he asked, speaking Spanish.

"Don Ransom, our good friend and employer. Why do you ask?" answered

the old woman wonderingly.

"Tia Juana, who am I?" he repeated, with his stern eyes looking into

hers.

A frightened look came in the old woman's face. She fumbled with her

black shawl.

"Who am I, Tia Juana?" said Ranse once more.

"Thirty-two years I have lived on the Rancho Cibolo," said Tia Juana.

"I thought to be buried under the coma mott beyond the garden before

these things should be known. Close the door, Don Ransom, and I will

speak. I see in your face that you know."

An hour Ranse spent behind Tia Juana's closed door. As he was on his

way back to the house Curly called to him from the wagon-shed.

The tramp sat on his cot, swinging his feet and smoking.

"Say, sport," he grumbled. "This is no way to treat a man after

kidnappin' him. I went up to the store and borrowed a razor from that

fresh guy and had a shave. But that ain't all a man needs. Say--can't

you loosen up for about three fingers more of that booze? I never

asked you to bring me to your d--d farm."

"Stand up out here in the light," said Ranse, looking at him closely.

Curly got up sullenly and took a step or two.

His face, now shaven smooth, seemed transformed. His hair had been

combed, and it fell back from the right side of his forehead with a

peculiar wave. The moonlight charitably softened the ravages of drink;

and his aquiline, well-shaped nose and small, square cleft chin almost

gave distinction to his looks.

Ranse sat on the foot of the cot and looked at him curiously.

"Where did you come from--have you got any home or folks anywhere?"

"Me? Why, I'm a dook," said Curly. "I'm Sir Reginald--oh, cheese it.

No; I don't know anything about my ancestors. I've been a tramp ever

since I can remember. Say, old pal, are you going to set 'em up again

to-night or not?"

"You answer my questions and maybe I will. How did you come to be a

tramp?"

"Me?" answered Curly. "Why, I adopted that profession when I was an

infant. Case of had to. First thing I can remember, I belonged to a

big, lazy hobo called Beefsteak Charley. He sent me around to houses

to beg. I wasn't hardly big enough to reach the latch of a gate."

"Did he ever tell you how he got you?" asked Ranse.

"Once when he was sober he said he bought me for an old six-shooter

and six bits from a band of drunken Mexican sheep-shearers. But what's

the diff? That's all I know."

"All right," said Ranse. "I reckon you're a maverick for certain. I'm

going to put the Rancho Cibolo brand on you. I'll start you to work in

one of the camps to-morrow."

"Work!" sniffed Curly, disdainfully. "What do you take me for? Do you

think I'd chase cows, and hop-skip-and-jump around after crazy sheep

like that pink and yellow guy at the store says these Reubs do? Forget

it."

"Oh, you'll like it when you get used to it," said Ranse. "Yes, I'll

send you up one more drink by Pedro. I think you'll make a first-class

cowpuncher before I get through with you."

"Me?" said Curly. "I pity the cows you set me to chaperon. They can go

chase themselves. Don't forget my nightcap, please, boss."

Ranse paid a visit to the store before going to the house. Sam Rivell

was taking off his tan shoes regretting and preparing for bed.

"Any of the boys from the San Gabriel camp riding in early in the

morning?" asked Ranse.

"Long Collins," said Sam briefly. "For the mail."

"Tell him," said Ranse, "to take that tramp out to camp with him and

keep him till I get there."

Curly was sitting on his blankets in the San Gabriel camp cursing

talentedly when Ranse Truesdell rode up and dismounted on the next

afternoon. The cowpunchers were ignoring the stray. He was grimy with

dust and black dirt. His clothes were making their last stand in

favour of the conventions.

Ranse went up to Buck Rabb, the camp boss, and spoke briefly.

"He's a plumb buzzard," said Buck. "He won't work, and he's the low-

downest passel of inhumanity I ever see. I didn't know what you wanted

done with him, Ranse, so I just let him set. That seems to suit him.

He's been condemned to death by the boys a dozen times, but I told 'em

maybe you was savin' him for the torture."

Ranse took off his coat.

"I've got a hard job before me, Buck, I reckon, but it has to be done.

I've got to make a man out of that thing. That's what I've come to

camp for."

He went up to Curly.

"Brother," he said, "don't you think if you had a bath it would allow

you to take a seat in the company of your fellow-man with less

injustice to the atmosphere."

"Run away, farmer," said Curly, sardonically. "Willie will send for

nursey when he feels like having his tub."

The /charco/, or water hole, was twelve yards away. Ranse took one of

Curly's ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the brink.

Then with the strength and sleight of a hammer-throw he hurled the

offending member of society far into the lake.

Curly crawled out and up the bank spluttering like a porpoise.

Ranse met him with a piece of soap and a coarse towel in his hands.

"Go to the other end of the lake and use this," he said. "Buck will

give you some dry clothes at the wagon."

The tramp obeyed without protest. By the time supper was ready he had

returned to camp. He was hardly to be recognised in his new shirt and

brown duck clothes. Ranse observed him out of the corner of his eye.

"Lordy, I hope he ain't a coward," he was saying to himself. "I hope

he won't turn out to be a coward."

His doubts were soon allayed. Curly walked straight to where he stood.

His light-blue eyes were blazing.

"Now I'm clean," he said meaningly, "maybe you'll talk to me. Think

you've got a picnic here, do you? You clodhoppers think you can run

over a man because you know he can't get away. All right. Now, what do

you think of that?"

Curly planted a stinging slap against Ranse's left cheek. The print of

his hand stood out a dull red against the tan.

Ranse smiled happily.

The cowpunchers talk to this day of the battle that followed.

Somewhere in his restless tour of the cities Curly had acquired the

art of self-defence. The ranchman was equipped only with the splendid

strength and equilibrium of perfect health and the endurance conferred

by decent living. The two attributes nearly matched. There were no

formal rounds. At last the fibre of the clean liver prevailed. The

last time Curly went down from one of the ranchman's awkward but

powerful blows he remained on the grass, but looking up with an

unquenched eye.

Ranse went to the water barrel and washed the red from a cut on his

chin in the stream from the faucet.

On his face was a grin of satisfaction.

Much benefit might accrue to educators and moralists if they could

know the details of the curriculum of reclamation through which Ranse

put his waif during the month that he spent in the San Gabriel camp.

The ranchman had no fine theories to work out--perhaps his whole stock

of pedagogy embraced only a knowledge of horse-breaking and a belief

in heredity.

The cowpunchers saw that their boss was trying to make a man out of

the strange animal that he had sent among them; and they tacitly

organised themselves into a faculty of assistants. But their system

was their own.

Curly's first lesson stuck. He became on friendly and then on intimate

terms with soap and water. And the thing that pleased Ranse most was

that his "subject" held his ground at each successive higher step. But

the steps were sometimes far apart.

Once he got at the quart bottle of whisky kept sacredly in the grub

tent for rattlesnake bites, and spent sixteen hours on the grass,

magnificently drunk. But when he staggered to his feet his first move

was to find his soap and towel and start for the /charco/. And once,

when a treat came from the ranch in the form of a basket of fresh

tomatoes and young onions, Curly devoured the entire consignment

before the punchers reached the camp at supper time.

And then the punchers punished him in their own way. For three days

they did not speak to him, except to reply to his own questions or

remarks. And they spoke with absolute and unfailing politeness. They

played tricks on one another; they pounded one another hurtfully and

affectionately; they heaped upon one another's heads friendly curses

and obloquy; but they were polite to Curly. He saw it, and it stung

him as much as Ranse hoped it would.

Then came a night that brought a cold, wet norther. Wilson, the

youngest of the outfit, had lain in camp two days, ill with fever.

When Joe got up at daylight to begin breakfast he found Curly sitting

asleep against a wheel of the grub wagon with only a saddle blanket

around him, while Curly's blankets were stretched over Wilson to

protect him from the rain and wind.

Three nights after that Curly rolled himself in his blanket and went

to sleep. Then the other punchers rose up softly and began to make

preparations. Ranse saw Long Collins tie a rope to the horn of a

saddle. Others were getting out their six-shooters.

"Boys," said Ranse, "I'm much obliged. I was hoping you would. But I

didn't like to ask."

Half a dozen six-shooters began to pop--awful yells rent the air--Long

Collins galloped wildly across Curly's bed, dragging the saddle after

him. That was merely their way of gently awaking their victim. Then

they hazed him for an hour, carefully and ridiculously, after the code

of cow camps. Whenever he uttered protest they held him stretched over

a roll of blankets and thrashed him woefully with a pair of leather

leggings.

And all this meant that Curly had won his spurs, that he was receiving

the puncher's accolade. Nevermore would they be polite to him. But he

would be their "pardner" and stirrup-brother, foot to foot.

When the fooling was ended all hands made a raid on Joe's big coffee-

pot by the fire for a Java nightcap. Ranse watched the new knight

carefully to see if he understood and was worthy. Curly limped with

his cup of coffee to a log and sat upon it. Long Collins followed and

sat by his side. Buck Rabb went and sat at the other. Curly--grinned.

And then Ranse furnished Curly with mounts and saddle and equipment,

and turned him over to Buck Rabb, instructing him to finish the job.

Three weeks later Ranse rode from the ranch into Rabb's camp, which

was then in Snake Valley. The boys were saddling for the day's ride.

He sought out Long Collins among them.

"How about that bronco?" he asked.

Long Collins grinned.

"Reach out your hand, Ranse Truesdell," he said, "and you'll touch

him. And you can shake his'n, too, if you like, for he's plumb white

and there's none better in no camp."

Ranse looked again at the clear-faced, bronzed, smiling cowpuncher who

stood at Collins's side. Could that be Curly? He held out his hand,

and Curly grasped it with the muscles of a bronco-buster.

"I want you at the ranch," said Ranse.

"All right, sport," said Curly, heartily. "But I want to come back

again. Say, pal, this is a dandy farm. And I don't want any better fun

than hustlin' cows with this bunch of guys. They're all to the merry-

merry."

At the Cibolo ranch-house they dismounted. Ranse bade Curly wait at

the door of the living room. He walked inside. Old "Kiowa" Truesdell

was reading at a table.

"Good-morning, Mr. Truesdell," said Ranse.

The old man turned his white head quickly.

"How is this?" he began. "Why do you call me 'Mr.--'?"

When he looked at Ranse's face he stopped, and the hand that held his

newspaper shook slightly.

"Boy," he said slowly, "how did you find it out?"

"It's all right," said Ranse, with a smile. "I made Tia Juana tell me.

It was kind of by accident, but it's all right."

"You've been like a son to me," said old "Kiowa," trembling.

"Tia Juana told me all about it," said Ranse. "She told me how you

adopted me when I was knee-high to a puddle duck out of a wagon train

of prospectors that was bound West. And she told me how the kid--your

own kid, you know--got lost or was run away with. And she said it was

the same day that the sheep-shearers got on a bender and left the

ranch."

"Our boy strayed from the house when he was two years old," said the

old man. "And then along came those emigrant wagons with a youngster

they didn't want; and we took you. I never intended you to know,

Ranse. We never heard of our boy again."

"He's right outside, unless I'm mighty mistaken," said Ranse, opening

the door and beckoning.

Curly walked in.

No one could have doubted. The old man and the young had the same

sweep of hair, the same nose, chin, line of face, and prominent light-

blue eyes.

Old "Kiowa" rose eagerly.

Curly looked about the room curiously. A puzzled expression came over

his face. He pointed to the wall opposite.

"Where's the tick-tock?" he asked, absent-mindedly.

"The clock," cried old "Kiowa" loudly. "The eight-day clock used to

stand there. Why--"

He turned to Ranse, but Ranse was not there.

Already a hundred yards away, Vaminos, the good flea-bitten dun, was

bearing him eastward like a racer through dust and chaparral towards

the Rancho de los Olmos.

CUPID A LA CARTE

"The dispositions of woman," said Jeff Peters, after various opinions

on the subject had been advanced, "run, regular, to diversions. What a

woman wants is what you're out of. She wants more of a thing when it's

scarce. She likes to have souvenirs of things that never happened. She

likes to be reminded of things she never heard of. A one-sided view of

objects is disjointing to the female composition.

"'Tis a misfortune of mine, begotten by nature and travel," continued

Jeff, looking thoughtfully between his elevated feet at the grocery

stove, "to look deeper into some subjects than most people do. I've

breathed gasoline smoke talking to street crowds in nearly every town

in the United States. I've held 'em spellbound with music, oratory,

sleight of hand, and prevarications, while I've sold 'em jewelry,

medicine, soap, hair tonic, and junk of other nominations. And during

my travels, as a matter of recreation and expiation, I've taken

cognisance some of women. It takes a man a lifetime to find out about

one particular woman; but if he puts in, say, ten years, industrious

and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex. One

lesson I picked up was when I was working the West with a line of

Brazilian diamonds and a patent fire kindler just after my trip from

Savannah down through the cotton belt with Dalby's Anti-explosive Lamp

Oil Powder. 'Twas when the Oklahoma country was in first bloom.

Guthrie was rising in the middle of it like a lump of self-raising

dough. It was a boom town of the regular kind--you stood in line to

get a chance to wash your face; if you ate over ten minutes you had a

lodging bill added on; if you slept on a plank at night they charged

it to you as board the next morning.

"By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering

choice places wherein to feed. So I looked around and found a

proposition that exactly cut the mustard. I found a restaurant tent

just opened up by an outfit that had drifted in on the tail of the

boom. They had knocked together a box house, where they lived and did

the cooking, and served the meals in a tent pitched against the side.

That tent was joyful with placards on it calculated to redeem the

world-worn pilgrim from the sinfulness of boarding houses and pick-me-

up hotels. 'Try Mother's Home-Made Biscuits,' 'What's the Matter with

Our Apple Dumplings and Hard Sauce?' 'Hot Cakes and Maple Syrup Like

You Ate When a Boy,' 'Our Fried Chicken Never Was Heard to Crow'--

there was literature doomed to please the digestions of man! I said to

myself that mother's wandering boy should munch there that night. And

so it came to pass. And there is where I contracted my case of Mame

Dugan.

"Old Man Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his

time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty

memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the

cooking, and Mame waited on the table.

"As soon as I saw Mame I knew there was a mistake in the census

reports. There wasn't but one girl in the United States. When you come

to specifications it isn't easy. She was about the size of an angel,

and she had eyes, and ways about her. When you come to the kind of a

girl she was, you'll find a belt of 'em reaching from the Brooklyn

Bridge west as far as the courthouse in Council Bluffs, Ia. They earn

their own living in stores, restaurants, factories, and offices.

They're chummy and honest and free and tender and sassy, and they look

life straight in the eye. They've met man face to face, and discovered

that he's a poor creature. They've dropped to it that the reports in

the Seaside Library about his being a fairy prince lack confirmation.

"Mame was that sort. She was full of life and fun, and breezy; she

passed the repartee with the boarders quick as a wink; you'd have

smothered laughing. I am disinclined to make excavations into the

insides of a personal affection. I am glued to the theory that the

diversions and discrepancies of the indisposition known as love should

be as private a sentiment as a toothbrush. 'Tis my opinion that the

biographies of the heart should be confined with the historical

romances of the liver to the advertising pages of the magazines. So,

you'll excuse the lack of an itemised bill of my feelings toward Mame.

"Pretty soon I got a regular habit of dropping into the tent to eat at

irregular times when there wasn't so many around. Mame would sail in

with a smile, in a black dress and white apron, and say: 'Hello, Jeff

--why don't you come at mealtime? Want to see how much trouble you can

be, of course. Friedchickenbeefsteakporkchopshamandeggspotpie'--and so

on. She called me Jeff, but there was no significations attached.

Designations was all she meant. The front names of any of us she used

as they came to hand. I'd eat about two meals before I left, and

string 'em out like a society spread where they changed plates and

wives, and josh one another festively between bites. Mame stood for

it, pleasant, for it wasn't up to her to take any canvas off the tent

by declining dollars just because they were whipped in after meal

times.

"It wasn't long until there was another fellow named Ed Collier got

the between-meals affliction, and him and me put in bridges between

breakfast and dinner, and dinner and supper, that made a three-ringed

circus of that tent, and Mame's turn as waiter a continuous

performance. That Collier man was saturated with designs and

contrivings. He was in well-boring or insurance or claim-jumping, or

something--I've forgotten which. He was a man well lubricated with

gentility, and his words were such as recommended you to his point of

view. So, Collier and me infested the grub tent with care and

activity. Mame was level full of impartiality. 'Twas like a casino

hand the way she dealt out her favours--one to Collier and one to me

and one to the board, and not a card up her sleeve.

"Me and Collier naturally got acquainted, and gravitated together some

on the outside. Divested of his stratagems, he seemed to be a pleasant

chap, full of an amiable sort of hostility.

"'I notice you have an affinity for grubbing in the banquet hall after

the guests have fled,' says I to him one day, to draw his conclusions.

"'Well, yes,' says Collier, reflecting; 'the tumult of a crowded board

seems to harass my sensitive nerves.'

"'It exasperates mine some, too,' says I. 'Nice little girl, don't you

think?'

"'I see,' says Collier, laughing. 'Well, now that you mention it, I

have noticed that she doesn't seem to displease the optic nerve.'

"'She's a joy to mine,' says I, 'and I'm going after her. Notice is

hereby served.'

"'I'll be as candid as you,' admits Collier, 'and if the drug stores

don't run out of pepsin I'll give you a run for your money that'll

leave you a dyspeptic at the wind-up.'

"So Collier and me begins the race; the grub department lays in new

supplies; Mame waits on us, jolly and kind and agreeable, and it looks

like an even break, with Cupid and the cook working overtime in

Dugan's restaurant.

"'Twas one night in September when I got Mame to take a walk after

supper when the things were all cleared away. We strolled out a

distance and sat on a pile of lumber at the edge of town. Such

opportunities was seldom, so I spoke my piece, explaining how the

Brazilian diamonds and the fire kindler were laying up sufficient

treasure to guarantee the happiness of two, and that both of 'em

together couldn't equal the light from somebody's eyes, and that the

name of Dugan should be changed to Peters, or reasons why not would be

in order.

"Mame didn't say anything right away. Directly she gave a kind of

shudder, and I began to learn something.

"'Jeff,' she says, 'I'm sorry you spoke. I like you as well as any of

them, but there isn't a man in the world I'd ever marry, and there

never will be. Do you know what a man is in my eye? He's a tomb. He's

a sarcophagus for the interment of Beafsteakporkchopsliver'nbaconham-

andeggs. He's that and nothing more. For two years I've watched men

eat, eat, eat, until they represent nothing on earth to me but

ruminant bipeds. They're absolutely nothing but something that goes in

front of a knife and fork and plate at the table. They're fixed that

way in my mind and memory. I've tried to overcome it, but I can't.

I've heard girls rave about their sweethearts, but I never could

understand it. A man and a sausage grinder and a pantry awake in me

exactly the same sentiments. I went to a matinee once to see an actor

the girls were crazy about. I got interested enough to wonder whether

he liked his steak rare, medium, or well done, and his eggs over or

straight up. That was all. No, Jeff; I'll marry no man and see him sit

at the breakfast table and eat, and come back to dinner and eat, and

happen in again at supper to eat, eat, eat.'

"'But, Mame,' says I, 'it'll wear off. You've had too much of it.

You'll marry some time, of course. Men don't eat always.'

"'As far as my observation goes, they do. No, I'll tell you what I'm

going to do.' Mame turns, sudden, to animation and bright eyes.

'There's a girl named Susie Foster in Terre Haute, a chum of mine. She

waits in the railroad eating house there. I worked two years in a

restaurant in that town. Susie has it worse than I do, because the men

who eat at railroad stations gobble. They try to flirt and gobble at

the same time. Whew! Susie and I have it all planned out. We're saving

our money, and when we get enough we're going to buy a little cottage

and five acres we know of, and live together, and grow violets for the

Eastern market. A man better not bring his appetite within a mile of

that ranch.'

"'Don't girls ever--' I commenced, but Mame heads me off, sharp.

"'No, they don't. They nibble a little bit sometimes; that's all.'

"'I thought the confect--'

"'For goodness' sake, change the subject,' says Mame.

"As I said before, that experience puts me wise that the feminine

arrangement ever struggles after deceptions and illusions. Take

England--beef made her; wieners elevated Germany; Uncle Sam owes his

greatness to fried chicken and pie, but the young ladies of the

Shetalkyou schools, they'll never believe it. Shakespeare, they allow,

and Rubinstein, and the Rough Riders is what did the trick.

"'Twas a situation calculated to disturb. I couldn't bear to give up

Mame; and yet it pained me to think of abandoning the practice of

eating. I had acquired the habit too early. For twenty-seven years I

had been blindly rushing upon my fate, yielding to the insidious lures

of that deadly monster, food. It was too late. I was a ruminant biped

for keeps. It was lobster salad to a doughnut that my life was going

to be blighted by it.

"I continued to board at the Dugan tent, hoping that Mame would

relent. I had sufficient faith in true love to believe that since it

has often outlived the absence of a square meal it might, in time,

overcome the presence of one. I went on ministering to my fatal vice,

although I felt that each time I shoved a potato into my mouth in

Mame's presence I might be burying my fondest hopes.

"I think Collier must have spoken to Mame and got the same answer, for

one day he orders a cup of coffee and a cracker, and sits nibbling the

corner of it like a girl in the parlour, that's filled up in the

kitchen, previous, on cold roast and fried cabbage. I caught on and

did the same, and maybe we thought we'd made a hit! The next day we

tried it again, and out comes old man Dugan fetching in his hands the

fairy viands.

"'Kinder off yer feed, ain't ye, gents?' he asks, fatherly and some

sardonic. 'Thought I'd spell Mame a bit, seein' the work was light,

and my rheumatiz can stand the strain.'

"So back me and Collier had to drop to the heavy grub again. I noticed

about that time that I was seized by a most uncommon and devastating

appetite. I ate until Mame must have hated to see me darken the door.

Afterward I found out that I had been made the victim of the first

dark and irreligious trick played on me by Ed Collier. Him and me had

been taking drinks together uptown regular, trying to drown our thirst

for food. That man had bribed about ten bartenders to always put a big

slug of Appletree's Anaconda Appetite Bitters in every one of my

drinks. But the last trick he played me was hardest to forget.

"One day Collier failed to show up at the tent. A man told me he left

town that morning. My only rival now was the bill of fare. A few days

before he left Collier had presented me with a two-gallon jug of fine

whisky which he said a cousin had sent him from Kentucky. I now have

reason to believe that it contained Appletree's Anaconda Appetite

Bitters almost exclusively. I continued to devour tons of provisions.

In Mame's eyes I remained a mere biped, more ruminant than ever.

"About a week after Collier pulled his freight there came a kind of

side-show to town, and hoisted a tent near the railroad. I judged it

was a sort of fake museum and curiosity business. I called to see Mame

one night, and Ma Dugan said that she and Thomas, her younger brother,

had gone to the show. That same thing happened for three nights that

week. Saturday night I caught her on the way coming back, and got to

sit on the steps a while and talk to her. I noticed she looked

different. Her eyes were softer, and shiny like. Instead of a Mame

Dugan to fly from the voracity of man and raise violets, she seemed to

be a Mame more in line as God intended her, approachable, and suited

to bask in the light of the Brazilians and the Kindler.

"'You seem to be right smart inveigled,' says I, 'with the

Unparalleled Exhibition of the World's Living Curiosities and

Wonders.'

"'It's a change,' says Mame.

"'You'll need another,' says I, 'if you keep on going every night.'

"'Don't be cross, Jeff,' says she; 'it takes my mind off business.'

"'Don't the curiosities eat?' I ask.

"'Not all of them. Some of them are wax.'

"'Look out, then, that you don't get stuck,' says I, kind of flip and

foolish.

"Mame blushed. I didn't know what to think about her. My hopes raised

some that perhaps my attentions had palliated man's awful crime of

visibly introducing nourishment into his system. She talked some about

the stars, referring to them with respect and politeness, and I

drivelled a quantity about united hearts, homes made bright by true

affection, and the Kindler. Mame listened without scorn, and I says to

myself, 'Jeff, old man, you're removing the hoodoo that has clung to

the consumer of victuals; you're setting your heel upon the serpent

that lurks in the gravy bowl.'

"Monday night I drop around. Mame is at the Unparalleled Exhibition

with Thomas.

"'Now, may the curse of the forty-one seven-sided sea cooks,' says I,

'and the bad luck of the nine impenitent grasshoppers rest upon this

self-same sideshow at once and forever more. Amen. I'll go to see it

myself to-morrow night and investigate its baleful charm. Shall man

that was made to inherit the earth be bereft of his sweetheart first

by a knife and fork and then by a ten-cent circus?'

"The next night before starting out for the exhibition tent I inquire

and find out that Mame is not at home. She is not at the circus with

Thomas this time, for Thomas waylays me in the grass outside of the

grub tent with a scheme of his own before I had time to eat supper.

"'What'll you give me, Jeff,' says he, 'if I tell you something?'

"'The value of it, son,' I says.

"'Sis is stuck on a freak,' says Thomas, 'one of the side-show freaks.

I don't like him. She does. I overheard 'em talking. Thought maybe

you'd like to know. Say, Jeff, does it put you wise two dollars'

worth? There's a target rifle up town that--'

"I frisked my pockets and commenced to dribble a stream of halves and

quarters into Thomas's hat. The information was of the pile-driver

system of news, and it telescoped my intellects for a while. While I

was leaking small change and smiling foolish on the outside, and

suffering disturbances internally, I was saying, idiotically and

pleasantly:

"'Thank you, Thomas--thank you--er--a freak, you said, Thomas. Now,

could you make out the monstrosity's entitlements a little clearer, if

you please, Thomas?'

"'This is the fellow,' says Thomas, pulling out a yellow handbill from

his pocket and shoving it under my nose. 'He's the Champion Faster of

the Universe. I guess that's why Sis got soft on him. He don't eat

nothing. He's going to fast forty-nine days. This is the sixth. That's

him.'

"I looked at the name Thomas pointed out--'Professor Eduardo

Collieri.' 'Ah!' says I, in admiration, 'that's not so bad, Ed

Collier. I give you credit for the trick. But I don't give you the

girl until she's Mrs. Freak.'

"I hit the sod in the direction of the show. I came up to the rear of

the tent, and, as I did so, a man wiggled out like a snake from under

the bottom of the canvas, scrambled to his feet, and ran into me like

a locoed bronco. I gathered him by the neck and investigated him by

the light of the stars. It is Professor Eduardo Collieri, in human

habiliments, with a desperate look in one eye and impatience in the

other.

"'Hello, Curiosity,' says I. 'Get still a minute and let's have a look

at your freakship. How do you like being the willopus-wallopus or the

bim-bam from Borneo, or whatever name you are denounced by in the

side-show business?'

"'Jeff Peters,' says Collier, in a weak voice. 'Turn me loose, or I'll

slug you one. I'm in the extremest kind of a large hurry. Hands off!'

"'Tut, tut, Eddie,' I answers, holding him hard; 'let an old friend

gaze on the exhibition of your curiousness. It's an eminent graft you

fell onto, my son. But don't speak of assaults and battery, because

you're not fit. The best you've got is a lot of nerve and a mighty

empty stomach.' And so it was. The man was as weak as a vegetarian

cat.

"'I'd argue this case with you, Jeff,' says he, regretful in his

style, 'for an unlimited number of rounds if I had half an hour to

train in and a slab of beefsteak two feet square to train with. Curse

the man, I say, that invented the art of going foodless. May his soul

in eternity be chained up within two feet of a bottomless pit of red-

hot hash. I'm abandoning the conflict, Jeff; I'm deserting to the

enemy. You'll find Miss Dugan inside contemplating the only living

mummy and the informed hog. She's a fine girl, Jeff. I'd have beat you

out if I could have kept up the grubless habit a little while longer.

You'll have to admit that the fasting dodge was aces-up for a while. I

figured it out that way. But say, Jeff, it's said that love makes the

world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification.

It's the wind from the dinner horn that does it. I love that Mame

Dugan. I've gone six days without food in order to coincide with her

sentiments. Only one bite did I have. That was when I knocked the

tattooed man down with a war club and got a sandwich he was gobbling.

The manager fined me all my salary; but salary wasn't what I was

after. 'Twas that girl. I'd give my life for her, but I'd endanger my

immortal soul for a beef stew. Hunger is a horrible thing, Jeff. Love

and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are

nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!'

"In such language Ed Collier discoursed to me, pathetic. I gathered

the diagnosis that his affections and his digestions had been

implicated in a scramble and the commissary had won out. I never

disliked Ed Collier. I searched my internal admonitions of suitable

etiquette to see if I could find a remark of a consoling nature, but

there was none convenient.

"'I'd be glad, now,' says Ed, 'if you'll let me go. I've been hard

hit, but I'll hit the ration supply harder. I'm going to clean out

every restaurant in town. I'm going to wade waist deep in sirloins and

swim in ham and eggs. It's an awful thing, Jeff Peters, for a man to

come to this pass--to give up his girl for something to eat--it's

worse than that man Esau, that swapped his copyright for a partridge--

but then, hunger's a fierce thing. You'll excuse me, now, Jeff, for I

smell a pervasion of ham frying in the distance, and my legs are

crying out to stampede in that direction.'

"'A hearty meal to you, Ed Collier,' I says to him, 'and no hard

feelings. For myself, I am projected to be an unseldom eater, and I

have condolence for your predicaments.'

"There was a sudden big whiff of frying ham smell on the breeze; and

the Champion Faster gives a snort and gallops off in the dark toward

fodder.

"I wish some of the cultured outfit that are always advertising the

extenuating circumstances of love and romance had been there to see.

There was Ed Collier, a fine man full of contrivances and flirtations,

abandoning the girl of his heart and ripping out into the contiguous

territory in the pursuit of sordid grub. 'Twas a rebuke to the poets

and a slap at the best-paying element of fiction. An empty stomach is

a sure antidote to an overfull heart.

"I was naturally anxious to know how far Mame was infatuated with

Collier and his stratagems. I went inside the Unparalleled Exhibition,

and there she was. She looked surprised to see me, but unguilty.

"'It's an elegant evening outside,' says I. 'The coolness is quite

nice and gratifying, and the stars are lined out, first class, up

where they belong. Wouldn't you shake these by-products of the animal

kingdom long enough to take a walk with a common human who never was

on a programme in his life?'

"Mame gave a sort of sly glance around, and I knew what that meant.

"'Oh,' says I, 'I hate to tell you; but the curiosity that lives on

wind has flew the coop. He just crawled out under the tent. By this

time he has amalgamated himself with half the delicatessen truck in

town.'

"'You mean Ed Collier?' says Mame.

"'I do,' I answers; 'and a pity it is that he has gone back to crime

again. I met him outside the tent, and he exposed his intentions of

devastating the food crop of the world. 'Tis enormously sad when one's

ideal descends from his pedestal to make a seventeen-year locust of

himself.'

"Mame looked me straight in the eye until she had corkscrewed my

reflections.

"'Jeff,' says she, 'it isn't quite like you to talk that way. I don't

care to hear Ed Collier ridiculed. A man may do ridiculous things, but

they don't look ridiculous to the girl he does 'em for. That was one

man in a hundred. He stopped eating just to please me. I'd be hard-

hearted and ungrateful if I didn't feel kindly toward him. Could you

do what he did?'

"'I know,' says I, seeing the point, 'I'm condemned. I can't help it.

The brand of the consumer is upon my brow. Mrs. Eve settled that

business for me when she made the dicker with the snake. I fell from

the fire into the frying-pan. I guess I'm the Champion Feaster of the

Universe.' I spoke humble, and Mame mollified herself a little.

"'Ed Collier and I are good friends,' she said, 'the same as me and

you. I gave him the same answer I did you--no marrying for me. I liked

to be with Ed and talk with him. There was something mighty pleasant

to me in the thought that here was a man who never used a knife and

fork, and all for my sake.'

"'Wasn't you in love with him?' I asks, all injudicious. 'Wasn't there

a deal on for you to become Mrs. Curiosity?'

"All of us do it sometimes. All of us get jostled out of the line of

profitable talk now and then. Mame put on that little lemon /glace/

smile that runs between ice and sugar, and says, much too pleasant:

'You're short on credentials for asking that question, Mr. Peters.

Suppose you do a forty-nine day fast, just to give you ground to stand

on, and then maybe I'll answer it.'

"So, even after Collier was kidnapped out of the way by the revolt of

his appetite, my own prospects with Mame didn't seem to be improved.

And then business played out in Guthrie.

"I had stayed too long there. The Brazilians I had sold commenced to

show signs of wear, and the Kindler refused to light up right frequent

on wet mornings. There is always a time, in my business, when the star

of success says, 'Move on to the next town.' I was travelling by wagon

at that time so as not to miss any of the small towns; so I hitched up

a few days later and went down to tell Mame good-bye. I wasn't

abandoning the game; I intended running over to Oklahoma City and work

it for a week or two. Then I was coming back to institute fresh

proceedings against Mame.

"What do I find at the Dugans' but Mame all conspicuous in a blue

travelling dress, with her little trunk at the door. It seems that

sister Lottie Bell, who is a typewriter in Terre Haute, is going to be

married next Thursday, and Mame is off for a week's visit to be an

accomplice at the ceremony. Mame is waiting for a freight wagon that

is going to take her to Oklahoma, but I condemns the freight wagon

with promptness and scorn, and offers to deliver the goods myself. Ma

Dugan sees no reason why not, as Mr. Freighter wants pay for the job;

so, thirty minutes later Mame and I pull out in my light spring wagon

with white canvas cover, and head due south.

"That morning was of a praiseworthy sort. The breeze was lively, and

smelled excellent of flowers and grass, and the little cottontail

rabbits entertained themselves with skylarking across the road. My two

Kentucky bays went for the horizon until it come sailing in so fast

you wanted to dodge it like a clothesline. Mame was full of talk and

rattled on like a kid about her old home and her school pranks and the

things she liked and the hateful ways of those Johnson girls just

across the street, 'way up in Indiana. Not a word was said about Ed

Collier or victuals or such solemn subjects. About noon Mame looks and

finds that the lunch she had put up in a basket had been left behind.

I could have managed quite a collation, but Mame didn't seem to be

grieving over nothing to eat, so I made no lamentations. It was a sore

subject with me, and I ruled provender in all its branches out of my

conversation.

"I am minded to touch light on explanations how I came to lose the

way. The road was dim and well grown with grass; and there was Mame by

my side confiscating my intellects and attention. The excuses are good

or they are not, as they may appear to you. But I lost it, and at dusk

that afternoon, when we should have been in Oklahoma City, we were

seesawing along the edge of nowhere in some undiscovered river bottom,

and the rain was falling in large, wet bunches. Down there in the

swamps we saw a little log house on a small knoll of high ground. The

bottom grass and the chaparral and the lonesome timber crowded all

around it. It seemed to be a melancholy little house, and you felt

sorry for it. 'Twas that house for the night, the way I reasoned it. I

explained to Mame, and she leaves it to me to decide. She doesn't

become galvanic and prosecuting, as most women would, but she says

it's all right; she knows I didn't mean to do it.

"We found the house was deserted. It had two empty rooms. There was a

little shed in the yard where beasts had once been kept. In a loft of

it was a lot of old hay. I put my horses in there and gave them some

of it, for which they looked at me sorrowful, expecting apologies. The

rest of the hay I carried into the house by armfuls, with a view to

accommodations. I also brought in the patent kindler and the

Brazilians, neither of which are guaranteed against the action of

water.

"Mame and I sat on the wagon seats on the floor, and I lit a lot of

the kindler on the hearth, for the night was chilly. If I was any

judge, that girl enjoyed it. It was a change for her. It gave her a

different point of view. She laughed and talked, and the kindler made

a dim light compared to her eyes. I had a pocketful of cigars, and as

far as I was concerned there had never been any fall of man. We were

at the same old stand in the Garden of Eden. Out there somewhere in

the rain and the dark was the river of Zion, and the angel with the

flaming sword had not yet put up the keep-off-the-grass sign. I opened

up a gross or two of the Brazilians and made Mame put them on--rings,

brooches, necklaces, eardrops, bracelets, girdles, and lockets. She

flashed and sparkled like a million-dollar princess until she had pink

spots in her cheeks and almost cried for a looking-glass.

"When it got late I made a fine bunk on the floor for Mame with the

hay and my lap robes and blankets out of the wagon, and persuaded her

to lie down. I sat in the other room burning tobacco and listening to

the pouring rain and meditating on the many vicissitudes that came to

a man during the seventy years or so immediately preceding his

funeral.

"I must have dozed a little while before morning, for my eyes were

shut, and when I opened them it was daylight, and there stood Mame

with her hair all done up neat and correct, and her eyes bright with

admiration of existence.

"'Gee whiz, Jeff!' she exclaims, 'but I'm hungry. I could eat a--'

"I looked up and caught her eye. Her smile went back in and she gave

me a cold look of suspicion. Then I laughed, and laid down on the

floor to laugh easier. It seemed funny to me. By nature and geniality

I am a hearty laugher, and I went the limit. When I came to, Mame was

sitting with her back to me, all contaminated with dignity.

"'Don't be angry, Mame,' I says, 'for I couldn't help it. It's the

funny way you've done up your hair. If you could only see it!'

"'You needn't tell stories, sir,' said Mame, cool and advised. 'My

hair is all right. I know what you were laughing about. Why, Jeff,

look outside,' she winds up, peeping through a chink between the logs.

I opened the little wooden window and looked out. The entire river

bottom was flooded, and the knob of land on which the house stood was

an island in the middle of a rushing stream of yellow water a hundred

yards wide. And it was still raining hard. All we could do was to stay

there till the doves brought in the olive branch.

"I am bound to admit that conversations and amusements languished

during that day. I was aware that Mame was getting a too prolonged

one-sided view of things again, but I had no way to change it.

Personally, I was wrapped up in the desire to eat. I had

hallucinations of hash and visions of ham, and I kept saying to myself

all the time, 'What'll you have to eat, Jeff?--what'll you order now,

old man, when the waiter comes?' I picks out to myself all sorts of

favourites from the bill of fare, and imagines them coming. I guess

it's that way with all hungry men. They can't get their cogitations

trained on anything but something to eat. It shows that the little

table with the broken-legged caster and the imitation Worcester sauce

and the napkin covering up the coffee stains is the paramount issue,

after all, instead of the question of immortality or peace between

nations.

"I sat there, musing along, arguing with myself quite heated as to how

I'd have my steak--with mushrooms, or /a la creole/. Mame was on the

other seat, pensive, her head leaning on her hand. 'Let the potatoes

come home-fried,' I states in my mind, 'and brown the hash in the pan,

with nine poached eggs on the side.' I felt, careful, in my own

pockets to see if I could find a peanut or a grain or two of popcorn.

"Night came on again with the river still rising and the rain still

falling. I looked at Mame and I noticed that desperate look on her

face that a girl always wears when she passes an ice-cream lair. I

knew that poor girl was hungry--maybe for the first time in her life.

There was that anxious look in her eye that a woman has only when she

has missed a meal or feels her skirt coming unfastened in the back.

"It was about eleven o'clock or so on the second night when we sat,

gloomy, in our shipwrecked cabin. I kept jerking my mind away from the

subject of food, but it kept flopping back again before I could fasten

it. I thought of everything good to eat I had ever heard of. I went

away back to my kidhood and remembered the hot biscuit sopped in

sorghum and bacon gravy with partiality and respect. Then I trailed

along up the years, pausing at green apples and salt, flapjacks and

maple, lye hominy, fried chicken Old Virginia style, corn on the cob,

spareribs and sweet potato pie, and wound up with Georgia Brunswick

stew, which is the top notch of good things to eat, because it

comprises 'em all.

"They say a drowning man sees a panorama of his whole life pass before

him. Well, when a man's starving he sees the ghost of every meal he

ever ate set out before him, and he invents new dishes that would make

the fortune of a chef. If somebody would collect the last words of men

who starved to death, they'd have to sift 'em mighty fine to discover

the sentiment, but they'd compile into a cook book that would sell

into the millions.

"I guess I must have had my conscience pretty well inflicted with

culinary meditations, for, without intending to do so, I says, out

loud, to the imaginary waiter, 'Cut it thick and have it rare, with

the French fried, and six, soft-scrambled, on toast.'

"Mame turned her head quick as a wing. Her eyes were sparkling and she

smiled sudden.

"'Medium for me,' she rattles out, 'with the Juliennes, and three,

straight up. Draw one, and brown the wheats, double order to come. Oh,

Jeff, wouldn't it be glorious! And then I'd like to have a half fry,

and a little chicken curried with rice, and a cup custard with ice

cream, and--'

"'Go easy,' I interrupts; 'where's the chicken liver pie, and the

kidney /saute/ on toast, and the roast lamb, and--'

"'Oh,' cuts in Mame, all excited, 'with mint sauce, and the turkey

salad, and stuffed olives, and raspberry tarts, and--'

"'Keep it going,' says I. 'Hurry up with the fried squash, and the hot

corn pone with sweet milk, and don't forget the apple dumpling with

hard sauce, and the cross-barred dew-berry pie--'

"Yes, for ten minutes we kept up that kind of restaurant repartee. We

ranges up and down and backward and forward over the main trunk lines

and the branches of the victual subject, and Mame leads the game, for

she is apprised in the ramifications of grub, and the dishes she

nominates aggravates my yearnings. It seems that there is a feeling

that Mame will line up friendly again with food. It seems that she

looks upon the obnoxious science of eating with less contempt than

before.

"The next morning we find that the flood has subsided. I geared up the

bays, and we splashed out through the mud, some precarious, until we

found the road again. We were only a few miles wrong, and in two hours

we were in Oklahoma City. The first thing we saw was a big restaurant

sign, and we piled into there in a hurry. Here I finds myself sitting

with Mame at table, with knives and forks and plates between us, and

she not scornful, but smiling with starvation and sweetness.

"'Twas a new restaurant and well stocked. I designated a list of

quotations from the bill of fare that made the waiter look out toward

the wagon to see how many more might be coming.

"There we were, and there was the order being served. 'Twas a banquet

for a dozen, but we felt like a dozen. I looked across the table at

Mame and smiled, for I had recollections. Mame was looking at the

table like a boy looks at his first stem-winder. Then she looked at

me, straight in the face, and two big tears came in her eyes. The

waiter was gone after more grub.

"'Jeff,' she says, soft like, 'I've been a foolish girl. I've looked

at things from the wrong side. I never felt this way before. Men get

hungry every day like this, don't they? They're big and strong, and

they do the hard work of the world, and they don't eat just to spite

silly waiter girls in restaurants, do they, Jeff? You said once--that

is, you asked me--you wanted me to--well, Jeff, if you still care--I'd

be glad and willing to have you always sitting across the table from

me. Now give me something to eat, quick, please.'

"So, as I've said, a woman needs to change her point of view now and

then. They get tired of the same old sights--the same old dinner

table, washtub, and sewing machine. Give 'em a touch of the various--a

little travel and a little rest, a little tomfoolery along with the

tragedies of keeping house, a little petting after the blowing-up, a

little upsetting and a little jostling around--and everybody in the

game will have chips added to their stack by the play."

THE CABALLERO'S WAY

The Cisco Kid had killed six men in more or less fair scrimmages, had

murdered twice as many (mostly Mexicans), and had winged a larger

number whom he modestly forbore to count. Therefore a woman loved him.

The Kid was twenty-five, looked twenty; and a careful insurance

company would have estimated the probable time of his demise at, say,

twenty-six. His habitat was anywhere between the Frio and the Rio

Grande. He killed for the love of it--because he was quick-tempered--

to avoid arrest--for his own amusement--any reason that came to his

mind would suffice. He had escaped capture because he could shoot

five-sixths of a second sooner than any sheriff or ranger in the

service, and because he rode a speckled roan horse that knew every

cow-path in the mesquite and pear thickets from San Antonio to

Matamoras.

Tonia Perez, the girl who loved the Cisco Kid, was half Carmen, half

Madonna, and the rest--oh, yes, a woman who is half Carmen and half

Madonna can always be something more--the rest, let us say, was

humming-bird. She lived in a grass-roofed /jacal/ near a little

Mexican settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio. With her

lived a father or grandfather, a lineal Aztec, somewhat less than a

thousand years old, who herded a hundred goats and lived in a

continuous drunken dream from drinking /mescal/. Back of the /jacal/ a

tremendous forest of bristling pear, twenty feet high at its worst,

crowded almost to its door. It was along the bewildering maze of this

spinous thicket that the speckled roan would bring the Kid to see his

girl. And once, clinging like a lizard to the ridge-pole, high up

under the peaked grass roof, he had heard Tonia, with her Madonna face

and Carmen beauty and humming-bird soul, parley with the sheriff's

posse, denying knowledge of her man in her soft /melange/ of Spanish

and English.

One day the adjutant-general of the State, who is, /ex offico/,

commander of the ranger forces, wrote some sarcastic lines to Captain

Duval of Company X, stationed at Laredo, relative to the serene and

undisturbed existence led by murderers and desperadoes in the said

captain's territory.

The captain turned the colour of brick dust under his tan, and

forwarded the letter, after adding a few comments, per ranger Private

Bill Adamson, to ranger Lieutenant Sandridge, camped at a water hole

on the Nueces with a squad of five men in preservation of law and

order.

Lieutenant Sandridge turned a beautiful /couleur de rose/ through his

ordinary strawberry complexion, tucked the letter in his hip pocket,

and chewed off the ends of his gamboge moustache.

The next morning he saddled his horse and rode alone to the Mexican

settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, twenty miles away.

Six feet two, blond as a Viking, quiet as a deacon, dangerous as a

machine gun, Sandridge moved among the /Jacales/, patiently seeking

news of the Cisco Kid.

Far more than the law, the Mexicans dreaded the cold and certain

vengeance of the lone rider that the ranger sought. It had been one of

the Kid's pastimes to shoot Mexicans "to see them kick": if he

demanded from them moribund Terpsichorean feats, simply that he might

be entertained, what terrible and extreme penalties would be certain

to follow should they anger him! One and all they lounged with

upturned palms and shrugging shoulders, filling the air with "/quien

sabes/" and denials of the Kid's acquaintance.

But there was a man named Fink who kept a store at the Crossing--a man

of many nationalities, tongues, interests, and ways of thinking.

"No use to ask them Mexicans," he said to Sandridge. "They're afraid

to tell. This /hombre/ they call the Kid--Goodall is his name, ain't

it?--he's been in my store once or twice. I have an idea you might run

across him at--but I guess I don't keer to say, myself. I'm two

seconds later in pulling a gun than I used to be, and the difference

is worth thinking about. But this Kid's got a half-Mexican girl at the

Crossing that he comes to see. She lives in that /jacal/ a hundred

yards down the arroyo at the edge of the pear. Maybe she--no, I don't

suppose she would, but that /jacal/ would be a good place to watch,

anyway."

Sandridge rode down to the /jacal/ of Perez. The sun was low, and the

broad shade of the great pear thicket already covered the grass-

thatched hut. The goats were enclosed for the night in a brush corral

near by. A few kids walked the top of it, nibbling the chaparral

leaves. The old Mexican lay upon a blanket on the grass, already in a

stupor from his mescal, and dreaming, perhaps, of the nights when he

and Pizarro touched glasses to their New World fortunes--so old his

wrinkled face seemed to proclaim him to be. And in the door of the

/jacal/ stood Tonia. And Lieutenant Sandridge sat in his saddle

staring at her like a gannet agape at a sailorman.

The Cisco Kid was a vain person, as all eminent and successful

assassins are, and his bosom would have been ruffled had he known that

at a simple exchange of glances two persons, in whose minds he had

been looming large, suddenly abandoned (at least for the time) all

thought of him.

Never before had Tonia seen such a man as this. He seemed to be made

of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather. He seemed to

illuminate the shadow of the pear when he smiled, as though the sun

were rising again. The men she had known had been small and dark. Even

the Kid, in spite of his achievements, was a stripling no larger than

herself, with black, straight hair and a cold, marble face that

chilled the noonday.

As for Tonia, though she sends description to the poorhouse, let her

make a millionaire of your fancy. Her blue-black hair, smoothly

divided in the middle and bound close to her head, and her large eyes

full of the Latin melancholy, gave her the Madonna touch. Her motions

and air spoke of the concealed fire and the desire to charm that she

had inherited from the /gitanas/ of the Basque province. As for the

humming-bird part of her, that dwelt in her heart; you could not

perceive it unless her bright red skirt and dark blue blouse gave you

a symbolic hint of the vagarious bird.

The newly lighted sun-god asked for a drink of water. Tonia brought it

from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter. Sandridge considered

it necessary to dismount so as to lessen the trouble of her

ministrations.

I play no spy; nor do I assume to master the thoughts of any human

heart; but I assert, by the chronicler's right, that before a quarter

of an hour had sped, Sandridge was teaching her how to plaint a

six-strand rawhide stake-rope, and Tonia had explained to him that

were it not for her little English book that the peripatetic /padre/

had given her and the little crippled /chivo/, that she fed from a

bottle, she would be very, very lonely indeed.

Which leads to a suspicion that the Kid's fences needed repairing, and

that the adjutant-general's sarcasm had fallen upon unproductive soil.

In his camp by the water hole Lieutenant Sandridge announced and

reiterated his intention of either causing the Cisco Kid to nibble the

black loam of the Frio country prairies or of haling him before a

judge and jury. That sounded business-like. Twice a week he rode over

to the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, and directed Tonia's slim,

slightly lemon-tinted fingers among the intricacies of the slowly

growing lariata. A six-strand plait is hard to learn and easy to

teach.

The ranger knew that he might find the Kid there at any visit. He kept

his armament ready, and had a frequent eye for the pear thicket at the

rear of the /jacal/. Thus he might bring down the kite and the

humming-bird with one stone.

While the sunny-haired ornithologist was pursuing his studies the

Cisco Kid was also attending to his professional duties. He moodily

shot up a saloon in a small cow village on Quintana Creek, killed the

town marshal (plugging him neatly in the centre of his tin badge), and

then rode away, morose and unsatisfied. No true artist is uplifted by

shooting an aged man carrying an old-style .38 bulldog.

On his way the Kid suddenly experienced the yearning that all men feel

when wrong-doing loses its keen edge of delight. He yearned for the

woman he loved to reassure him that she was his in spite of it. He

wanted her to call his bloodthirstiness bravery and his cruelty

devotion. He wanted Tonia to bring him water from the red jar under

the brush shelter, and tell him how the /chivo/ was thriving on the

bottle.

The Kid turned the speckled roan's head up the ten-mile pear flat that

stretches along the Arroyo Hondo until it ends at the Lone Wolf

Crossing of the Frio. The roan whickered; for he had a sense of

locality and direction equal to that of a belt-line street-car horse;

and he knew he would soon be nibbling the rich mesquite grass at the

end of a forty-foot stake-rope while Ulysses rested his head in

Circe's straw-roofed hut.

More weird and lonesome than the journey of an Amazonian explorer is

the ride of one through a Texas pear flat. With dismal monotony and

startling variety the uncanny and multiform shapes of the cacti lift

their twisted trunks, and fat, bristly hands to encumber the way. The

demon plant, appearing to live without soil or rain, seems to taunt

the parched traveller with its lush grey greenness. It warps itself a

thousand times about what look to be open and inviting paths, only to

lure the rider into blind and impassable spine-defended "bottoms of

the bag," leaving him to retreat, if he can, with the points of the

compass whirling in his head.

To be lost in the pear is to die almost the death of the thief on the

cross, pierced by nails and with grotesque shapes of all the fiends

hovering about.

But it was not so with the Kid and his mount. Winding, twisting,

circling, tracing the most fantastic and bewildering trail ever picked

out, the good roan lessened the distance to the Lone Wolf Crossing

with every coil and turn that he made.

While they fared the Kid sang. He knew but one tune and sang it, as he

knew but one code and lived it, and but one girl and loved her. He was

a single-minded man of conventional ideas. He had a voice like a

coyote with bronchitis, but whenever he chose to sing his song he sang

it. It was a conventional song of the camps and trail, running at its

beginning as near as may be to these words:

Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl

Or I'll tell you what I'll do--

and so on. The roan was inured to it, and did not mind.

But even the poorest singer will, after a certain time, gain his own

consent to refrain from contributing to the world's noises. So the

Kid, by the time he was within a mile or two of Tonia's /jacal/, had

reluctantly allowed his song to die away--not because his vocal

performance had become less charming to his own ears, but because his

laryngeal muscles were aweary.

As though he were in a circus ring the speckled roan wheeled and

danced through the labyrinth of pear until at length his rider knew by

certain landmarks that the Lone Wolf Crossing was close at hand. Then,

where the pear was thinner, he caught sight of the grass roof of the

/jacal/ and the hackberry tree on the edge of the arroyo. A few yards

farther the Kid stopped the roan and gazed intently through the

prickly openings. Then he dismounted, dropped the roan's reins, and

proceeded on foot, stooping and silent, like an Indian. The roan,

knowing his part, stood still, making no sound.

The Kid crept noiselessly to the very edge of the pear thicket and

reconnoitred between the leaves of a clump of cactus.

Ten yards from his hiding-place, in the shade of the /jacal/, sat his

Tonia calmly plaiting a rawhide lariat. So far she might surely escape

condemnation; women have been known, from time to time, to engage in

more mischievous occupations. But if all must be told, there is to be

added that her head reposed against the broad and comfortable chest of

a tall red-and-yellow man, and that his arm was about her, guiding her

nimble fingers that required so many lessons at the intricate six-

strand plait.

Sandridge glanced quickly at the dark mass of pear when he heard a

slight squeaking sound that was not altogether unfamiliar. A gun-

scabbard will make that sound when one grasps the handle of a six-

shooter suddenly. But the sound was not repeated; and Tonia's fingers

needed close attention.

And then, in the shadow of death, they began to talk of their love;

and in the still July afternoon every word they uttered reached the

ears of the Kid.

"Remember, then," said Tonia, "you must not come again until I send

for you. Soon he will be here. A /vaquero/ at the /tienda/ said to-day

he saw him on the Guadalupe three days ago. When he is that near he

always comes. If he comes and finds you here he will kill you. So, for

my sake, you must come no more until I send you the word."

"All right," said the stranger. "And then what?"

"And then," said the girl, "you must bring your men here and kill him.

If not, he will kill you."

"He ain't a man to surrender, that's sure," said Sandridge. "It's kill

or be killed for the officer that goes up against Mr. Cisco Kid."

"He must die," said the girl. "Otherwise there will not be any peace

in the world for thee and me. He has killed many. Let him so die.

Bring your men, and give him no chance to escape."

"You used to think right much of him," said Sandridge.

Tonia dropped the lariat, twisted herself around, and curved a lemon-

tinted arm over the ranger's shoulder.

"But then," she murmured in liquid Spanish, "I had not beheld thee,

thou great, red mountain of a man! And thou art kind and good, as well

as strong. Could one choose him, knowing thee? Let him die; for then I

will not be filled with fear by day and night lest he hurt thee or

me."

"How can I know when he comes?" asked Sandridge.

"When he comes," said Tonia, "he remains two days, sometimes three.

Gregorio, the small son of old Luisa, the /lavendera/, has a swift

pony. I will write a letter to thee and send it by him, saying how it

will be best to come upon him. By Gregorio will the letter come. And

bring many men with thee, and have much care, oh, dear red one, for

the rattlesnake is not quicker to strike than is '/El Chivato/,' as

they call him, to send a ball from his /pistola/."

"The Kid's handy with his gun, sure enough," admitted Sandridge, "but

when I come for him I shall come alone. I'll get him by myself or not

at all. The Cap wrote one or two things to me that make me want to do

the trick without any help. You let me know when Mr. Kid arrives, and

I'll do the rest."

"I will send you the message by the boy Gregorio," said the girl. "I

knew you were braver than that small slayer of men who never smiles.

How could I ever have thought I cared for him?"

It was time for the ranger to ride back to his camp on the water hole.

Before he mounted his horse he raised the slight form of Tonia with

one arm high from the earth for a parting salute. The drowsy stillness

of the torpid summer air still lay thick upon the dreaming afternoon.

The smoke from the fire in the /jacal/, where the /frijoles/ blubbered

in the iron pot, rose straight as a plumb-line above the clay-daubed

chimney. No sound or movement disturbed the serenity of the dense pear

thicket ten yards away.

When the form of Sandridge had disappeared, loping his big dun down

the steep banks of the Frio crossing, the Kid crept back to his own

horse, mounted him, and rode back along the tortuous trail he had

come.

But not far. He stopped and waited in the silent depths of the pear

until half an hour had passed. And then Tonia heard the high, untrue

notes of his unmusical singing coming nearer and nearer; and she ran

to the edge of the pear to meet him.

The Kid seldom smiled; but he smiled and waved his hat when he saw

her. He dismounted, and his girl sprang into his arms. The Kid looked

at her fondly. His thick, black hair clung to his head like a wrinkled

mat. The meeting brought a slight ripple of some undercurrent of

feeling to his smooth, dark face that was usually as motionless as a

clay mask.

"How's my girl?" he asked, holding her close.

"Sick of waiting so long for you, dear one," she answered. "My eyes

are dim with always gazing into that devil's pincushion through which

you come. And I can see into it such a little way, too. But you are

here, beloved one, and I will not scold. /Que mal muchacho/! not to

come to see your /alma/ more often. Go in and rest, and let me water

your horse and stake him with the long rope. There is cool water in

the jar for you."

The Kid kissed her affectionately.

"Not if the court knows itself do I let a lady stake my horse for me,"

said he. "But if you'll run in, /chica/, and throw a pot of coffee

together while I attend to the /caballo/, I'll be a good deal

obliged."

Besides his marksmanship the Kid had another attribute for which he

admired himself greatly. He was /muy caballero/, as the Mexicans

express it, where the ladies were concerned. For them he had always

gentle words and consideration. He could not have spoken a harsh word

to a woman. He might ruthlessly slay their husbands and brothers, but

he could not have laid the weight of a finger in anger upon a woman.

Wherefore many of that interesting division of humanity who had come

under the spell of his politeness declared their disbelief in the

stories circulated about Mr. Kid. One shouldn't believe everything one

heard, they said. When confronted by their indignant men folk with

proof of the /caballero's/ deeds of infamy, they said maybe he had

been driven to it, and that he knew how to treat a lady, anyhow.

Considering this extremely courteous idiosyncrasy of the Kid and the

pride he took in it, one can perceive that the solution of the problem

that was presented to him by what he saw and heard from his hiding-

place in the pear that afternoon (at least as to one of the actors)

must have been obscured by difficulties. And yet one could not think

of the Kid overlooking little matters of that kind.

At the end of the short twilight they gathered around a supper of

/frijoles/, goat steaks, canned peaches, and coffee, by the light of a

lantern in the /jacal/. Afterward, the ancestor, his flock corralled,

smoked a cigarette and became a mummy in a grey blanket. Tonia washed

the few dishes while the Kid dried them with the flour-sacking towel.

Her eyes shone; she chatted volubly of the inconsequent happenings of

her small world since the Kid's last visit; it was as all his other

home-comings had been.

Then outside Tonia swung in a grass hammock with her guitar and sang

sad /canciones de amor/.

"Do you love me just the same, old girl?" asked the Kid, hunting for

his cigarette papers.

"Always the same, little one," said Tonia, her dark eyes lingering

upon him.

"I must go over to Fink's," said the Kid, rising, "for some tobacco. I

thought I had another sack in my coat. I'll be back in a quarter of an

hour."

"Hasten," said Tonia, "and tell me--how long shall I call you my own

this time? Will you be gone again to-morrow, leaving me to grieve, or

will you be longer with your Tonia?"

"Oh, I might stay two or three days this trip," said the Kid, yawning.

"I've been on the dodge for a month, and I'd like to rest up."

He was gone half an hour for his tobacco. When he returned Tonia was

still lying in the hammock.

"It's funny," said the Kid, "how I feel. I feel like there was

somebody lying behind every bush and tree waiting to shoot me. I never

had mullygrubs like them before. Maybe it's one of them presumptions.

I've got half a notion to light out in the morning before day. The

Guadalupe country is burning up about that old Dutchman I plugged down

there."

"You are not afraid--no one could make my brave little one fear."

"Well, I haven't been usually regarded as a jack-rabbit when it comes

to scrapping; but I don't want a posse smoking me out when I'm in your

/jacal/. Somebody might get hurt that oughtn't to."

"Remain with your Tonia; no one will find you here."

The Kid looked keenly into the shadows up and down the arroyo and

toward the dim lights of the Mexican village.

"I'll see how it looks later on," was his decision.

At midnight a horseman rode into the rangers' camp, blazing his way by

noisy "halloes" to indicate a pacific mission. Sandridge and one or

two others turned out to investigate the row. The rider announced

himself to be Domingo Sales, from the Lone Wolf Crossing. he bore a

letter for Senor Sandridge. Old Luisa, the /lavendera/, had persuaded

him to bring it, he said, her son Gregorio being too ill of a fever to

ride.

Sandridge lighted the camp lantern and read the letter. These were its

words:

/Dear One/: He has come. Hardly had you ridden away when he came

out of the pear. When he first talked he said he would stay three

days or more. Then as it grew later he was like a wolf or a fox,

and walked about without rest, looking and listening. Soon he said

he must leave before daylight when it is dark and stillest. And

then he seemed to suspect that I be not true to him. He looked at

me so strange that I am frightened. I swear to him that I love

him, his own Tonia. Last of all he said I must prove to him I am

true. He thinks that even now men are waiting to kill him as he

rides from my house. To escape he says he will dress in my

clothes, my red skirt and the blue waist I wear and the brown

mantilla over the head, and thus ride away. But before that he

says that I must put on his clothes, his /pantalones/ and /camisa/

and hat, and ride away on his horse from the /jacal/ as far as the

big road beyond the crossing and back again. This before he goes,

so he can tell if I am true and if men are hidden to shoot him. It

is a terrible thing. An hour before daybreak this is to be. Come,

my dear one, and kill this man and take me for your Tonia. Do not

try to take hold of him alive, but kill him quickly. Knowing all,

you should do that. You must come long before the time and hide

yourself in the little shed near the /jacal/ where the wagon and

saddles are kept. It is dark in there. He will wear my red skirt

and blue waist and brown mantilla. I send you a hundred kisses.

Come surely and shoot quickly and straight.

Thine Own Tonia.

Sandridge quickly explained to his men the official part of the

missive. The rangers protested against his going alone.

"I'll get him easy enough," said the lieutenant. "The girl's got him

trapped. And don't even think he'll get the drop on me."

Sandridge saddled his horse and rode to the Lone Wolf Crossing. He

tied his big dun in a clump of brush on the arroyo, took his

Winchester from its scabbard, and carefully approached the Perez

/jacal/. There was only the half of a high moon drifted over by

ragged, milk-white gulf clouds.

The wagon-shed was an excellent place for ambush; and the ranger got

inside it safely. In the black shadow of the brush shelter in front of

the /jacal/ he could see a horse tied and hear him impatiently pawing

the hard-trodden earth.

He waited almost an hour before two figures came out of the /jacal/.

One, in man's clothes, quickly mounted the horse and galloped past the

wagon-shed toward the crossing and village. And then the other figure,

in skirt, waist, and mantilla over its head, stepped out into the

faint moonlight, gazing after the rider. Sandridge thought he would

take his chance then before Tonia rode back. He fancied she might not

care to see it.

"Throw up your hands," he ordered loudly, stepping out of the wagon-

shed with his Winchester at his shoulder.

There was a quick turn of the figure, but no movement to obey, so the

ranger pumped in the bullets--one--two--three--and then twice more;

for you never could be too sure of bringing down the Cisco Kid. There

was no danger of missing at ten paces, even in that half moonlight.

The old ancestor, asleep on his blanket, was awakened by the shots.

Listening further, he heard a great cry from some man in mortal

distress or anguish, and rose up grumbling at the disturbing ways of

moderns.

The tall, red ghost of a man burst into the /jacal/, reaching one

hand, shaking like a /tule/ reed, for the lantern hanging on its nail.

The other spread a letter on the table.

"Look at this letter, Perez," cried the man. "Who wrote it?"

"/Ah, Dios/! it is Senor Sandridge," mumbled the old man, approaching.

"/Pues, senor/, that letter was written by '/El Chivato/,' as he is

called--by the man of Tonia. They say he is a bad man; I do not know.

While Tonia slept he wrote the letter and sent it by this old hand of

mine to Domingo Sales to be brought to you. Is there anything wrong in

the letter? I am very old; and I did not know. /Valgame Dios/! it is a

very foolish world; and there is nothing in the house to drink--

nothing to drink."

Just then all that Sandridge could think of to do was to go outside

and throw himself face downward in the dust by the side of his

humming-bird, of whom not a feather fluttered. He was not a

/caballero/ by instinct, and he could not understand the niceties of

revenge.

A mile away the rider who had ridden past the wagon-shed struck up a

harsh, untuneful song, the words of which began:

Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl

Or I'll tell you what I'll do--

XII

THE SPHINX APPLE

Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise

City, Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow

had been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a level.

The remainder of the road was not without peril in daylight, creeping

along the ribs of a bijou range of ragged mountains. Now, when both

snow and night masked its dangers, further travel was not to be

thought of, said Bildad Rose. So he pulled up his four stout horses,

and delivered to his five passengers oral deductions of his wisdom.

Judge Menefee, to whom men granted leadership and the initiatory as

upon a silver salver, sprang from the coach at once. Four of his

fellow-passengers followed, inspired by his example, ready to explore,

to objurgate, to resist, to submit, to proceed, according as their

prime factor might be inclined to sway them. The fifth passenger, a

young woman, remained in the coach.

Bildad had halted upon the shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two

rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the

upper fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small

house. Upon this house descended--or rather ascended--Judge Menefee

and his cohorts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They

called; they pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence

they waxed restive; they assaulted and forced the pregnable barriers,

and invaded the premises.

The watchers from the coach heard stumblings and shoutings from the

interior of the ravaged house. Before long a light within flickered,

glowed, flamed high and bright and cheerful. Then came running back

through the driving flakes the exuberant explorers. More deeply

pitched than the clarion--even orchestral in volume--the voice of

Judge Menefee proclaimed the succour that lay in apposition with their

state of travail. The one room of the house was uninhabited, he said,

and bare of furniture; but it contained a great fireplace, and they

had discovered an ample store of chopped wood in a lean-to at the

rear. Housing and warmth against the shivering night were thus

assured. For the placation of Bildad Rose there was news of a stable,

not ruined beyond service, with hay in a loft, near the house.

"Gentlemen," cried Bildad Rose from his seat, swathed in coats and

robes, "tear me down two panels of that fence, so I can drive in. That

is old man Redruth's shanty. I thought we must be nigh it. They took

him to the foolish house in August."

Cheerfully the four passengers sprang at the snow-capped rails. The

exhorted team tugged the coach up the slant to the door of the edifice

from which a mid-summer madness had ravished its proprietor. The

driver and two of the passengers began to unhitch. Judge Menefee

opened the door of the coach, and removed his hat.

"I have to announce, Miss Garland," said he, "the enforced suspension

of our journey. The driver asserts that the risk in travelling the

mountain road by night is too great even to consider. It will be

necessary to remain in the shelter of this house until morning. I beg

that you will feel that there is nothing to fear beyond a temporary

inconvenience. I have personally inspected the house, and find that

there are means to provide against the rigour of the weather, at

least. You shall be made as comfortable as possible. Permit me to

assist you to alight."

To the Judge's side came the passenger whose pursuit in life was the

placing of the Little Goliath windmill. His name was Dunwoody; but

that matters not much. In travelling merely from Paradise to Sunrise

City one needs little or no name. Still, one who would seek to divide

honours with Judge Madison L. Menefee deserves a cognomenal peg upon

which Fame may hang a wreath. Thus spake, loudly and buoyantly, the

aerial miller:

"Guess you'll have to climb out of the ark, Mrs. McFarland. This

wigwam isn't exactly the Palmer House, but it turns snow, and they

won't search your grip for souvenir spoons when you leave. /We've/ got

a fire going; and /we'll/ fix you up with dry Tilbys and keep the mice

away, anyhow, all right, all right."

One of the two passengers who were struggling in a melee of horses,

harness, snow, and the sarcastic injunctions of Bildad Rose, called

loudly from the whirl of his volunteer duties: "Say! some of you

fellows get Miss Solomon into the house, will you? Whoa, there! you

confounded brute!"

Again must it be gently urged that in travelling from Paradise to

Sunrise City an accurate name is prodigality. When Judge Menefee--

sanctioned to the act by his grey hair and widespread repute--had

introduced himself to the lady passenger, she had, herself, sweetly

breathed a name, in response, that the hearing of the male passengers

had variously interpreted. In the not unjealous spirit of rivalry that

eventuated, each clung stubbornly to his own theory. For the lady

passenger to have reasseverated or corrected would have seemed

didactic if not unduly solicitous of a specific acquaintance.

Therefore the lady passenger permitted herself to be Garlanded and

McFarlanded and Solomoned with equal and discreet complacency. It is

thirty-five miles from Paradise to Sunrise City. /Compagnon de voyage/

is name enough, by the gripsack of the Wandering Jew! for so brief a

journey.

Soon the little party of wayfarers were happily seated in a cheerful

arc before the roaring fire. The robes, cushions, and removable

portions of the coach had been brought in and put to service. The lady

passenger chose a place near the hearth at one end of the arc. There

she graced almost a throne that her subjects had prepared. She sat

upon cushions and leaned against an empty box and barrel, robe

bespread, which formed a defence from the invading draughts. She

extended her feet, delectably shod, to the cordial heat. She ungloved

her hands, but retained about her neck her long fur boa. The unstable

flames half revealed, while the warding boa half submerged, her face--

a youthful face, altogether feminine, clearly moulded and calm with

beauty's unchallenged confidence. Chivalry and manhood were here vying

to please and comfort her. She seemed to accept their devoirs--not

piquantly, as one courted and attended; nor preeningly, as many of her

sex unworthily reap their honours; not yet stolidly, as the ox

receives his hay; but concordantly with nature's own plan--as the lily

ingests the drop of dew foreordained to its refreshment.

Outside the wind roared mightily, the fine snow whizzed through the

cracks, the cold besieged the backs of the immolated six; but the

elements did not lack a champion that night. Judge Menefee was

attorney for the storm. The weather was his client, and he strove by

special pleading to convince his companions in that frigid jury-box

that they sojourned in a bower of roses, beset only by benignant

zephyrs. He drew upon a fund of gaiety, wit, and anecdote,

sophistical, but crowned with success. His cheerfulness communicated

itself irresistibly. Each one hastened to contribute his own quota

toward the general optimism. Even the lady passenger was moved to

expression.

"I think it is quite charming," she said, in her slow, crystal tones.

At intervals some one of the passengers would rise and humorously

explore the room. There was little evidence to be collected of its

habitation by old man Redruth.

Bildad Rose was called upon vivaciously for the ex-hermit's history.

Now, since the stage-driver's horses were fairly comfortable and his

passengers appeared to be so, peace and comity returned to him.

"The old didapper," began Bildad, somewhat irreverently, "infested

this here house about twenty year. He never allowed nobody to come

nigh him. He'd duck his head inside and slam the door whenever a team

drove along. There was spinning-wheels up in his loft, all right. He

used to buy his groceries and tobacco at Sam Tilly's store, on the

Little Muddy. Last August he went up there dressed in a red bedquilt,

and told Sam he was King Solomon, and that the Queen of Sheba was

coming to visit him. He fetched along all the money he had--a little

bag full of silver--and dropped it in Sam's well. 'She won't come,'

says old man Redruth to Sam, 'if she knows I've got any money.'

"As soon as folks heard he had that sort of a theory about women and

money they knowed he was crazy; so they sent down and packed him to

the foolish asylum."

"Was there a romance in his life that drove him to a solitary

existence?" asked one of the passengers, a young man who had an

Agency.

"No," said Bildad, "not that I ever heard spoke of. Just ordinary

trouble. They say he had had unfortunateness in the way of love

derangements with a young lady when he was young; before he contracted

red bed-quilts and had his financial conclusions disqualified. I never

heard of no romance."

"Ah!" exclaimed Judge Menefee, impressively; "a case of unrequited

affection, no doubt."

"No, sir," returned Bildad, "not at all. She never married him.

Marmaduke Mulligan, down at Paradise, seen a man once that come from

old Redruth's town. He said Redruth was a fine young man, but when you

kicked him on the pocket all you could hear jingle was a cuff-fastener

and a bunch of keys. He was engaged to this young lady--Miss Alice--

something was her name; I've forgot. This man said she was the kind of

girl you like to have reach across you in a car to pay the fare. Well,

there come to the town a young chap all affluent and easy, and fixed

up with buggies and mining stock and leisure time. Although she was a

staked claim, Miss Alice and the new entry seemed to strike a mutual

kind of a clip. They had calls and coincidences of going to the post

office and such things as sometimes make a girl send back the

engagement ring and other presents--'a rift within the loot,' the

poetry man calls it.

"One day folks seen Redruth and Miss Alice standing talking at the

gate. Then he lifts his hat and walks away, and that was the last

anybody in that town seen of him, as far as this man knew."

"What about the young lady?" asked the young man who had an Agency.

"Never heard," answered Bildad. "Right there is where my lode of

information turns to an old spavined crowbait, and folds its wings,

for I've pumped it dry."

"A very sad--" began Judge Menefee, but his remark was curtailed by a

higher authority.

"What a charming story!" said the lady passenger, in flute-like tones.

A little silence followed, except for the wind and the crackling of

the fire.

The men were seated upon the floor, having slightly mitigated its

inhospitable surface with wraps and stray pieces of boards. The man

who was placing Little Goliath windmills arose and walked about to

ease his cramped muscles.

Suddenly a triumphant shout came from him. He hurried back from a

dusky corner of the room, bearing aloft something in his hand. It was

an apple--a large, red-mottled, firm pippin, pleasing to behold. In a

paper bag on a high shelf in that corner he had found it. It could

have been no relic of the lovewrecked Redruth, for its glorious

soundness repudiated the theory that it had lain on that musty shelf

since August. No doubt some recent bivouackers, lunching in the

deserted house, had left it there.

Dunwoody--again his exploits demand for him the honours of

nomenclature--flaunted his apple in the faces of his fellow-marooners.

"See what I found, Mrs. McFarland!" he cried, vaingloriously. He held

the apple high up in the light of the fire, where it glowed a still

richer red. The lady passenger smiled calmly--always calmly.

"What a charming apple!" she murmured, clearly.

For a brief space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated.

Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished

man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover

the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a

function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of

comedy--and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady

passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an

admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the

windmill man swelled and gyrated like a sample of his own goods,

puffed up with the wind that ever blows from the chorus land toward

the domain of the star.

While the transported Dunwoody, with his Aladdin's apple, was

receiving the fickle attentions of all, the resourceful jurist formed

a plan to recover his own laurels.

With his courtliest smile upon his heavy but classic features, Judge

Menefee advanced, and took the apple, as if to examine it, from the

hand of Dunwoody. In his hand it became Exhibit A.

"A fine apple," he said, approvingly. "Really, my dear Mr. Dudwindy,

you have eclipsed all of us as a forager. But I have an idea. This

apple shall become an emblem, a token, a symbol, a prize bestowed by

the mind and heart of beauty upon the most deserving."

The audience, except one, applauded. "Good on the stump, ain't he?"

commented the passenger who was nobody in particular to the young man

who had an Agency.

The unresponsive one was the windmill man. He saw himself reduced to

the ranks. Never would the thought have occurred to him to declare his

apple an emblem. He had intended, after it had been divided and eaten,

to create diversion by sticking the seeds against his forehead and

naming them for young ladies of his acquaintance. One he was going to

name Mrs. McFarland. The seed that fell off first would be--but 'twas

too late now.

"The apple," continued Judge Menefee, charging his jury, "in modern

days occupies, though undeservedly, a lowly place in our esteem.

Indeed, it is so constantly associated with the culinary and the

commercial that it is hardly to be classed among the polite fruits.

But in ancient times this was not so. Biblical, historical, and

mythological lore abounds with evidences that the apple was the

aristocrat of fruits. We still say 'the apple of the eye' when we wish

to describe something superlatively precious. We find in Proverbs the

comparison to 'apples of silver.' No other product of tree or vine has

been so utilised in figurative speech. Who has not heard of and longed

for the 'apples of the Hesperides'? I need not call your attention to

the most tremendous and significant instance of the apple's ancient

prestige when its consumption by our first parents occasioned the fall

of man from his state of goodness and perfection."

"Apples like them," said the windmill man, lingering with the

objective article, "are worth $3.50 a barrel in the Chicago market."

"Now, what I have to propose," said Judge Menefee, conceding an

indulgent smile to his interrupter, "is this: We must remain here,

perforce, until morning. We have wood in plenty to keep us warm. Our

next need is to entertain ourselves as best we can, in order that the

time shall not pass too slowly. I propose that we place this apple in

the hands of Miss Garland. It is no longer a fruit, but, as I said, a

prize, in award, representing a great human idea. Miss Garland,

herself, shall cease to be an individual--but only temporarily, I am

happy to add"--(a low bow, full of the old-time grace). "She shall

represent her sex; she shall be the embodiment, the epitome of

womankind--the heart and brain, I may say, of God's masterpiece of

creation. In this guise she shall judge and decide the question which

follows:

"But a few minutes ago our friend, Mr. Rose, favoured us with an

entertaining but fragmentary sketch of the romance in the life of the

former professor of this habitation. The few facts that we have

learned seem to me to open up a fascinating field for conjecture, for

the study of human hearts, for the exercise of the imagination--in

short, for story-telling. Let us make use of the opportunity. Let each

one of us relate his own version of the story of Redruth, the hermit,

and his lady-love, beginning where Mr. Rose's narrative ends--at the

parting of the lovers at the gate. This much should be assumed and

conceded--that the young lady was not necessarily to blame for

Redruth's becoming a crazed and world-hating hermit. When we have

done, Miss Garland shall render the JUDGEMENT OF WOMAN. As the Spirit

of her Sex she shall decide which version of the story best and most

truly depicts human and love interest, and most faithfully estimates

the character and acts of Redruth's betrothed according to the

feminine view. The apple shall be bestowed upon him who is awarded the

decision. If you are all agreed, we shall be pleased to hear the first

story from Mr. Dinwiddie."

The last sentence captured the windmill man. He was not one to linger

in the dumps.

"That's a first-rate scheme, Judge," he said, heartily. "Be a regular

short-story vaudeville, won't it? I used to be correspondent for a

paper in Springfield, and when there wasn't any news I faked it. Guess

I can do my turn all right."

"I think the idea is charming," said the lady passenger, brightly. "It

will be almost like a game."

Judge Menefee stepped forward and placed the apple in her hand

impressively.

"In olden days," he said, orotundly, "Paris awarded the golden apple

to the most beautiful."

"I was at the Exposition," remarked the windmill man, now cheerful

again, "but I never heard of it. And I was on the Midway, too, all the

time I wasn't at the machinery exhibit."

"But now," continued the Judge, "the fruit shall translate to us the

mystery and wisdom of the feminine heart. Take the apple, Miss

Garland. Hear our modest tales of romance, and then award the prize as

you may deem it just."

The lady passenger smiled sweetly. The apple lay in her lap beneath

her robes and wraps. She reclined against her protecting bulwark,

brightly and cosily at ease. But for the voices and the wind one might

have listened hopefully to hear her purr. Someone cast fresh logs upon

the fire. Judge Menefee nodded suavely. "Will you oblige us with the

initial story?" he asked.

The windmill man sat as sits a Turk, with his hat well back on his

head on account of the draughts.

"Well," he began, without any embarrassment, "this is about the way I

size up the difficulty: Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by

this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of

his girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is

still square. Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and

gold bonds when he's got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around to

see her. Well, maybe he's hot, and talks like the proprietor, and

forgets that an engagement ain't always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I

guess that makes Alice warm under the lacy yoke. Well, she answers

back sharp. Well, he--"

"Say!" interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, "if you

could put up a windmill on every one of them 'wells' you're using,

you'd be able to retire from business, wouldn't you?"

The windmill man grinned good-naturedly.

"Oh, I ain't no /Guy de Mopassong/," he said, cheerfully. "I'm giving

it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like this:

'Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,' says she; 'but he takes me riding

and buys me theatre tickets, and that's what you never do. Ain't I to

never have any pleasure in life while I can?' 'Pass this chatfield-

chatfield thing along,' says Redruth;--'hand out the mitt to the

Willie with creases in it or you don't put your slippers under my

wardrobe.'

"Now that kind of train orders don't go with a girl that's got any

spirit. I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only

wanted, as girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and

caramels before she settled down to patch George's other pair, and be

a good wife. But he is glued to the high horse, and won't come down.

Well, she hands him back the ring, proper enough; and George goes away

and hits the booze. Yep. That's what done it. I bet that girl fired

the cornucopia with the fancy vest two days after her steady left.

George boards a freight and checks his bag of crackers for parts

unknown. He sticks to Old Booze for a number of years; and then the

aniline and aquafortis gets the decision. 'Me for the hermit's hut,'

says George, 'and the long whiskers, and the buried can of money that

isn't there.'

"But that Alice, in my mind, was on the level. She never married, but

took up typewriting as soon as the wrinkles began to show, and kept a

cat that came when you said 'weeny--weeny--weeny!' I got too much

faith in good women to believe they throw down the fellow they're

stuck on every time for the dough." The windmill man ceased.

"I think," said the lady passenger, slightly moving upon her lowly

throne, "that that is a char--"

"Oh, Miss Garland!" interposed Judge Menefee, with uplifted hand, "I

beg of you, no comments! It would not be fair to the other

contestants. Mr.--er--will you take the next turn?" The Judge

addressed the young man who had the Agency.

"My version of the romance," began the young man, diffidently clasping

his hands, "would be this: They did not quarrel when they parted. Mr.

Redruth bade her good-by and went out into the world to seek his

fortune. He knew his love would remain true to him. He scorned the

thought that his rival could make an impression upon a heart so fond

and faithful. I would say that Mr. Redruth went out to the Rocky

Mountains in Wyoming to seek for gold. One day a crew of pirates

landed and captured him while at work, and--"

"Hey! what's that?" sharply called the passenger who was nobody in

particular--"a crew of pirates landed in the Rocky Mountains! Will you

tell us how they sailed--"

"Landed from a train," said the narrator, quietly and not without some

readiness. "They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they

took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a

beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained true to

Alice. After another year of wandering in the woods, he set out with

the diamonds--"

"What diamonds?" asked the unimportant passenger, almost with

acerbity.

"The ones the saddlemaker showed him in the Peruvian temple," said the

other, somewhat obscurely. "When he reached home, Alice's mother led

him, weeping, to a green mound under a willow tree. 'Her heart was

broken when you left,' said her mother. 'And what of my rival--of

Chester McIntosh?' asked Mr. Redruth, as he knelt sadly by Alice's

grave. 'When he found out,' she answered, 'that her heart was yours,

he pined away day by day until, at length, he started a furniture

store in Grand Rapids. We heard lately that he was bitten to death by

an infuriated moose near South Bend, Ind., where he had gone to try to

forget scenes of civilisation.' With which, Mr. Redruth forsook the

face of mankind and became a hermit, as we have seen.

"My story," concluded the young man with an Agency, "may lack the

literary quality; but what I wanted it to show is that the young lady

remained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true

affection. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think

otherwise."

The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where

reclined the lady passenger.

Bildad Rose was next invited by Judge Menefee to contribute his story

in the contest for the apple of judgment. The stage-driver's essay was

brief.

"I'm not one of them lobo wolves," he said, "who are always blaming on

women the calamities of life. My testimony in regards to the fiction

story you ask for, Judge, will be about as follows: What ailed Redruth

was pure laziness. If he had up and slugged this Percival De Lacey

that tried to give him the outside of the road, and had kept Alice in

the grape-vine swing with the blind-bridle on, all would have been

well. The woman you want is sure worth taking pains for.

"'Send for me if you want me again,' says Redruth, and hoists his

Stetson, and walks off. He'd have called it pride, but the

nixycomlogical name for it is laziness. No woman don't like to run

after a man. 'Let him come back, hisself,' says the girl; and I'll be

bound she tells the boy with the pay ore to trot; and then spends her

time watching out the window for the man with the empty pocket-book

and the tickly moustache.

"I reckon Redruth waits about nine year expecting her to send him a

note by a nigger asking him to forgive her. But she don't. 'This game

won't work,' says Redruth; 'then so won't I.' And he goes in the

hermit business and raises whiskers. Yes; laziness and whiskers was

what done the trick. They travel together. You ever hear of a man with

long whiskers and hair striking a bonanza? No. Look at the Duke of

Marlborough and this Standard Oil snoozer. Have they got 'em?

"Now, this Alice didn't never marry, I'll bet a hoss. If Redruth had

married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns

up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a

lock of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them sort

of articles is as good as a husband to some women. I'd say she played

out a lone hand. I don't blame no woman for old man Redruth's

abandonment of barber shops and clean shirts."

Next in order came the passenger who was nobody in particular.

Nameless to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City.

But him you shall see, if the firelight be not too dim, as he responds

to the Judge's call.

A lean form, in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms

wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth,

oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr's, with upturned,

tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish's; a red necktie with a

horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed

itself into words.

"Everybody wrong so far. What! a romance without any orange blossoms!

Ho, ho! My money on the lad with the butterfly tie and the certified

checks in his trouserings.

"Take 'em as they parted at the gate? All right. 'You never loved me,'

says Redruth, wildly, 'or you wouldn't speak to a man who can buy you

the ice-cream.' 'I hate him,' says she. 'I loathe his side-bar buggy;

I despise the elegant cream bonbons he sends me in gilt boxes covered

with real lace; I feel that I could stab him to the heart when he

presents me with a solid medallion locket with turquoises and pearls

running in a vine around the border. Away with him! 'Tis only you I

love.' 'Back to the cosey corner!' says Redruth. 'Was I bound and

lettered in East Aurora? Get platonic, if you please. No jack-pots for

mine. Go and hate your friend some more. For me the Nickerson girl on

Avenue B, and gum, and a trolley ride.'

"Around that night comes John W. Croesus. 'What! tears?' says he,

arranging his pearl pin. 'You have driven my lover away,' says little

Alice, sobbing: 'I hate the sight of you.' 'Marry me, then,' says John

W., lighting a Henry Clay. 'What!' she cries indignantly, 'marry you!

Never,' she says, 'until this blows over, and I can do some shopping,

and you see about the licence. There's a telephone next door if you

want to call up the county clerk.'"

The narrator paused to give vent to his cynical chuckle.

"Did they marry?" he continued. "Did the duck swallow the June-bug?

And then I take up the case of Old Boy Redruth. There's where you are

all wrong again, according to my theory. What turned him into a

hermit? One says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze. I say

women did it. How old is the old man now?" asked the speaker, turning

to Bildad Rose.

"I should say about sixty-five."

"All right. He conducted his hermit shop here for twenty years. Say he

was twenty-five when he took off his hat at the gate. That leaves

twenty years for him to account for, or else be docked. Where did he

spend that ten and two fives? I'll give you my idea. Up for bigamy.

Say there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at

Skillet Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets

his cases mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they

are through with him, and says: 'Any line for me except the crinoline.

The hermit trade is not overdone, and the stenographers never apply to

'em for work. The jolly hermit's life for me. No more long hairs in

the comb or dill pickles lying around in the cigar tray.' You tell me

they pinched old Redruth for the noodle villa just because he said he

was King Solomon? Figs! He /was/ Solomon. That's all of mine. I guess

it don't call for any apples. Enclosed find stamps. It don't sound

much like a prize winner."

Respecting the stricture laid by Judge Menefee against comments upon

the stories, all were silent when the passenger who was nobody in

particular had concluded. And then the ingenious originator of the

contest cleared his throat to begin the ultimate entry for the prize.

Though seated with small comfort upon the floor, you might search in

vain for any abatement of dignity in Judge Menefee. The now

diminishing firelight played softly upon his face, as clearly

chiselled as a Roman emperor's on some old coin, and upon the thick

waves of his honourable grey hair.

"A woman's heart!" he began, in even but thrilling tones--"who can

hope to fathom it? The ways and desires of men are various. I think

that the hearts of all women beat with the same rhythm, and to the

same old tune of love. Love, to a woman, means sacrifice. If she be

worthy of the name, no gold or rank will outweigh with her a genuine

devotion.

"Gentlemen of the--er--I should say, my friends, the case of Redruth

/versus/ love and affection has been called. Yet, who is on trial? Not

Redruth, for he has been punished. Not those immortal passions that

clothe our lives with the joy of the angels. Then who? Each man of us

here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness

inhabits his bosom. To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of

its fairest flowers. In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically

insignificant, but worthy of our noblest efforts to win as a guerdon

of approval from so worthy a representative of feminine judgment and

taste.

"In taking up the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being to

whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice

against the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or

love of luxury of any woman drove him to renounce the world. I have

not found woman to be so unspiritual or venal. We must seek elsewhere,

among man's baser nature and lower motives for the cause.

"There was, in all probability, a lover's quarrel as they stood at the

gate on that memorable day. Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth

vanished from his native haunts. But had he just cause to do so? There

is no evidence for or against. But there is something higher than

evidence; there is the grand, eternal belief in woman's goodness, in

her steadfastness against temptation, in her loyalty even in the face

of proffered riches.

"I picture to myself the rash lover, wandering, self-tortured, about

the world. I picture his gradual descent, and, finally, his complete

despair when he realises that he has lost the most precious gift life

had to offer him. Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the

subsequent derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible.

"But what do I see on the other hand? A lonely woman fading away as

the years roll by; still faithful, still waiting, still watching for a

form and listening for a step that will come no more. She is old now.

Her hair is white and smoothly banded. Each day she sits at the door

and gazes longingly down the dusty road. In spirit she is waiting

there at the gate, just as he left her--his forever, but not here

below. Yes; my belief in woman paints that picture in my mind. Parted

forever on earth, but waiting! She in anticipation of a meeting in

Elysium; he in the Slough of Despond."

"I thought he was in the bughouse," said the passenger who was nobody

in particular.

Judge Menefee stirred, a little impatiently. The men sat, drooping, in

grotesque attitudes. The wind had abated its violence; coming now in

fitful, virulent puffs. The fire had burned to a mass of red coals

which shed but a dim light within the room. The lady passenger in her

cosey nook looked to be but a formless dark bulk, crowned by a mass of

coiled, sleek hair and showing but a small space of snowy forehead

above her clinging boa.

Judge Menefee got stiffly to his feet.

"And now, Miss Garland," he announced, "we have concluded. It is for

you to award the prize to the one of us whose argument--especially, I

may say, in regard to his estimate of true womanhood--approaches

nearest to your own conception."

No answer came from the lady passenger. Judge Menefee bent over

solicitously. The passenger who was nobody in particular laughed low

and harshly. The lady was sleeping sweetly. The Judge essayed to take

her hand to awaken her. In doing so he touched a small, cold, round,

irregular something in her lap.

"She has eaten the apple," announced Judge Menefee, in awed tones, as

he held up the core for them to see.

XIII

THE MISSING CHORD

I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy

Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time

when I called "Hallo!" at his hitching-rack; but from that moment

until my departure on the next morning we were, according to the Texas

code, undeniable friends.

After supper the ranchman and I lugged our chairs outside the two-room

house, to its floorless gallery roofed with chaparral and sacuista

grass. With the rear legs of our chairs sinking deep into the

hardpacked loam, each of us reposed against an elm pillar of the

structure and smoked El Toro tobacco, while we wrangled amicably

concerning the affairs of the rest of the world.

As for conveying adequate conception of the engaging charm of that

prairie evening, despair waits upon it. It is a bold chronicler who

will undertake the description of a Texas night in the early spring.

An inventory must suffice.

The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient

prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear,

lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed

as dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The

miraculous air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues

of wild flowerets, gave tang and savour to the breath. In the sky was

a great, round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but

the dark lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering

spring. In the nearest corral a flock of sheep lay silent until a

groundless panic would send a squad of them huddling together with a

drumming rush. For other sounds a shrill family of coyotes yapped

beyond the shearing-pen, and whippoorwills twittered in the long

grass. But even these dissonances hardly rippled the clear torrent of

the mocking-birds' notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs

and trees. It would not have been preposterous for one to tiptoe and

essay to touch the stars, they hung so bright and imminent.

Mr. Kinney's wife, a young and capable woman, we had left in the

house. She remained to busy herself with the domestic round of duties,

in which I had observed that she seemed to take a buoyant and

contented pride. In one room we had supped. Presently, from the other,

as Kinney and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and

brilliant music. If I could justly estimate the art of piano-playing,

the construer of that rollicking fantasia had creditably mastered the

secrets of the keyboard. A piano, and one so well played, seemed to me

to be an unusual thing to find in that small and unpromising ranch-

house. I must have looked my surprise at Rush Kinney, for he laughed

in his soft, Southern way, and nodded at me through the moonlit haze

of our cigarettes.

"You don't often hear as agreeable a noise as that on a sheep-ranch,"

he remarked; "but I never see any reason for not playing up to the

arts and graces just because we happen to live out in the brush. It's

a lonesome life for a woman; and if a little music can make it any

better, why not have it? That's the way I look at it."

"A wise and generous theory," I assented. "And Mrs. Kinney plays well.

I am not learned in the science of music, but I should call her an

uncommonly good performer. She has technic and more than ordinary

power."

The moon was very bright, you will understand, and I saw upon Kinney's

face a sort of amused and pregnant expression, as though there were

things behind it that might be expounded.

"You came up the trail from the Double-Elm Fork," he said promisingly.

"As you crossed it you must have seen an old deserted /jacal/ to your

left under a comma mott."

"I did," said I. "There was a drove of /javalis/ rooting around it. I

could see by the broken corrals that no one lived there."

"That's where this music proposition started," said Kinney. "I don't

mind telling you about it while we smoke. That's where old Cal Adams

lived. He had about eight hundred graded merinos and a daughter that

was solid silk and as handsome as a new stake-rope on a thirty-dollar

pony. And I don't mind telling you that I was guilty in the second

degree of hanging around old Cal's ranch all the time I could spare

away from lambing and shearing. Miss Marilla was her name; and I had

figured it out by the rule of two that she was destined to become the

chatelaine and lady superior of Rancho Lomito, belonging to R. Kinney,

Esq., where you are now a welcome and honoured guest.

"I will say that old Cal wasn't distinguished as a sheepman. He was a

little, old stoop-shouldered /hombre/ about as big as a gun scabbard,

with scraggy white whiskers, and condemned to the continuous use of

language. Old Cal was so obscure in his chosen profession that he

wasn't even hated by the cowmen. And when a sheepman don't get eminent

enough to acquire the hostility of the cattlemen, he is mighty apt to

die unwept and considerably unsung.

"But that Marilla girl was a benefit to the eye. And she was the most

elegant kind of a housekeeper. I was the nearest neighbour, and I used

to ride over to the Double-Elm anywhere from nine to sixteen times a

week with fresh butter or a quarter of venison or a sample of new

sheep-dip just as a frivolous excuse to see Marilla. Marilla and me

got to be extensively inveigled with each other, and I was pretty sure

I was going to get my rope around her neck and lead her over to the

Lomito. Only she was so everlastingly permeated with filial sentiments

toward old Cal that I never could get her to talk about serious

matters.

"You never saw anybody in your life that was as full of knowledge and

had less sense than old Cal. He was advised about all the branches of

information contained in learning, and he was up to all the rudiments

of doctrines and enlightenment. You couldn't advance him any ideas on

any of the parts of speech or lines of thought. You would have thought

he was a professor of the weather and politics and chemistry and

natural history and the origin of derivations. Any subject you brought

up old Cal could give you an abundant synopsis of it from the Greek

root up to the time it was sacked and on the market.

"One day just after the fall shearing I rides over to the Double-Elm

with a lady's magazine about fashions for Marilla and a scientific

paper for old Cal.

"While I was tying my pony to a mesquite, out runs Marilla, 'tickled

to death' with some news that couldn't wait.

"'Oh, Rush,' she says, all flushed up with esteem and gratification,

'what do you think! Dad's going to buy me a piano. Ain't it grand? I

never dreamed I'd ever have one."

"'It's sure joyful,' says I. 'I always admired the agreeable uproar of

a piano. It'll be lots of company for you. That's mighty good of Uncle

Cal to do that.'

"'I'm all undecided,' says Marilla, 'between a piano and an organ. A

parlour organ is nice.'

"'Either of 'em,' says I, 'is first-class for mitigating the lack of

noise around a sheep-ranch. For my part,' I says, 'I shouldn't like

anything better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few

waltzes and jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the piano-

stool and rounding up the notes.'

"'Oh, hush about that,' says Marilla, 'and go on in the house. Dad

hasn't rode out to-day. He's not feeling well.'

"Old Cal was inside, lying on a cot. He had a pretty bad cold and

cough. I stayed to supper.

"'Going to get Marilla a piano, I hear,' says I to him.

"'Why, yes, something of the kind, Rush,' says he. 'She's been

hankering for music for a long spell; and I allow to fix her up with

something in that line right away. The sheep sheared six pounds all

round this fall; and I'm going to get Marilla an instrument if it

takes the price of the whole clip to do it.'

"'/Star wayno/,' says I. 'The little girl deserves it.'

"'I'm going to San Antone on the last load of wool,' says Uncle Cal,

'and select an instrument for her myself.'

"'Wouldn't it be better,' I suggests, 'to take Marilla along and let

her pick out one that she likes?'

"I might have known that would set Uncle Cal going. Of course, a man

like him, that knew everything about everything, would look at that as

a reflection on his attainments.

"'No, sir, it wouldn't,' says he, pulling at his white whiskers.

'There ain't a better judge of musical instruments in the whole world

than what I am. I had an uncle,' says he, 'that was a partner in a

piano-factory, and I've seen thousands of 'em put together. I know all

about musical instruments from a pipe-organ to a corn-stalk fiddle.

There ain't a man lives, sir, that can tell me any news about any

instrument that has to be pounded, blowed, scraped, grinded, picked,

or wound with a key.'

"'You get me what you like, dad,' says Marilla, who couldn't keep her

feet on the floor from joy. 'Of course you know what to select. I'd

just as lief it was a piano or a organ or what.'

"'I see in St. Louis once what they call a orchestrion,' says Uncle

Cal, 'that I judged was about the finest thing in the way of music

ever invented. But there ain't room in this house for one. Anyway, I

imagine they'd cost a thousand dollars. I reckon something in the

piano line would suit Marilla the best. She took lessons in that

respect for two years over at Birdstail. I wouldn't trust the buying

of an instrument to anybody else but myself. I reckon if I hadn't took

up sheep-raising I'd have been one of the finest composers or piano-

and-organ manufacturers in the world.'

"That was Uncle Cal's style. But I never lost any patience with him,

on account of his thinking so much of Marilla. And she thought just as

much of him. He sent her to the academy over at Birdstail for two

years when it took nearly every pound of wool to pay the expenses.

"Along about Tuesday Uncle Cal put out for San Antone on the last

wagonload of wool. Marilla's uncle Ben, who lived in Birdstail, come

over and stayed at the ranch while Uncle Cal was gone.

"It was ninety miles to San Antone, and forty to the nearest railroad-

station, so Uncle Cal was gone about four days. I was over at the

Double-Elm when he came rolling back one evening about sundown. And up

there in the wagon, sure enough, was a piano or a organ--we couldn't

tell which--all wrapped up in woolsacks, with a wagon-sheet tied over

it in case of rain. And out skips Marilla, hollering, 'Oh, oh!' with

her eyes shining and her hair a-flying. 'Dad--dad,' she sings out,

'have you brought it--have you brought it?'--and it right there before

her eyes, as women will do.

"'Finest piano in San Antone,' says Uncle Cal, waving his hand, proud.

'Genuine rosewood, and the finest, loudest tone you ever listened to.

I heard the storekeeper play it, and I took it on the spot and paid

cash down.'

"Me and Ben and Uncle Cal and a Mexican lifted it out of the wagon and

carried it in the house and set it in a corner. It was one of them

upright instruments, and not very heavy or very big.

"And then all of a sudden Uncle Cal flops over and says he's mighty

sick. He's got a high fever, and he complains of his lungs. He gets

into bed, while me and Ben goes out to unhitch and put the horses in

the pasture, and Marilla flies around to get Uncle Cal something hot

to drink. But first she puts both arms on that piano and hugs it with

a soft kind of a smile, like you see kids doing with their Christmas

toys.

"When I came in from the pasture, Marilla was in the room where the

piano was. I could see by the strings and woolsacks on the floor that

she had had it unwrapped. But now she was tying the wagon-sheet over

it again, and there was a kind of solemn, whitish look on her face.

"'Ain't wrapping up the music again, are you, Marilla?' I asks.

'What's the matter with just a couple of tunes for to see how she goes

under the saddle?'

"'Not to-night, Rush,' says she. 'I don't want to play any to-night.

Dad's too sick. Just think, Rush, he paid three hundred dollars for it

--nearly a third of what the wool-clip brought!'

"'Well, it ain't anyways in the neighbourhood of a third of what you

are worth,' I told her. 'And I don't think Uncle Cal is too sick to

hear a little agitation of the piano-keys just to christen the

machine.

"'Not to-night, Rush,' says Marilla, in a way that she had when she

wanted to settle things.

"But it seems that Uncle Cal was plenty sick, after all. He got so bad

that Ben saddled up and rode over to Birdstail for Doc Simpson. I

stayed around to see if I'd be needed for anything.

"When Uncle Cal's pain let up on him a little he called Marilla and

says to her: 'Did you look at your instrument, honey? And do you like

it?'

"'It's lovely, dad,' says she, leaning down by his pillow; 'I never

saw one so pretty. How dear and good it was of you to buy it for me!'

"'I haven't heard you play on it any yet,' says Uncle Cal; 'and I've

been listening. My side don't hurt quite so bad now--won't you play a

piece, Marilla?'

"But no; she puts Uncle Cal off and soothes him down like you've seen

women do with a kid. It seems she's made up her mind not to touch that

piano at present.

"When Doc Simpson comes over he tells us that Uncle Cal has pneumonia

the worst kind; and as the old man was past sixty and nearly on the

lift anyhow, the odds was against his walking on grass any more.

"On the fourth day of his sickness he calls for Marilla again and

wants to talk piano. Doc Simpson was there, and so was Ben and Mrs.

Ben, trying to do all they could.

"'I'd have made a wonderful success in anything connected with music,'

says Uncle Cal. 'I got the finest instrument for the money in San

Antone. Ain't that piano all right in every respect, Marilla?'

"'It's just perfect, dad,' says she. 'It's got the finest tone I ever

heard. But don't you think you could sleep a little while now, dad?'

"'No, I don't,' says Uncle Cal. 'I want to hear that piano. I don't

believe you've even tried it yet. I went all the way to San Antone and

picked it out for you myself. It took a third of the fall clip to buy

it; but I don't mind that if it makes my good girl happier. Won't you

play a little bit for dad, Marilla?'

"Doc Simpson beckoned Marilla to one side and recommended her to do

what Uncle Cal wanted, so it would get him quieted. And her uncle Ben

and his wife asked her, too.

"'Why not hit out a tune or two with the soft pedal on?' I asks

Marilla. 'Uncle Cal has begged you so often. It would please him a

good deal to hear you touch up the piano he's bought for you. Don't

you think you might?'

"But Marilla stands there with big tears rolling down from her eyes

and says nothing. And then she runs over and slips her arm under Uncle

Cal's neck and hugs him tight.

"'Why, last night, dad,' we heard her say, 'I played it ever so much.

Honest--I have been playing it. And it's such a splendid instrument,

you don't know how I love it. Last night I played "Bonnie Dundee" and

the "Anvil Polka" and the "Blue Danube"--and lots of pieces. You must

surely have heard me playing a little, didn't you, dad? I didn't like

to play loud when you was so sick.'

"'Well, well,' says Uncle Cal, 'maybe I did. Maybe I did and forgot

about it. My head is a little cranky at times. I heard the man in the

store play it fine. I'm mighty glad you like it, Marilla. Yes, I

believe I could go to sleep a while if you'll stay right beside me

till I do.'

"There was where Marilla had me guessing. Much as she thought of that

old man, she wouldn't strike a note on that piano that he'd bought

her. I couldn't imagine why she told him she'd been playing it, for

the wagon-sheet hadn't ever been off of it since she put it back on

the same day it come. I knew she could play a little anyhow, for I'd

once heard her snatch some pretty fair dance-music out of an old piano

at the Charco Largo Ranch.

"Well, in about a week the pneumonia got the best of Uncle Cal. They

had the funeral over at Birdstail, and all of us went over. I brought

Marilla back home in my buckboard. Her uncle Ben and his wife were

going to stay there a few days with her.

"That night Marilla takes me in the room where the piano was, while

the others were out on the gallery.

"'Come here, Rush,' says she; 'I want you to see this now.'

"She unties the rope, and drags off the wagon-sheet.

"If you ever rode a saddle without a horse, or fired off a gun that

wasn't loaded, or took a drink out of an empty bottle, why, then you

might have been able to scare an opera or two out of the instrument

Uncle Cal had bought.

"Instead of a piano, it was one of the machines they've invented to

play the piano with. By itself it was about as musical as the holes of

a flute without the flute.

"And that was the piano that Uncle Cal had selected; and standing by

it was the good, fine, all-wool girl that never let him know it.

"And what you heard playing a while ago," concluded Mr. Kinney, "was

that same deputy-piano machine; only just at present it's shoved up

against a six-hundred-dollar piano that I bought for Marilla as soon

as we was married."

XIV

A CALL LOAN

In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees

of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and

bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so

inclined. The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed

to him that he had more money than was decent. But when he had bought

a watch with precious stones set in the case so large that they hurt

his ribs, and a California saddle with silver nails and Angora skin

/suaderos/, and ordered everybody up to the bar for whisky--what else

was there for him to spend money for?

Not so circumscribed in expedient for the reduction of surplus wealth

were those lairds of the lariat who had womenfolk to their name. In

the breast of the rib-sprung sex the genius of purse lightening may

slumber through years of inopportunity, but never, my brothers, does

it become extinct.

So, out of the chaparral came Long Bill Longley from the Bar Circle

Branch on the Frio--a wife-driven man--to taste the urban joys of

success. Something like half a million dollars he had, with an income

steadily increasing.

Long Bill was a graduate of the camp and trail. Luck and thrift, a

cool head, and a telescopic eye for mavericks had raised him from

cowboy to be a cowman. Then came the boom in cattle, and Fortune,

stepping gingerly among the cactus thorns, came and emptied her

cornucopia at the doorstep of the ranch.

In the little frontier city of Chaparosa, Longley built a costly

residence. Here he became a captive, bound to the chariot of social

existence. He was doomed to become a leading citizen. He struggled for

a time like a mustang in his first corral, and then he hung up his

quirt and spurs. Time hung heavily on his hands. He organised the

First National Bank of Chaparosa, and was elected its president.

One day a dyspeptic man, wearing double-magnifying glasses, inserted

an official-looking card between the bars of the cashier's window of

the First National Bank. Five minutes later the bank force was dancing

at the beck and call of a national bank examiner.

This examiner, Mr. J. Edgar Todd, proved to be a thorough one.

At the end of it all the examiner put on his hat, and called the

president, Mr. William R. Longley, into the private office.

"Well, how do you find things?" asked Longley, in his slow, deep

tones. "Any brands in the round-up you didn't like the looks of?"

"The bank checks up all right, Mr. Longley," said Todd; "and I find

your loans in very good shape--with one exception. You are carrying

one very bad bit of paper--one that is so bad that I have been

thinking that you surely do not realise the serious position it places

you in. I refer to a call loan of $10,000 made to Thomas Merwin. Not

only is the amount in excess of the maximum sum the bank can loan any

individual legally, but it is absolutely without endorsement or

security. Thus you have doubly violated the national banking laws, and

have laid yourself open to criminal prosecution by the Government. A

report of the matter to the Comptroller of the Currency--which I am

bound to make--would, I am sure, result in the matter being turned

over to the Department of Justice for action. You see what a serious

thing it is."

Bill Longley was leaning his lengthy, slowly moving frame back in his

swivel chair. His hands were clasped behind his head, and he turned a

little to look the examiner in the face. The examiner was surprised to

see a smile creep about the rugged mouth of the banker, and a kindly

twinkle in his light-blue eyes. If he saw the seriousness of the

affair, it did not show in his countenance.

"Of course, you don't know Tom Merwin," said Longley, almost genially.

"Yes, I know about that loan. It hasn't any security except Tom

Merwin's word. Somehow, I've always found that when a man's word is

good it's the best security there is. Oh, yes, I know the Government

doesn't think so. I guess I'll see Tom about that note."

Mr. Todd's dyspepsia seemed to grow suddenly worse. He looked at the

chaparral banker through his double-magnifying glasses in amazement.

"You see," said Longley, easily explaining the thing away, "Tom heard

of 2000 head of two-year-olds down near Rocky Ford on the Rio Grande

that could be had for $8 a head. I reckon 'twas one of old Leandro

Garcia's outfits that he had smuggled over, and he wanted to make a

quick turn on 'em. Those cattle are worth $15 on the hoof in Kansas

City. Tom knew it and I knew it. He had $6,000, and I let him have

the $10,000 to make the deal with. His brother Ed took 'em on to

market three weeks ago. He ought to be back 'most any day now with the

money. When he comes Tom'll pay that note."

The bank examiner was shocked. It was, perhaps, his duty to step out

to the telegraph office and wire the situation to the Comptroller. But

he did not. He talked pointedly and effectively to Longley for three

minutes. He succeeded in making the banker understand that he stood

upon the border of a catastrophe. And then he offered a tiny loophole

of escape.

"I am going to Hilldale's to-night," he told Longley, "to examine a

bank there. I will pass through Chaparosa on my way back. At twelve

o'clock to-morrow I shall call at this bank. If this loan has been

cleared out of the way by that time it will not be mentioned in my

report. If not--I will have to do my duty."

With that the examiner bowed and departed.

The President of the First National lounged in his chair half an hour

longer, and then he lit a mild cigar, and went over to Tom Merwin's

house. Merwin, a ranchman in brown duck, with a contemplative eye, sat

with his feet upon a table, plaiting a rawhide quirt.

"Tom," said Longley, leaning against the table, "you heard anything

from Ed yet?"

"Not yet," said Merwin, continuing his plaiting. "I guess Ed'll be

along back now in a few days."

"There was a bank examiner," said Longley, "nosing around our place

to-day, and he bucked a sight about that note of yours. You know I

know it's all right, but the thing /is/ against the banking laws. I

was pretty sure you'd have paid it off before the bank was examined

again, but the son-of-a-gun slipped in on us, Tom. Now, I'm short of

cash myself just now, or I'd let you have the money to take it up

with. I've got till twelve o'clock to-morrow, and then I've got to

show the cash in place of that note or--"

"Or what, Bill?" asked Merwin, as Longley hesitated.

"Well, I suppose it means be jumped on with both of Uncle Sam's feet."

"I'll try to raise the money for you on time," said Merwin, interested

in his plaiting.

"All right, Tom," concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door; "I

knew you would if you could."

Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a

private one, run by Cooper & Craig.

"Cooper," he said, to the partner by that name, "I've got to have

$10,000 to-day or to-morrow. I've got a house and lot there that's

worth about $6,000 and that's all the actual collateral. But I've got

a cattle deal on that's sure to bring me in more than that much profit

within a few days."

Cooper began to cough.

"Now, for God's sake don't say no," said Merwin. "I owe that much

money on a call loan. It's been called, and the man that called it is

a man I've laid on the same blanket with in cow-camps and ranger-camps

for ten years. He can call anything I've got. He can call the blood

out of my veins and it'll come. He's got to have the money. He's in a

devil of a--Well, he needs the money, and I've got to get it for him.

You know my word's good, Cooper."

"No doubt of it," assented Cooper, urbanely, "but I've a partner, you

know. I'm not free in making loans. And even if you had the best

security in your hands, Merwin, we couldn't accommodate you in less

than a week. We're just making a shipment of $15,000 to Myer Brothers

in Rockdell, to buy cotton with. It goes down on the narrow-gauge

to-night. That leaves our cash quite short at present. Sorry we can't

arrange it for you."

Merwin went back to his little bare office and plaited at his quirt

again. About four o'clock in the afternoon he went to the First

National Bank and leaned over the railing of Longley's desk.

"I'll try to get that money for you to-night--I mean to-morrow, Bill."

"All right, Tom," said Longley quietly.

At nine o'clock that night Tom Merwin stepped cautiously out of the

small frame house in which he lived. It was near the edge of the

little town, and few citizens were in the neighbourhood at that hour.

Merwin wore two six-shooters in a belt, and a slouch hat. He moved

swiftly down a lonely street, and then followed the sandy road that

ran parallel to the narrow-gauge track until he reached the water-

tank, two miles below the town. There Tom Merwin stopped, tied a black

silk handkerchief about the lower part of his face, and pulled his hat

down low.

In ten minutes the night train for Rockdell pulled up at the tank,

having come from Chaparosa.

With a gun in each hand Merwin raised himself from behind a clump of

chaparral and started for the engine. But before he had taken three

steps, two long, strong arms clasped him from behind, and he was

lifted from his feet and thrown, face downward upon the grass. There

was a heavy knee pressing against his back, and an iron hand grasping

each of his wrists. He was held thus, like a child, until the engine

had taken water, and until the train had moved, with accelerating

speed, out of sight. Then he was released, and rose to his feet to

face Bill Longley.

"The case never needed to be fixed up this way, Tom," said Longley. "I

saw Cooper this evening, and he told me what you and him talked about.

Then I went down to your house to-night and saw you come out with your

guns on, and I followed you. Let's go back, Tom."

They walked away together, side by side.

"'Twas the only chance I saw," said Merwin presently. "You called your

loan, and I tried to answer you. Now, what'll you do, Bill, if they

sock it to you?"

"What would you have done if they'd socked it to you?" was the answer

Longley made.

"I never thought I'd lay in a bush to stick up a train," remarked

Merwin; "but a call loan's different. A call's a call with me. We've

got twelve hours yet, Bill, before this spy jumps onto you. We've got

to raise them spondulicks somehow. Maybe we can--Great Sam Houston! do

you hear that?"

Merwin broke into a run, and Longley kept with him, hearing only a

rather pleasing whistle somewhere in the night rendering the

lugubrious air of "The Cowboy's Lament."

"It's the only tune he knows," shouted Merwin, as he ran. "I'll bet--"

They were at the door of Merwin's house. He kicked it open and fell

over an old valise lying in the middle of the floor. A sunburned,

firm-jawed youth, stained by travel, lay upon the bed puffing at a

brown cigarette.

"What's the word, Ed?" gasped Merwin.

"So, so," drawled that capable youngster. "Just got in on the 9:30.

Sold the bunch for fifteen, straight. Now, buddy, you want to quit

kickin' a valise around that's got $29,000 in greenbacks in its

in'ards."

THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA

There had to be a king and queen, of course. The king was a terrible

old man who wore six-shooters and spurs, and shouted in such a

tremendous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into their

holes under the prickly pear. Before there was a royal family they

called the man "Whispering Ben." When he came to own 50,000 acres of

land and more cattle than he could count, they called him O'Donnell

"the Cattle King."

The queen had been a Mexican girl from Laredo. She made a good, mild,

Colorado-claro wife, and even succeeded in teaching Ben to modify his

voice sufficiently while in the house to keep the dishes from being

broken. When Ben got to be king she would sit on the gallery of

Espinosa Ranch and weave rush mats. When wealth became so irresistible

and oppressive that upholstered chairs and a centre table were brought

down from San Antone in the wagons, she bowed her smooth, dark head,

and shared the fate of the Danae.

To avoid /lese-majeste/ you have been presented first to the king and

queen. They do not enter the story, which might be called "The

Chronicle of the Princess, the Happy Thought, and the Lion that

Bungled his Job."

Josefa O'Donnell was the surviving daughter, the princess. From her

mother she inherited warmth of nature and a dusky, semi-tropic beauty.

From Ben O'Donnell the royal she acquired a store of intrepidity,

common sense, and the faculty of ruling. The combination was one worth

going miles to see. Josefa while riding her pony at a gallop could put

five out of six bullets through a tomato-can swinging at the end of a

string. She could play for hours with a white kitten she owned,

dressing it in all manner of absurd clothes. Scorning a pencil, she

could tell you out of her head what 1545 two-year-olds would bring on

the hoof, at $8.50 per head. Roughly speaking, the Espinosa Ranch is

forty miles long and thirty broad--but mostly leased land. Josefa, on

her pony, had prospected over every mile of it. Every cow-puncher on

the range knew her by sight and was a loyal vassal. Ripley Givens,

foreman of one of the Espinosa outfits, saw her one day, and made up

his mind to form a royal matrimonial alliance. Presumptuous? No. In

those days in the Nueces country a man was a man. And, after all, the

title of cattle king does not presuppose blood royalty. Often it only

signifies that its owner wears the crown in token of his magnificent

qualities in the art of cattle stealing.

One day Ripley Givens rode over to the Double Elm Ranch to inquire

about a bunch of strayed yearlings. He was late in setting out on his

return trip, and it was sundown when he struck the White Horse

Crossing of the Nueces. From there to his own camp it was sixteen

miles. To the Espinosa ranch it was twelve. Givens was tired. He

decided to pass the night at the Crossing.

There was a fine water hole in the river-bed. The banks were thickly

covered with great trees, undergrown with brush. Back from the water

hole fifty yards was a stretch of curly mesquite grass--supper for his

horse and bed for himself. Givens staked his horse, and spread out his

saddle blankets to dry. He sat down with his back against a tree and

rolled a cigarette. From somewhere in the dense timber along the river

came a sudden, rageful, shivering wail. The pony danced at the end of

his rope and blew a whistling snort of comprehending fear. Givens

puffed at his cigarette, but he reached leisurely for his pistol-belt,

which lay on the grass, and twirled the cylinder of his weapon

tentatively. A great gar plunged with a loud splash into the water

hole. A little brown rabbit skipped around a bunch of catclaw and sat

twitching his whiskers and looking humorously at Givens. The pony went

on eating grass.

It is well to be reasonably watchful when a Mexican lion sings soprano

along the arroyos at sundown. The burden of his song may be that young

calves and fat lambs are scarce, and that he has a carnivorous desire

for your acquaintance.

In the grass lay an empty fruit can, cast there by some former

sojourner. Givens caught sight of it with a grunt of satisfaction. In

his coat pocket tied behind his saddle was a handful or two of ground

coffee. Black coffee and cigarettes! What ranchero could desire more?

In two minutes he had a little fire going clearly. He started, with

his can, for the water hole. When within fifteen yards of its edge he

saw, between the bushes, a side-saddled pony with down-dropped reins

cropping grass a little distance to his left. Just rising from her

hands and knees on the brink of the water hole was Josefa O'Donnell.

She had been drinking water, and she brushed the sand from the palms

of her hands. Ten yards away, to her right, half concealed by a clump

of sacuista, Givens saw the crouching form of the Mexican lion. His

amber eyeballs glared hungrily; six feet from them was the tip of the

tail stretched straight, like a pointer's. His hind-quarters rocked

with the motion of the cat tribe preliminary to leaping.

Givens did what he could. His six-shooter was thirty-five yards away

lying on the grass. He gave a loud yell, and dashed between the lion

and the princess.

The "rucus," as Givens called it afterward, was brief and somewhat

confused. When he arrived on the line of attack he saw a dim streak in

the air, and heard a couple of faint cracks. Then a hundred pounds of

Mexican lion plumped down upon his head and flattened him, with a

heavy jar, to the ground. He remembered calling out: "Let up, now--no

fair gouging!" and then he crawled from under the lion like a worm,

with his mouth full of grass and dirt, and a big lump on the back of

his head where it had struck the root of a water-elm. The lion lay

motionless. Givens, feeling aggrieved, and suspicious of fouls, shook

his fist at the lion, and shouted: "I'll rastle you again for

twenty--" and then he got back to himself.

Josefa was standing in her tracks, quietly reloading her silver-

mounted .38. It had not been a difficult shot. The lion's head made an

easier mark than a tomato-can swinging at the end of a string. There

was a provoking, teasing, maddening smile upon her mouth and in her

dark eyes. The would-be-rescuing knight felt the fire of his fiasco

burn down to his soul. Here had been his chance, the chance that he

had dreamed of; and Momus, and not Cupid, had presided over it. The

satyrs in the wood were, no doubt, holding their sides in hilarious,

silent laughter. There had been something like vaudeville--say Signor

Givens and his funny knockabout act with the stuffed lion.

"Is that you, Mr. Givens?" said Josefa, in her deliberate, saccharine

contralto. "You nearly spoilt my shot when you yelled. Did you hurt

your head when you fell?"

"Oh, no," said Givens, quietly; "that didn't hurt." He stooped

ignominiously and dragged his best Stetson hat from under the beast.

It was crushed and wrinkled to a fine comedy effect. Then he knelt

down and softly stroked the fierce, open-jawed head of the dead lion.

"Poor old Bill!" he exclaimed mournfully.

"What's that?" asked Josefa, sharply.

"Of course you didn't know, Miss Josefa," said Givens, with an air of

one allowing magnanimity to triumph over grief. "Nobody can blame you.

I tried to save him, but I couldn't let you know in time."

"Save who?"

"Why, Bill. I've been looking for him all day. You see, he's been our

camp pet for two years. Poor old fellow, he wouldn't have hurt a

cottontail rabbit. It'll break the boys all up when they hear about

it. But you couldn't tell, of course, that Bill was just trying to

play with you."

Josefa's black eyes burned steadily upon him. Ripley Givens met the

test successfully. He stood rumpling the yellow-brown curls on his

head pensively. In his eye was regret, not unmingled with a gentle

reproach. His smooth features were set to a pattern of indisputable

sorrow. Josefa wavered.

"What was your pet doing here?" she asked, making a last stand.

"There's no camp near the White Horse Crossing."

"The old rascal ran away from camp yesterday," answered Givens

readily. "It's a wonder the coyotes didn't scare him to death. You

see, Jim Webster, our horse wrangler, brought a little terrier pup

into camp last week. The pup made life miserable for Bill--he used to

chase him around and chew his hind legs for hours at a time. Every

night when bedtime came Bill would sneak under one of the boy's

blankets and sleep to keep the pup from finding him. I reckon he must

have been worried pretty desperate or he wouldn't have run away. He

was always afraid to get out of sight of camp."

Josefa looked at the body of the fierce animal. Givens gently patted

one of the formidable paws that could have killed a yearling calf with

one blow. Slowly a red flush widened upon the dark olive face of the

girl. Was it the signal of shame of the true sportsman who has brought

down ignoble quarry? Her eyes grew softer, and the lowered lids drove

away all their bright mockery.

"I'm very sorry," she said humbly; "but he looked so big, and jumped

so high that--"

"Poor old Bill was hungry," interrupted Givens, in quick defence of

the deceased. "We always made him jump for his supper in camp. He

would lie down and roll over for a piece of meat. When he saw you he

thought he was going to get something to eat from you."

Suddenly Josefa's eyes opened wide.

"I might have shot you!" she exclaimed. "You ran right in between. You

risked your life to save your pet! That was fine, Mr. Givens. I like a

man who is kind to animals."

Yes; there was even admiration in her gaze now. After all, there was a

hero rising out of the ruins of the anti-climax. The look on Givens's

face would have secured him a high position in the S.P.C.A.

"I always loved 'em," said he; "horses, dogs, Mexican lions, cows,

alligators--"

"I hate alligators," instantly demurred Josefa; "crawly, muddy

things!"

"Did I say alligators?" said Givens. "I meant antelopes, of course."

Josefa's conscience drove her to make further amends. She held out her

hand penitently. There was a bright, unshed drop in each of her eyes.

"Please forgive me, Mr. Givens, won't you? I'm only a girl, you know,

and I was frightened at first. I'm very, very sorry I shot Bill. You

don't know how ashamed I feel. I wouldn't have done it for anything."

Givens took the proffered hand. He held it for a time while he allowed

the generosity of his nature to overcome his grief at the loss of

Bill. At last it was clear that he had forgiven her.

"Please don't speak of it any more, Miss Josefa. 'Twas enough to

frighten any young lady the way Bill looked. I'll explain it all right

to the boys."

"Are you really sure you don't hate me?" Josefa came closer to him

impulsively. Her eyes were sweet--oh, sweet and pleading with gracious

penitence. "I would hate anyone who would kill my kitten. And how

daring and kind of you to risk being shot when you tried to save him!

How very few men would have done that!" Victory wrested from defeat!

Vaudeville turned into drama! Bravo, Ripley Givens!

It was now twilight. Of course Miss Josefa could not be allowed to

ride on to the ranch-house alone. Givens resaddled his pony in spite

of that animal's reproachful glances, and rode with her. Side by side

they galloped across the smooth grass, the princess and the man who

was kind to animals. The prairie odours of fruitful earth and delicate

bloom were thick and sweet around them. Coyotes yelping over there on

the hill! No fear. And yet--

Josefa rode closer. A little hand seemed to grope. Givens found it

with his own. The ponies kept an even gait. The hands lingered

together, and the owner of one explained:

"I never was frightened before, but just think! How terrible it would

be to meet a really wild lion! Poor Bill! I'm so glad you came with

me!"

O'Donnell was sitting on the ranch gallery.

"Hello, Rip!" he shouted--"that you?"

"He rode in with me," said Josefa. "I lost my way and was late."

"Much obliged," called the cattle king. "Stop over, Rip, and ride to

camp in the morning."

But Givens would not. He would push on to camp. There was a bunch of

steers to start off on the trail at daybreak. He said good-night, and

trotted away.

An hour later, when the lights were out, Josefa, in her night-robe,

came to her door and called to the king in his own room across the

brick-paved hallway:

"Say, pop, you know that old Mexican lion they call the 'Gotch-eared

Devil'--the one that killed Gonzales, Mr. Martin's sheep herder, and

about fifty calves on the Salado range? Well, I settled his hash this

afternoon over at the White Horse Crossing. Put two balls in his head

with my .38 while he was on the jump. I knew him by the slice gone

from his left ear that old Gonzales cut off with his machete. You

couldn't have made a better shot yourself, daddy."

"Bully for you!" thundered Whispering Ben from the darkness of the

royal chamber.

XVI

THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON

Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake the bottle

before using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated

a small sponge with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the roots

of his hair. Besides sulphur there was sugar of lead in it and

tincture of nux vomica and bay rum. Dry Valley found the recipe in a

Sunday newspaper. You must next be told why a strong man came to fall

a victim to a Beauty Hint.

Dry Valley had been a sheepman. His real name was Hector, but he had

been rechristened after his range to distinguish him from "Elm Creek"

Johnson, who ran sheep further down the Frio.

Many years of living face to face with sheep on their own terms

wearied Dry Valley Johnson. So, he sold his ranch for eighteen

thousand dollars and moved to Santa Rosa to live a life of gentlemanly

ease. Being a silent and melancholy person of thirty-five--or perhaps

thirty-eight--he soon became that cursed and earth-cumbering thing--an

elderlyish bachelor with a hobby. Some one gave him his first

strawberry to eat, and he was done for.

Dry Valley bought a four-room cottage in the village, and a library on

strawberry culture. Behind the cottage was a garden of which he made a

strawberry patch. In his old grey woolen shirt, his brown duck

trousers, and high-heeled boots he sprawled all day on a canvas cot

under a live-oak tree at his back door studying the history of the

seductive, scarlet berry.

The school teacher, Miss De Witt, spoke of him as "a fine, presentable

man, for all his middle age." But, the focus of Dry Valley's eyes

embraced no women. They were merely beings who flew skirts as a signal

for him to lift awkwardly his heavy, round-crowned, broad-brimmed felt

Stetson whenever he met them, and then hurry past to get back to his

beloved berries.

And all this recitative by the chorus is only to bring us to the point

where you may be told why Dry Valley shook up the insoluble sulphur in

the bottle. So long-drawn and inconsequential a thing is history--the

anamorphous shadow of a milestone reaching down the road between us

and the setting sun.

When his strawberries were beginning to ripen Dry Valley bought the

heaviest buggy whip in the Santa Rosa store. He sat for many hours

under the live oak tree plaiting and weaving in an extension to its

lash. When it was done he could snip a leaf from a bush twenty feet

away with the cracker. For the bright, predatory eyes of Santa Rosa

youth were watching the ripening berries, and Dry Valley was arming

himself against their expected raids. No greater care had he taken of

his tender lambs during his ranching days than he did of his cherished

fruit, warding it from the hungry wolves that whistled and howled and

shot their marbles and peered through the fence that surrounded his

property.

In the house next to Dry Valley's lived a widow with a pack of

children that gave the husbandman frequent anxious misgivings. In the

woman there was a strain of the Spanish. She had wedded one of the

name of O'Brien. Dry Valley was a connoisseur in cross strains; and he

foresaw trouble in the offspring of this union.

Between the two homesteads ran a crazy picket fence overgrown with

morning glory and wild gourd vines. Often he could see little heads

with mops of black hair and flashing dark eyes dodging in and out

between the pickets, keeping tabs on the reddening berries.

Late one afternoon Dry Valley went to the post office. When he came

back, like Mother Hubbard he found the deuce to pay. The descendants

of Iberian bandits and Hibernian cattle raiders had swooped down upon

his strawberry patch. To the outraged vision of Dry Valley there

seemed to be a sheep corral full of them; perhaps they numbered five

or six. Between the rows of green plants they were stooped, hopping

about like toads, gobbling silently and voraciously his finest fruit.

Dry Valley slipped into the house, got his whip, and charged the

marauders. The lash curled about the legs of the nearest--a greedy

ten-year-old--before they knew they were discovered. His screech gave

warning; and the flock scampered for the fence like a drove of

/javelis/ flushed in the chaparral. Dry Valley's whip drew a toll of

two more elfin shrieks before they dived through the vine-clad fence

and disappeared.

Dry Valley, less fleet, followed them nearly to the pickets. Checking

his useless pursuit, he rounded a bush, dropped his whip and stood,

voiceless, motionless, the capacity of his powers consumed by the act

of breathing and preserving the perpendicular.

Behind the bush stood Panchita O'Brien, scorning to fly. She was

nineteen, the oldest of the raiders. Her night-black hair was gathered

back in a wild mass and tied with a scarlet ribbon. She stood, with

reluctant feet, yet nearer the brook than to the river; for childhood

had environed and detained her.

She looked at Dry Valley Johnson for a moment with magnificent

insolence, and before his eyes slowly crunched a luscious berry

between her white teeth. Then she turned and walked slowly to the

fence with a swaying, conscious motion, such as a duchess might make

use of in leading a promenade. There she turned again and grilled Dry

Valley Johnson once more in the dark flame of her audacious eyes,

laughed a trifle school-girlishly, and twisted herself with pantherish

quickness between the pickets to the O'Brien side of the wild gourd

vine.

Dry Valley picked up his whip and went into his house. He stumbled as

he went up the two wooden steps. The old Mexican woman who cooked his

meals and swept his house called him to supper as he went through the

rooms. Dry Valley went on, stumbled down the front steps, out the gate

and down the road into a mesquite thicket at the edge of town. He sat

down in the grass and laboriously plucked the spines from a prickly

pear, one by one. This was his attitude of thought, acquired in the

days when his problems were only those of wind and wool and water.

A thing had happened to the man--a thing that, if you are eligible,

you must pray may pass you by. He had become enveloped in the Indian

Summer of the Soul.

Dry Valley had had no youth. Even his childhood had been one of

dignity and seriousness. At six he had viewed the frivolous gambols of

the lambs on his father's ranch with silent disapproval. His life as a

young man had been wasted. The divine fires and impulses, the glorious

exaltations and despairs, the glow and enchantment of youth had passed

above his head. Never a thrill of Romeo had he known; he was but a

melancholy Jaques of the forest with a ruder philosophy, lacking the

bitter-sweet flavour of experience that tempered the veteran years of

the rugged ranger of Arden. And now in his sere and yellow leaf one

scornful look from the eyes of Panchita O'Brien had flooded the

autumnal landscape with a tardy and delusive summer heat.

But a sheepman is a hardy animal. Dry Valley Johnson had weathered too

many northers to turn his back on a late summer, spiritual or real.

Old? He would show them.

By the next mail went an order to San Antonio for an outfit of the

latest clothes, colours and styles and prices no object. The next day

went the recipe for the hair restorer clipped from a newspaper; for

Dry Valley's sunburned auburn hair was beginning to turn silvery above

his ears.

Dry Valley kept indoors closely for a week except for frequent sallies

after youthful strawberry snatchers. Then, a few days later, he

suddenly emerged brilliantly radiant in the hectic glow of his belated

midsummer madness.

A jay-bird-blue tennis suit covered him outwardly, almost as far as

his wrists and ankles. His shirt was ox-blood; his collar winged and

tall; his necktie a floating oriflamme; his shoes a venomous bright

tan, pointed and shaped on penitential lasts. A little flat straw hat

with a striped band desecrated his weather-beaten head. Lemon-coloured

kid gloves protected his oak-tough hands from the benignant May

sunshine. This sad and optic-smiting creature teetered out of its den,

smiling foolishly and smoothing its gloves for men and angels to see.

To such a pass had Dry Valley Johnson been brought by Cupid, who

always shoots game that is out of season with an arrow from the quiver

of Momus. Reconstructing mythology, he had risen, a prismatic macaw,

from the ashes of the grey-brown phoenix that had folded its tired

wings to roost under the trees of Santa Rosa.

Dry Valley paused in the street to allow Santa Rosans within sight of

him to be stunned; and then deliberately and slowly, as his shoes

required, entered Mrs. O'Brien's gate.

Not until the eleven months' drought did Santa Rosa cease talking

about Dry Valley Johnson's courtship of Panchita O'Brien. It was an

unclassifiable procedure; something like a combination of cake-

walking, deaf-and-dumb oratory, postage stamp flirtation and parlour

charades. It lasted two weeks and then came to a sudden end.

Of course Mrs. O'Brien favoured the match as soon as Dry Valley's

intentions were disclosed. Being the mother of a woman child, and

therefore a charter member of the Ancient Order of the Rat-trap, she

joyfully decked out Panchita for the sacrifice. The girl was

temporarily dazzled by having her dresses lengthened and her hair

piled up on her head, and came near forgetting that she was only a

slice of cheese. It was nice, too, to have as good a match as Mr.

Johnson paying you attentions and to see the other girls fluttering

the curtains at their windows to see you go by with him.

Dry Valley bought a buggy with yellow wheels and a fine trotter in San

Antonio. Every day he drove out with Panchita. He was never seen to

speak to her when they were walking or driving. The consciousness of

his clothes kept his mind busy; the knowledge that he could say

nothing of interest kept him dumb; the feeling that Panchita was there

kept him happy.

He took her to parties and dances, and to church. He tried--oh, no man

ever tried so hard to be young as Dry Valley did. He could not dance;

but he invented a smile which he wore on these joyous occasions, a

smile that, in him, was as great a concession to mirth and gaiety as

turning hand-springs would be in another. He began to seek the company

of the young men in the town--even of the boys. They accepted him as a

decided damper, for his attempts at sportiveness were so forced that

they might as well have essayed their games in a cathedral. Neither he

nor any other could estimate what progress he had made with Panchita.

The end came suddenly in one day, as often disappears the false

afterglow before a November sky and wind.

Dry Valley was to call for the girl one afternoon at six for a walk.

An afternoon walk in Santa Rosa was a feature of social life that

called for the pink of one's wardrobe. So Dry Valley began gorgeously

to array himself; and so early that he finished early, and went over

to the O'Brien cottage. As he neared the porch on the crooked walk

from the gate he heard sounds of revelry within. He stopped and looked

through the honeysuckle vines in the open door.

Panchita was amusing her younger brothers and sisters. She wore a

man's clothes--no doubt those of the late Mr. O'Brien. On her head was

the smallest brother's straw hat decorated with an ink-striped paper

band. On her hands were flapping yellow cloth gloves, roughly cut out

and sewn for the masquerade. The same material covered her shoes,

giving them the semblance of tan leather. High collar and flowing

necktie were not omitted.

Panchita was an actress. Dry Valley saw his affectedly youthful gait,

his limp where the right shoe hurt him, his forced smile, his awkward

simulation of a gallant air, all reproduced with startling fidelity.

For the first time a mirror had been held up to him. The corroboration

of one of the youngsters calling, "Mamma, come and see Pancha do like

Mr. Johnson," was not needed.

As softly as the caricatured tans would permit, Dry Valley tiptoed

back to the gate and home again.

Twenty minutes after the time appointed for the walk Panchita tripped

demurely out of her gate in a thin, trim white lawn and sailor hat.

She strolled up the sidewalk and slowed her steps at Dry Valley's

gate, her manner expressing wonder at his unusual delinquency.

Then out of his door and down the walk strode--not the polychromatic

victim of a lost summertime, but the sheepman, rehabilitated. He wore

his old grey woolen shirt, open at the throat, his brown duck trousers

stuffed into his run-over boots, and his white felt sombrero on the

back of his head. Twenty years or fifty he might look; Dry Valley

cared not. His light blue eyes met Panchita's dark ones with a cold

flash in them. He came as far as the gate. He pointed with his long

arm to her house.

"Go home," said Dry Valley. "Go home to your mother. I wonder

lightnin' don't strike a fool like me. Go home and play in the sand.

What business have you got cavortin' around with grown men? I reckon I

was locoed to be makin' a he poll-parrot out of myself for a kid like

you. Go home and don't let me see you no more. Why I done it, will

somebody tell me? Go home, and let me try and forget it."

Panchita obeyed and walked slowly toward her home, saying nothing. For

some distance she kept her head turned and her large eyes fixed

intrepidly upon Dry Valley's. At her gate she stood for a moment

looking back at him, then ran suddenly and swiftly into the house.

Old Antonia was building a fire in the kitchen stove. Dry Valley

stopped at the door and laughed harshly.

"I'm a pretty looking old rhinoceros to be gettin' stuck on a kid,

ain't I, 'Tonia?" said he.

"Not verree good thing," agreed Antonia, sagely, "for too much old man

to likee /muchacha/."

"You bet it ain't," said Dry Valley, grimly. "It's dum foolishness;

and, besides, it hurts."

He brought at one armful the regalia of his aberration--the blue

tennis suit, shoes, hat, gloves and all, and threw them in a pile at

Antonia's feet.

"Give them to your old man," said he, "to hunt antelope in."

Just as the first star presided palely over the twilight Dry Valley

got his biggest strawberry book and sat on the back steps to catch the

last of the reading light. He thought he saw the figure of someone in

his strawberry patch. He laid aside the book, got his whip and hurried

forth to see.

It was Panchita. She had slipped through the picket fence and was

half-way across the patch. She stopped when she saw him and looked at

him without wavering.

A sudden rage--a humiliating flush of unreasoning wrath--came over Dry

Valley. For this child he had made himself a motley to the view. He

had tried to bribe Time to turn backward for himself; he had--been

made a fool of. At last he had seen his folly. There was a gulf

between him and youth over which he could not build a bridge even with

yellow gloves to protect his hands. And the sight of his torment

coming to pester him with her elfin pranks--coming to plunder his

strawberry vines like a mischievous schoolboy--roused all his anger.

"I told you to keep away from here," said Dry Valley. "Go back to your

home."

Panchita moved slowly toward him.

Dry Valley cracked his whip.

"Go back home," said Dry Valley, savagely, "and play theatricals some

more. You'd make a fine man. You've made a fine one of me."

She came a step nearer, silent, and with that strange, defiant, steady

shine in her eyes that had always puzzled him. Now it stirred his

wrath.

His whiplash whistled through the air. He saw a red streak suddenly

come out through her white dress above her knee where it had struck.

Without flinching and with the same unchanging dark glow in her eyes,

Panchita came steadily toward him through the strawberry vines. Dry

Valley's trembling hand released his whip handle. When within a yard

of him Panchita stretched out her arms.

"God, kid!" stammered Dry Valley, "do you mean--?"

But the seasons are versatile; and it may have been Springtime, after

all, instead of Indian Summer, that struck Dry Valley Johnson.

XVII

CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION

Cherokee was the civic father of Yellowhammer. Yellowhammer was a new

mining town constructed mainly of canvas and undressed pine. Cherokee

was a prospector. One day while his burro was eating quartz and pine

burrs Cherokee turned up with his pick a nugget, weighing thirty

ounces. He staked his claim and then, being a man of breadth and

hospitality, sent out invitations to his friends in three States to

drop in and share his luck.

Not one of the invited guests sent regrets. They rolled in from the

Gila country, from Salt River, from the Pecos, from Albuquerque and

Phoenix and Santa Fe, and from the camps intervening.

When a thousand citizens had arrived and taken up claims they named

the town Yellowhammer, appointed a vigilance committee, and presented

Cherokee with a watch-chain made of nuggets.

Three hours after the presentation ceremonies Cherokee's claim played

out. He had located a pocket instead of a vein. He abandoned it and

staked others one by one. Luck had kissed her hand to him. Never

afterward did he turn up enough dust in Yellowhammer to pay his bar

bill. But his thousand invited guests were mostly prospering, and

Cherokee smiled and congratulated them.

Yellowhammer was made up of men who took off their hats to a smiling

loser; so they invited Cherokee to say what he wanted.

"Me?" said Cherokee, "oh, grubstakes will be about the thing. I reckon

I'll prospect along up in the Mariposas. If I strike it up there I

will most certainly let you all know about the facts. I never was any

hand to hold out cards on my friends."

In May Cherokee packed his burro and turned its thoughtful, mouse-

coloured forehead to the north. Many citizens escorted him to the

undefined limits of Yellowhammer and bestowed upon him shouts of

commendation and farewells. Five pocket flasks without an air bubble

between contents and cork were forced upon him; and he was bidden to

consider Yellowhammer in perpetual commission for his bed, bacon and

eggs, and hot water for shaving in the event that luck did not see fit

to warm her hands by his campfire in the Mariposas.

The name of the father of Yellowhammer was given him by the gold

hunters in accordance with their popular system of nomenclature. It

was not necessary for a citizen to exhibit his baptismal certificate

in order to acquire a cognomen. A man's name was his personal

property. For convenience in calling him up to the bar and in

designating him among other blue-shirted bipeds, a temporary

appellation, title, or epithet was conferred upon him by the public.

Personal peculiarities formed the source of the majority of such

informal baptisms. Many were easily dubbed geographically from the

regions from which they confessed to have hailed. Some announced

themselves to be "Thompsons," and "Adamses," and the like, with a

brazenness and loudness that cast a cloud upon their titles. A few

vaingloriously and shamelessly uncovered their proper and indisputable

names. This was held to be unduly arrogant, and did not win

popularity. One man who said he was Chesterton L. C. Belmont, and

proved it by letters, was given till sundown to leave the town. Such

names as "Shorty," "Bow-legs," "Texas," "Lazy Bill," "Thirsty Rogers,"

"Limping Riley," "The Judge," and "California Ed" were in favour.

Cherokee derived his title from the fact that he claimed to have lived

for a time with that tribe in the Indian Nation.

On the twentieth day of December Baldy, the mail rider, brought

Yellowhammer a piece of news.

"What do I see in Albuquerque," said Baldy, to the patrons of the bar,

"but Cherokee all embellished and festooned up like the Czar of

Turkey, and lavishin' money in bulk. Him and me seen the elephant and

the owl, and we had specimens of this seidlitz powder wine; and

Cherokee he audits all the bills, C.O.D. His pockets looked like a

pool table's after a fifteen-ball run.

"Cherokee must have struck pay ore," remarked California Ed. "Well,

he's white. I'm much obliged to him for his success."

"Seems like Cherokee would ramble down to Yellowhammer and see his

friends," said another, slightly aggrieved. "But that's the way.

Prosperity is the finest cure there is for lost forgetfulness."

"You wait," said Baldy; "I'm comin' to that. Cherokee strikes a three-

foot vein up in the Mariposas that assays a trip to Europe to the ton,

and he closes it out to a syndicate outfit for a hundred thousand

hasty dollars in cash. Then he buys himself a baby sealskin overcoat

and a red sleigh, and what do you think he takes it in his head to do

next?"

"Chuck-a-luck," said Texas, whose ideas of recreation were the

gamester's.

"Come and Kiss Me, Ma Honey," sang Shorty, who carried tintypes in his

pocket and wore a red necktie while working on his claim.

"Bought a saloon?" suggested Thirsty Rogers.

"Cherokee took me to a room," continued Baldy, "and showed me. He's

got that room full of drums and dolls and skates and bags of candy and

jumping-jacks and toy lambs and whistles and such infantile truck. And

what do you think he's goin' to do with them inefficacious knick-

knacks? Don't surmise none--Cherokee told me. He's goin' to lead 'em

up in his red sleigh and--wait a minute, don't order no drinks yet--

he's goin' to drive down here to Yellowhammer and give the kids--the

kids of this here town--the biggest Christmas tree and the biggest

cryin' doll and Little Giant Boys' Tool Chest blowout that was ever

seen west of the Cape Hatteras."

Two minutes of absolute silence ticked away in the wake of Baldy's

words. It was broken by the House, who, happily conceiving the moment

to be ripe for extending hospitality, sent a dozen whisky glasses

spinning down the bar, with the slower travelling bottle bringing up

the rear.

"Didn't you tell him?" asked the miner called Trinidad.

"Well, no," answered Baldy, pensively; "I never exactly seen my way

to.

"You see, Cherokee had this Christmas mess already bought and paid

for; and he was all flattered up with self-esteem over his idea; and

we had in a way flew the flume with that fizzy wine I speak of; so I

never let on."

"I cannot refrain from a certain amount of surprise," said the Judge,

as he hung his ivory-handled cane on the bar, "that our friend

Cherokee should possess such an erroneous conception of--ah--his, as

it were, own town."

"Oh, it ain't the eighth wonder of the terrestrial world," said Baldy.

"Cherokee's been gone from Yellowhammer over seven months. Lots of

things could happen in that time. How's he to know that there ain't a

single kid in this town, and so far as emigration is concerned, none

expected?"

"Come to think of it," remarked California Ed, "it's funny some ain't

drifted in. Town ain't settled enough yet for to bring in the rubber-

ring brigade, I reckon."

"To top off this Christmas-tree splurge of Cherokee's," went on Baldy,

"he's goin' to give an imitation of Santa Claus. He's got a white wig

and whiskers that disfigure him up exactly like the pictures of this

William Cullen Longfellow in the books, and a red suit of fur-trimmed

outside underwear, and eight-ounce gloves, and a stand-up, lay-down

croshayed red cap. Ain't it a shame that a outfit like that can't get

a chance to connect with a Annie and Willie's prayer layout?"

"When does Cherokee allow to come over with his truck?" inquired

Trinidad.

"Mornin' before Christmas," said Baldy. "And he wants you folks to

have a room fixed up and a tree hauled and ready. And such ladies to

assist as can stop breathin' long enough to let it be a surprise for

the kids."

The unblessed condition of Yellowhammer had been truly described. The

voice of childhood had never gladdened its flimsy structures; the

patter of restless little feet had never consecrated the one rugged

highway between the two rows of tents and rough buildings. Later they

would come. But now Yellowhammer was but a mountain camp, and nowhere

in it were the roguish, expectant eyes, opening wide at dawn of the

enchanting day; the eager, small hands to reach for Santa's

bewildering hoard; the elated, childish voicings of the season's joy,

such as the coming good things of the warm-hearted Cherokee deserved.

Of women there were five in Yellowhammer. The assayer's wife, the

proprietress of the Lucky Strike Hotel, and a laundress whose washtub

panned out an ounce of dust a day. These were the permanent feminines;

the remaining two were the Spangler Sisters, Misses Fanchon and Erma,

of the Transcontinental Comedy Company, then playing in repertoire at

the (improvised) Empire Theatre. But of children there were none.

Sometimes Miss Fanchon enacted with spirit and address the part of

robustious childhood; but between her delineation and the visions of

adolescence that the fancy offered as eligible recipients of

Cherokee's holiday stores there seemed to be fixed a gulf.

Christmas would come on Thursday. On Tuesday morning Trinidad, instead

of going to work, sought the Judge at the Lucky Strike Hotel.

"It'll be a disgrace to Yellowhammer," said Trinidad, "if it throws

Cherokee down on his Christmas tree blowout. You might say that that

man made this town. For one, I'm goin' to see what can be done to give

Santa Claus a square deal."

"My co-operation," said the Judge, "would be gladly forthcoming. I am

indebted to Cherokee for past favours. But, I do not see--I have

heretofore regarded the absence of children rather as a luxury--but in

this instance--still, I do not see--"

"Look at me," said Trinidad, "and you'll see old Ways and Means with

the fur on. I'm goin' to hitch up a team and rustle a load of kids for

Cherokee's Santa Claus act, if I have to rob an orphan asylum."

"Eureka!" cried the Judge, enthusiastically.

"No, you didn't," said Trinidad, decidedly. "I found it myself. I

learned about that Latin word at school."

"I will accompany you," declared the Judge, waving his cane. "Perhaps

such eloquence and gift of language as I possess will be of benefit in

persuading our young friends to lend themselves to our project."

Within an hour Yellowhammer was acquainted with the scheme of Trinidad

and the Judge, and approved it. Citizens who knew of families with

offspring within a forty-mile radius of Yellowhammer came forward and

contributed their information. Trinidad made careful notes of all

such, and then hastened to secure a vehicle and team.

The first stop scheduled was at a double log-house fifteen miles out

from Yellowhammer. A man opened the door at Trinidad's hail, and then

came down and leaned upon the rickety gate. The doorway was filled

with a close mass of youngsters, some ragged, all full of curiosity

and health.

"It's this way," explained Trinidad. "We're from Yellowhammer, and we

come kidnappin' in a gentle kind of a way. One of our leading citizens

is stung with the Santa Claus affliction, and he's due in town

to-morrow with half the folderols that's painted red and made in

Germany. The youngest kid we got in Yellowhammer packs a forty-five

and a safety razor. Consequently we're mighty shy on anybody to say

'Oh' and 'Ah' when we light the candles on the Christmas tree. Now,

partner, if you'll loan us a few kids we guarantee to return 'em safe

and sound on Christmas Day. And they'll come back loaded down with a

good time and Swiss Family Robinsons and cornucopias and red drums and

similar testimonials. What do you say?"

"In other words," said the Judge, "we have discovered for the first

time in our embryonic but progressive little city the inconveniences

of the absence of adolescence. The season of the year having

approximately arrived during which it is a custom to bestow frivolous

but often appreciated gifts upon the young and tender--"

"I understand," said the parent, packing his pipe with a forefinger.

"I guess I needn't detain you gentlemen. Me and the old woman have got

seven kids, so to speak; and, runnin' my mind over the bunch, I don't

appear to hit upon none that we could spare for you to take over to

your doin's. The old woman has got some popcorn candy and rag dolls

hid in the clothes chest, and we allow to give Christmas a little

whirl of our own in a insignificant sort of style. No, I couldn't,

with any degree of avidity, seem to fall in with the idea of lettin'

none of 'em go. Thank you kindly, gentlemen."

Down the slope they drove and up another foothill to the ranch-house

of Wiley Wilson. Trinidad recited his appeal and the Judge boomed out

his ponderous antiphony. Mrs. Wiley gathered her two rosy-cheeked

youngsters close to her skirts and did not smile until she had seen

Wiley laugh and shake his head. Again a refusal.

Trinidad and the Judge vainly exhausted more than half their list

before twilight set in among the hills. They spent the night at a

stage road hostelry, and set out again early the next morning. The

wagon had not acquired a single passenger.

"It's creepin' upon my faculties," remarked Trinidad, "that borrowin'

kids at Christmas is somethin' like tryin' to steal butter from a man

that's got hot pancakes a-comin'."

"It is undoubtedly an indisputable fact," said the Judge, "that the--

ah--family ties seem to be more coherent and assertive at that period

of the year."

On the day before Christmas they drove thirty miles, making four

fruitless halts and appeals. Everywhere they found "kids" at a

premium.

The sun was low when the wife of a section boss on a lonely railroad

huddled her unavailable progeny behind her and said:

"There's a woman that's just took charge of the railroad eatin' house

down at Granite Junction. I hear she's got a little boy. Maybe she

might let him go."

Trinidad pulled up his mules at Granite Junction at five o'clock in

the afternoon. The train had just departed with its load of fed and

appeased passengers.

On the steps of the eating house they found a thin and glowering boy

of ten smoking a cigarette. The dining-room had been left in chaos by

the peripatetic appetites. A youngish woman reclined, exhausted, in a

chair. Her face wore sharp lines of worry. She had once possessed a

certain style of beauty that would never wholly leave her and would

never wholly return. Trinidad set forth his mission.

"I'd count it a mercy if you'd take Bobby for a while," she said,

wearily. "I'm on the go from morning till night, and I don't have time

to 'tend to him. He's learning bad habits from the men. It'll be the

only chance he'll have to get any Christmas."

The men went outside and conferred with Bobby. Trinidad pictured the

glories of the Christmas tree and presents in lively colours.

"And, moreover, my young friend," added the Judge, "Santa Claus

himself will personally distribute the offerings that will typify the

gifts conveyed by the shepherds of Bethlehem to--"

"Aw, come off," said the boy, squinting his small eyes. "I ain't no

kid. There ain't any Santa Claus. It's your folks that buys toys and

sneaks 'em in when you're asleep. And they make marks in the soot in

the chimney with the tongs to look like Santa's sleigh tracks."

"That might be so," argued Trinidad, "but Christmas trees ain't no

fairy tale. This one's goin' to look like the ten-cent store in

Albuquerque, all strung up in a redwood. There's tops and drums and

Noah's arks and--"

"Oh, rats!" said Bobby, wearily. "I cut them out long ago. I'd like to

have a rifle--not a target one--a real one, to shoot wildcats with;

but I guess you won't have any of them on your old tree."

"Well, I can't say for sure," said Trinidad diplomatically; "it might

be. You go along with us and see."

The hope thus held out, though faint, won the boy's hesitating consent

to go. With this solitary beneficiary for Cherokee's holiday bounty,

the canvassers spun along the homeward road.

In Yellowhammer the empty storeroom had been transformed into what

might have passed as the bower of an Arizona fairy. The ladies had

done their work well. A tall Christmas tree, covered to the topmost

branch with candles, spangles, and toys sufficient for more than a

score of children, stood in the centre of the floor. Near sunset

anxious eyes had begun to scan the street for the returning team of

the child-providers. At noon that day Cherokee had dashed into town

with his new sleigh piled high with bundles and boxes and bales of all

sizes and shapes. So intent was he upon the arrangements for his

altruistic plans that the dearth of children did not receive his

notice. No one gave away the humiliating state of Yellowhammer, for

the efforts of Trinidad and the Judge were expected to supply the

deficiency.

When the sun went down Cherokee, with many wings and arch grins on his

seasoned face, went into retirement with the bundle containing the

Santa Claus raiment and a pack containing special and undisclosed

gifts.

"When the kids are rounded up," he instructed the volunteer

arrangement committee, "light up the candles on the tree and set 'em

to playin' 'Pussy Wants a Corner' and 'King William.' When they get

good and at it, why--old Santa'll slide in the door. I reckon there'll

be plenty of gifts to go 'round."

The ladies were flitting about the tree, giving it final touches that

were never final. The Spangled Sisters were there in costume as Lady

Violet de Vere and Marie, the maid, in their new drama, "The Miner's

Bride." The theatre did not open until nine, and they were welcome

assistants of the Christmas tree committee. Every minute heads would

pop out the door to look and listen for the approach of Trinidad's

team. And now this became an anxious function, for night had fallen

and it would soon be necessary to light the candles on the tree, and

Cherokee was apt to make an irruption at any time in his Kriss Kringle

garb.

At length the wagon of the child "rustlers" rattled down the street to

the door. The ladies, with little screams of excitement, flew to the

lighting of the candles. The men of Yellowhammer passed in and out

restlessly or stood about the room in embarrassed groups.

Trinidad and the Judge, bearing the marks of protracted travel,

entered, conducting between them a single impish boy, who stared with

sullen, pessimistic eyes at the gaudy tree.

"Where are the other children?" asked the assayer's wife, the

acknowledged leader of all social functions.

"Ma'am," said Trinidad with a sigh, "prospectin' for kids at Christmas

time is like huntin' in a limestone for silver. This parental business

is one that I haven't no chance to comprehend. It seems that fathers

and mothers are willin' for their offsprings to be drownded, stole,

fed on poison oak, and et by catamounts 364 days in the year; but on

Christmas Day they insists on enjoyin' the exclusive mortification of

their company. This here young biped, ma'am, is all that washes out of

our two days' manoeuvres."

"Oh, the sweet little boy!" cooed Miss Erma, trailing her De Vere

robes to centre of stage.

"Aw, shut up," said Bobby, with a scowl. "Who's a kid? You ain't, you

bet."

"Fresh brat!" breathed Miss Erma, beneath her enamelled smile.

"We done the best we could," said Trinidad. "It's tough on Cherokee,

but it can't be helped."

Then the door opened and Cherokee entered in the conventional dress of

Saint Nick. A white rippling beard and flowing hair covered his face

almost to his dark and shining eyes. Over his shoulder he carried a

pack.

No one stirred as he came in. Even the Spangler Sisters ceased their

coquettish poses and stared curiously at the tall figure. Bobby stood

with his hands in his pockets gazing gloomily at the effeminate and

childish tree. Cherokee put down his pack and looked wonderingly about

the room. Perhaps he fancied that a bevy of eager children were being

herded somewhere, to be loosed upon his entrance. He went up to Bobby

and extended his red-mittened hand.

"Merry Christmas, little boy," said Cherokee. "Anything on the tree

you want they'll get it down for you. Won't you shake hands with Santa

Claus?"

"There ain't any Santa Claus," whined the boy. "You've got old false

billy goat's whiskers on your face. I ain't no kid. What do I want

with dolls and tin horses? The driver said you'd have a rifle, and you

haven't. I want to go home."

Trinidad stepped into the breach. He shook Cherokee's hand in warm

greeting.

"I'm sorry, Cherokee," he explained. "There never was a kid in

Yellowhammer. We tried to rustle a bunch of 'em for your swaree, but

this sardine was all we could catch. He's a atheist, and he don't

believe in Santa Claus. It's a shame for you to be out all this truck.

But me and the Judge was sure we could round up a wagonful of

candidates for your gimcracks."

"That's all right," said Cherokee gravely. "The expense don't amount

to nothin' worth mentionin'. We can dump the stuff down a shaft or

throw it away. I don't know what I was thinkin' about; but it never

occurred to my cogitations that there wasn't any kids in

Yellowhammer."

Meanwhile the company had relaxed into a hollow but praiseworthy

imitation of a pleasure gathering.

Bobby had retreated to a distant chair, and was coldly regarding the

scene with ennui plastered thick upon him. Cherokee, lingering with

his original idea, went over and sat beside him.

"Where do you live, little boy?" he asked respectfully.

"Granite Junction," said Bobby without emphasis.

The room was warm. Cherokee took off his cap, and then removed his

beard and wig.

"Say!" exclaimed Bobby, with a show of interest, "I know your mug, all

right."

"Did you ever see me before?" asked Cherokee.

"I don't know; but I've seen your picture lots of times."

"Where?"

The boy hesitated. "On the bureau at home," he answered.

"Let's have your name, if you please, buddy."

"Robert Lumsden. The picture belongs to my mother. She puts it under

her pillow of nights. And once I saw her kiss it. I wouldn't. But

women are that way."

Cherokee rose and beckoned to Trinidad.

"Keep this boy by you till I come back," he said. "I'm goin' to shed

these Christmas duds, and hitch up my sleigh. I'm goin' to take this

kid home."

"Well, infidel," said Trinidad, taking Cherokee's vacant chair, "and

so you are too superannuated and effete to yearn for such mockeries as

candy and toys, it seems."

"I don't like you," said Bobby, with acrimony. "You said there would

be a rifle. A fellow can't even smoke. I wish I was at home."

Cherokee drove his sleigh to the door, and they lifted Bobby in beside

him. The team of fine horses sprang away prancingly over the hard

snow. Cherokee had on his $500 overcoat of baby sealskin. The laprobe

that he drew about them was as warm as velvet.

Bobby slipped a cigarette from his pocket and was trying to snap a

match.

"Throw that cigarette away," said Cherokee, in a quiet but new voice.

Bobby hesitated, and then dropped the cylinder overboard.

"Throw the box, too," commanded the new voice.

More reluctantly the boy obeyed.

"Say," said Bobby, presently, "I like you. I don't know why. Nobody

never made me do anything I didn't want to do before."

"Tell me, kid," said Cherokee, not using his new voice, "are you sure

your mother kissed that picture that looks like me?"

"Dead sure. I seen her do it."

"Didn't you remark somethin' a while ago about wanting a rifle?"

"You bet I did. Will you get me one?"

"To-morrow--silver-mounted."

Cherokee took out his watch.

"Half-past nine. We'll hit the Junction plumb on time with Christmas

Day. Are you cold? Sit closer, son."

XVIII

A CHAPARRAL PRINCE

Nine o'clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena

climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen's Hotel.

Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman,

scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups,

making the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wood and

water in that turbulent and depressing hostelry.

The din of the day's quarrying was over--the blasting and drilling,

the creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the

backing and shifting of the flat-cars hauling the heavy blocks of

limestone. Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers

were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers. Heavy

odours of stewed meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a

depressing fog about the house.

Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair.

She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished. Her back and limbs

were sore and aching. But the ache in her heart made the biggest

trouble. The last straw had been added to the burden upon her small

shoulders. They had taken away Grimm. Always at night, however tired

she might be, she had turned to Grimm for comfort and hope. Each time

had Grimm whispered to her that the prince or the fairy would come and

deliver her out of the wicked enchantment. Every night she had taken

fresh courage and strength from Grimm.

To whatever tale she read she found an analogy in her own condition.

The woodcutter's lost child, the unhappy goose girl, the persecuted

stepdaughter, the little maiden imprisoned in the witch's hut--all

these were but transparent disguises for Lena, the overworked

kitchenmaid in the Quarrymen's Hotel. And always when the extremity

was direst came the good fairy or the gallant prince to the rescue.

So, here in the ogre's castle, enslaved by a wicked spell, Lena had

leaned upon Grimm and waited, longing for the powers of goodness to

prevail. But on the day before Mrs. Maloney had found the book in her

room and had carried it away, declaring sharply that it would not do

for servants to read at night; they lost sleep and did not work

briskly the next day. Can one only eleven years old, living away from

one's mamma, and never having any time to play, live entirely deprived

of Grimm? Just try it once and you will see what a difficult thing it

is.

Lena's home was in Texas, away up among the little mountains on the

Pedernales River, in a little town called Fredericksburg. They are all

German people who live in Fredericksburg. Of evenings they sit at

little tables along the sidewalk and drink beer and play pinochle and

scat. They are very thrifty people.

Thriftiest among them was Peter Hildesmuller, Lena's father. And that

is why Lena was sent to work in the hotel at the quarries, thirty

miles away. She earned three dollars every week there, and Peter added

her wages to his well-guarded store. Peter had an ambition to become

as rich as his neighbour, Hugo Heffelbauer, who smoked a meerschaum

pipe three feet long and had wiener schnitzel and hassenpfeffer for

dinner every day in the week. And now Lena was quite old enough to

work and assist in the accumulation of riches. But conjecture, if you

can, what it means to be sentenced at eleven years of age from a home

in the pleasant little Rhine village to hard labour in the ogre's

castle, where you must fly to serve the ogres, while they devour

cattle and sheep, growling fiercely as they stamp white limestone dust

from their great shoes for you to sweep and scour with your weak,

aching fingers. And then--to have Grimm taken away from you!

Lena raised the lid of an old empty case that had once contained

canned corn and got out a sheet of paper and a piece of pencil. She

was going to write a letter to her mamma. Tommy Ryan was going to post

it for her at Ballinger's. Tommy was seventeen, worked in the

quarries, went home to Ballinger's every night, and was now waiting in

the shadows under Lena's window for her to throw the letter out to

him. That was the only way she could send a letter to Fredericksburg.

Mrs. Maloney did not like for her to write letters.

The stump of the candle was burning low, so Lena hastily bit the wood

from around the lead of her pencil and began. This is the letter she

wrote:

Dearest Mamma:--I want so much to see you. And Gretel and Claus

and Heinrich and little Adolf. I am so tired. I want to see you.

To-day I was slapped by Mrs. Maloney and had no supper. I could

not bring in enough wood, for my hand hurt. She took my book

yesterday. I mean "Grimm's Fairy Tales," which Uncle Leo gave me.

It did not hurt any one for me to read the book. I try to work as

well as I can, but there is so much to do. I read only a little

bit every night. Dear mamma, I shall tell you what I am going to

do. Unless you send for me to-morrow to bring me home I shall go

to a deep place I know in the river and drown. It is wicked to

drown, I suppose, but I wanted to see you, and there is no one

else. I am very tired, and Tommy is waiting for the letter. You

will excuse me, mamma, if I do it.

Your respectful and loving daughter,

Lena.

Tommy was still waiting faithfully when the letter was concluded, and

when Lena dropped it out she saw him pick it up and start up the steep

hillside. Without undressing she blew out the candle and curled

herself upon the mattress on the floor.

At 10:30 o'clock old man Ballinger came out of his house in his

stocking feet and leaned over the gate, smoking his pipe. He looked

down the big road, white in the moonshine, and rubbed one ankle with

the toe of his other foot. It was time for the Fredericksburg mail to

come pattering up the road.

Old man Ballinger had waited only a few minutes when he heard the

lively hoofbeats of Fritz's team of little black mules, and very soon

afterward his covered spring wagon stood in front of the gate. Fritz's

big spectacles flashed in the moonlight and his tremendous voice

shouted a greeting to the postmaster of Ballinger's. The mail-carrier

jumped out and took the bridles from the mules, for he always fed them

oats at Ballinger's.

While the mules were eating from their feed bags old man Ballinger

brought out the mail sack and threw it into the wagon.

Fritz Bergmann was a man of three sentiments--or to be more accurate--

four, the pair of mules deserving to be reckoned individually. Those

mules were the chief interest and joy of his existence. Next came the

Emperor of Germany and Lena Hildesmuller.

"Tell me," said Fritz, when he was ready to start, "contains the sack

a letter to Frau Hildesmuller from the little Lena at the quarries?

One came in the last mail to say that she is a little sick, already.

Her mamma is very anxious to hear again."

"Yes," said old man Ballinger, "thar's a letter for Mrs.

Helterskelter, or some sich name. Tommy Ryan brung it over when he

come. Her little gal workin' over thar, you say?"

"In the hotel," shouted Fritz, as he gathered up the lines; "eleven

years old and not bigger as a frankfurter. The close-fist of a Peter

Hildesmuller!--some day I shall with a big club pound that man's

dummkopf--all in and out the town. Perhaps in this letter Lena will

say that she is yet feeling better. So, her mamma will be glad. /Auf

wiedersehen/, Herr Ballinger--your feets will take cold out in the

night air."

"So long, Fritzy," said old man Ballinger. "You got a nice cool night

for your drive."

Up the road went the little black mules at their steady trot, while

Fritz thundered at them occasional words of endearment and cheer.

These fancies occupied the mind of the mail-carrier until he reached

the big post oak forest, eight miles from Ballinger's. Here his

ruminations were scattered by the sudden flash and report of pistols

and a whooping as if from a whole tribe of Indians. A band of

galloping centaurs closed in around the mail wagon. One of them leaned

over the front wheel, covered the driver with his revolver, and

ordered him to stop. Others caught at the bridles of Donder and

Blitzen.

"Donnerwetter!" shouted Fritz, with all his tremendous voice--"wass

ist? Release your hands from dose mules. Ve vas der United States

mail!"

"Hurry up, Dutch!" drawled a melancholy voice. "Don't you know when

you're in a stick-up? Reverse your mules and climb out of the cart."

It is due to the breadth of Hondo Bill's demerit and the largeness of

his achievements to state that the holding up of the Fredericksburg

mail was not perpetrated by way of an exploit. As the lion while in

the pursuit of prey commensurate to his prowess might set a frivolous

foot upon a casual rabbit in his path, so Hondo Bill and his gang had

swooped sportively upon the pacific transport of Meinherr Fritz.

The real work of their sinister night ride was over. Fritz and his

mail bag and his mules came as gentle relaxation, grateful after the

arduous duties of their profession. Twenty miles to the southeast

stood a train with a killed engine, hysterical passengers and a looted

express and mail car. That represented the serious occupation of Hondo

Bill and his gang. With a fairly rich prize of currency and silver the

robbers were making a wide detour to the west through the less

populous country, intending to seek safety in Mexico by means of some

fordable spot on the Rio Grande. The booty from the train had melted

the desperate bushrangers to jovial and happy skylarkers.

Trembling with outraged dignity and no little personal apprehension,

Fritz climbed out to the road after replacing his suddenly removed

spectacles. The band had dismounted and were singing, capering, and

whooping, thus expressing their satisfied delight in the life of a

jolly outlaw. Rattlesnake Rogers, who stood at the heads of the mules,

jerked a little too vigorously at the rein of the tender-mouthed

Donder, who reared and emitted a loud, protesting snort of pain.

Instantly Fritz, with a scream of anger, flew at the bulky Rogers and

began to assiduously pummel that surprised freebooter with his fists.

"Villain!" shouted Fritz, "dog, bigstiff! Dot mule he has a soreness

by his mouth. I vill knock off your shoulders mit your head--

robbermans!"

"Yi-yi!" howled Rattlesnake, roaring with laughter and ducking his

head, "somebody git this here sour-krout off'n me!"

One of the band yanked Fritz back by the coat-tail, and the woods rang

with Rattlesnake's vociferous comments.

"The dog-goned little wienerwurst," he yelled, amiably. "He's not so

much of a skunk, for a Dutchman. Took up for his animile plum quick,

didn't he? I like to see a man like his hoss, even if it is a mule.

The dad-blamed little Limburger he went for me, didn't he! Whoa, now,

muley--I ain't a-goin' to hurt your mouth agin any more."

Perhaps the mail would not have been tampered with had not Ben Moody,

the lieutenant, possessed certain wisdom that seemed to promise more

spoils.

"Say, Cap," he said, addressing Hondo Bill, "there's likely to be good

pickings in these mail sacks. I've done some hoss tradin' with these

Dutchmen around Fredericksburg, and I know the style of the varmints.

There's big money goes through the mails to that town. Them Dutch risk

a thousand dollars sent wrapped in a piece of paper before they'd pay

the banks to handle the money."

Hondo Bill, six feet two, gentle of voice and impulsive in action, was

dragging the sacks from the rear of the wagon before Moody had

finished his speech. A knife shone in his hand, and they heard the

ripping sound as it bit through the tough canvas. The outlaws crowded

around and began tearing open letters and packages, enlivening their

labours by swearing affably at the writers, who seemed to have

conspired to confute the prediction of Ben Moody. Not a dollar was

found in the Fredericksburg mail.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hondo Bill to the mail-

carrier in solemn tones, "to be packing around such a lot of old,

trashy paper as this. What d'you mean by it, anyhow? Where do you

Dutchers keep your money at?"

The Ballinger mail sack opened like a cocoon under Hondo's knife. It

contained but a handful of mail. Fritz had been fuming with terror and

excitement until this sack was reached. He now remembered Lena's

letter. He addressed the leader of the band, asking that that

particular missive be spared.

"Much obliged, Dutch," he said to the disturbed carrier. "I guess

that's the letter we want. Got spondulicks in it, ain't it? Here she

is. Make a light, boys."

Hondo found and tore open the letter to Mrs. Hildesmuller. The others

stood about, lighting twisted up letters one from another. Hondo gazed

with mute disapproval at the single sheet of paper covered with the

angular German script.

"Whatever is this you've humbugged us with, Dutchy? You call this here

a valuable letter? That's a mighty low-down trick to play on your

friends what come along to help you distribute your mail."

"That's Chiny writin'," said Sandy Grundy, peering over Hondo's

shoulder.

"You're off your kazip," declared another of the gang, an effective

youth, covered with silk handkerchiefs and nickel plating. "That's

shorthand. I see 'em do it once in court."

"Ach, no, no, no--dot is German," said Fritz. "It is no more as a

little girl writing a letter to her mamma. One poor little girl, sick

and vorking hard avay from home. Ach! it is a shame. Good Mr.

Robberman, you vill please let me have dot letter?"

"What the devil do you take us for, old Pretzels?" said Hondo with

sudden and surprising severity. "You ain't presumin' to insinuate that

we gents ain't possessed of sufficient politeness for to take an

interest in the miss's health, are you? Now, you go on, and you read

that scratchin' out loud and in plain United States language to this

here company of educated society."

Hondo twirled his six-shooter by its trigger guard and stood towering

above the little German, who at once began to read the letter,

translating the simple words into English. The gang of rovers stood in

absolute silence, listening intently.

"How old is that kid?" asked Hondo when the letter was done.

"Eleven," said Fritz.

"And where is she at?"

"At dose rock quarries--working. Ach, mein Gott--little Lena, she

speak of drowning. I do not know if she vill do it, but if she shall I

schwear I vill dot Peter Hildesmuller shoot mit a gun."

"You Dutchers," said Hondo Bill, his voice swelling with fine

contempt, "make me plenty tired. Hirin' out your kids to work when

they ought to be playin' dolls in the sand. You're a hell of a sect of

people. I reckon we'll fix your clock for a while just to show what we

think of your old cheesy nation. Here, boys!"

Hondo Bill parleyed aside briefly with his band, and then they seized

Fritz and conveyed him off the road to one side. Here they bound him

fast to a tree with a couple of lariats. His team they tied to another

tree near by.

"We ain't going to hurt you bad," said Hondo reassuringly. "'Twon't

hurt you to be tied up for a while. We will now pass you the time of

day, as it is up to us to depart. Ausgespielt--nixcumrous, Dutchy.

Don't get any more impatience."

Fritz heard a great squeaking of saddles as the men mounted their

horses. Then a loud yell and a great clatter of hoofs as they galloped

pell-mell back along the Fredericksburg road.

For more than two hours Fritz sat against his tree, tightly but not

painfully bound. Then from the reaction after his exciting adventure

he sank into slumber. How long he slept he knew not, but he was at

last awakened by a rough shake. Hands were untying his ropes. He was

lifted to his feet, dazed, confused in mind, and weary of body.

Rubbing his eyes, he looked and saw that he was again in the midst of

the same band of terrible bandits. They shoved him up to the seat of

his wagon and placed the lines in his hands.

"Hit it out for home, Dutch," said Hondo Bill's voice commandingly.

"You've given us lots of trouble and we're pleased to see the back of

your neck. Spiel! Zwei bier! Vamoose!"

Hondo reached out and gave Blitzen a smart cut with his quirt.

The little mules sprang ahead, glad to be moving again. Fritz urged

them along, himself dizzy and muddled over his fearful adventure.

According to schedule time, he should have reached Fredericksburg at

daylight. As it was, he drove down the long street of the town at

eleven o'clock A.M. He had to pass Peter Hildesmuller's house on his

way to the post-office. He stopped his team at the gate and called.

But Frau Hildesmuller was watching for him. Out rushed the whole

family of Hildesmullers.

Frau Hildesmuller, fat and flushed, inquired if he had a letter from

Lena, and then Fritz raised his voice and told the tale of his

adventure. He told the contents of that letter that the robber had

made him read, and then Frau Hildesmuller broke into wild weeping. Her

little Lena drown herself! Why had they sent her from home? What could

be done? Perhaps it would be too late by the time they could send for

her now. Peter Hildesmuller dropped his meerschaum on the walk and it

shivered into pieces.

"Woman!" he roared at his wife, "why did you let that child go away?

It is your fault if she comes home to us no more."

Every one knew that it was Peter Hildesmuller's fault, so they paid no

attention to his words.

A moment afterward a strange, faint voice was heard to call: "Mamma!"

Frau Hildesmuller at first thought it was Lena's spirit calling, and

then she rushed to the rear of Fritz's covered wagon, and, with a loud

shriek of joy, caught up Lena herself, covering her pale little face

with kisses and smothering her with hugs. Lena's eyes were heavy with

the deep slumber of exhaustion, but she smiled and lay close to the

one she had longed to see. There among the mail sacks, covered in a

nest of strange blankets and comforters, she had lain asleep until

wakened by the voices around her.

Fritz stared at her with eyes that bulged behind his spectacles.

"Gott in Himmel!" he shouted. "How did you get in that wagon? Am I

going crazy as well as to be murdered and hanged by robbers this day?"

"You brought her to us, Fritz," cried Frau Hildesmuller. "How can we

ever thank you enough?"

"Tell mamma how you came in Fritz's wagon," said Frau Hildesmuller.

"I don't know," said Lena. "But I know how I got away from the hotel.

The Prince brought me."

"By the Emperor's crown!" shouted Fritz, "we are all going crazy."

"I always knew he would come," said Lena, sitting down on her bundle

of bedclothes on the sidewalk. "Last night he came with his armed

knights and captured the ogre's castle. They broke the dishes and

kicked down the doors. They pitched Mr. Maloney into a barrel of rain

water and threw flour all over Mrs. Maloney. The workmen in the hotel

jumped out of the windows and ran into the woods when the knights

began firing their guns. They wakened me up and I peeped down the

stair. And then the Prince came up and wrapped me in the bedclothes

and carried me out. He was so tall and strong and fine. His face was

as rough as a scrubbing brush, and he talked soft and kind and smelled

of schnapps. He took me on his horse before him and we rode away among

the knights. He held me close and I went to sleep that way, and didn't

wake up till I got home."

"Rubbish!" cried Fritz Bergmann. "Fairy tales! How did you come from

the quarries to my wagon?"

"The Prince brought me," said Lena, confidently.

And to this day the good people of Fredericksburg haven't been able to

make her give any other explanation.

XIX

THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE

Calliope Catesby was in his humours again. Ennui was upon him. This

goodly promontory, the earth--particularly that portion of it known as

Quicksand--was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of

vapours. Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in

soliloquy; my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold

at the millinery bills of his women folk. Such recourse was

insufficient to the denizens of Quicksand. Calliope, especially, was

wont to express his ennui according to his lights.

Over night Calliope had hung out signals of approaching low spirits.

He had kicked his own dog on the porch of the Occidental Hotel, and

refused to apologise. He had become capricious and fault-finding in

conversation. While strolling about he reached often for twigs of

mesquite and chewed the leaves fiercely. That was always an ominous

act. Another symptom alarming to those who were familiar with the

different stages of his doldrums was his increasing politeness and a

tendency to use formal phrases. A husky softness succeeded the usual

penetrating drawl in his tones. A dangerous courtesy marked his

manners. Later, his smile became crooked, the left side of his mouth

slanting upward, and Quicksand got ready to stand from under.

At this stage Calliope generally began to drink. Finally, about

midnight, he was seen going homeward, saluting those whom he met with

exaggerated but inoffensive courtesy. Not yet was Calliope's

melancholy at the danger point. He would seat himself at the window of

the room he occupied over Silvester's tonsorial parlours and there

chant lugubrious and tuneless ballads until morning, accompanying the

noises by appropriate maltreatment of a jangling guitar. More

magnanimous than Nero, he would thus give musical warning of the

forthcoming municipal upheaval that Quicksand was scheduled to endure.

A quiet, amiable man was Calliope Catesby at other times--quiet to

indolence, and amiable to worthlessness. At best he was a loafer and a

nuisance; at worst he was the Terror of Quicksand. His ostensible

occupation was something subordinate in the real estate line; he drove

the beguiled Easterner in buckboards out to look over lots and ranch

property. Originally he came from one of the Gulf States, his lank six

feet, slurring rhythm of speech, and sectional idioms giving evidence

of his birthplace.

And yet, after taking on Western adjustments, this languid pine-box

whittler, cracker barrel hugger, shady corner lounger of the cotton

fields and sumac hills of the South became famed as a bad man among

men who had made a life-long study of the art of truculence.

At nine the next morning Calliope was fit. Inspired by his own

barbarous melodies and the contents of his jug, he was ready primed to

gather fresh laurels from the diffident brow of Quicksand. Encircled

and criss-crossed with cartridge belts, abundantly garnished with

revolvers, and copiously drunk, he poured forth into Quicksand's main

street. Too chivalrous to surprise and capture a town by silent

sortie, he paused at the nearest corner and emitted his slogan--that

fearful, brassy yell, so reminiscent of the steam piano, that had

gained for him the classic appellation that had superseded his own

baptismal name. Following close upon his vociferation came three shots

from his forty-five by way of limbering up the guns and testing his

aim. A yellow dog, the personal property of Colonel Swazey, the

proprietor of the Occidental, fell feet upward in the dust with one

farewell yelp. A Mexican who was crossing the street from the Blue

Front grocery carrying in his hand a bottle of kerosene, was

stimulated to a sudden and admirable burst of speed, still grasping

the neck of the shattered bottle. The new gilt weather-cock on Judge

Riley's lemon and ultramarine two-story residence shivered, flapped,

and hung by a splinter, the sport of the wanton breezes.

The artillery was in trim. Calliope's hand was steady. The high, calm

ecstasy of habitual battle was upon him, though slightly embittered by

the sadness of Alexander in that his conquests were limited to the

small world of Quicksand.

Down the street went Calliope, shooting right and left. Glass fell

like hail; dogs vamosed; chickens flew, squawking; feminine voices

shrieked concernedly to youngsters at large. The din was perforated at

intervals by the /staccato/ of the Terror's guns, and was drowned

periodically by the brazen screech that Quicksand knew so well. The

occasions of Calliope's low spirits were legal holidays in Quicksand.

All along the main street in advance of his coming clerks were putting

up shutters and closing doors. Business would languish for a space.

The right of way was Calliope's, and as he advanced, observing the

dearth of opposition and the few opportunities for distraction, his

ennui perceptibly increased.

But some four squares farther down lively preparations were being made

to minister to Mr. Catesby's love for interchange of compliments and

repartee. On the previous night numerous messengers had hastened to

advise Buck Patterson, the city marshal, of Calliope's impending

eruption. The patience of that official, often strained in extending

leniency toward the disturber's misdeeds, had been overtaxed. In

Quicksand some indulgence was accorded the natural ebullition of human

nature. Providing that the lives of the more useful citizens were not

recklessly squandered, or too much property needlessly laid waste, the

community sentiment was against a too strict enforcement of the law.

But Calliope had raised the limit. His outbursts had been too frequent

and too violent to come within the classification of a normal and

sanitary relaxation of spirit.

Buck Patterson had been expecting and awaiting in his little ten-by-

twelve frame office that preliminary yell announcing that Calliope was

feeling blue. When the signal came the city marshal rose to his feet

and buckled on his guns. Two deputy sheriffs and three citizens who

had proven the edible qualities of fire also stood up, ready to bandy

with Calliope's leaden jocularities.

"Gather that fellow in," said Buck Patterson, setting forth the lines

of the campaign. "Don't have no talk, but shoot as soon as you can get

a show. Keep behind cover and bring him down. He's a nogood 'un. It's

up to Calliope to turn up his toes this time, I reckon. Go to him all

spraddled out, boys. And don't git too reckless, for what Calliope

shoots at he hits."

Buck Patterson, tall, muscular, and solemn-faced, with his bright

"City Marshal" badge shining on the breast of his blue flannel shirt,

gave his posse directions for the onslaught upon Calliope. The plan

was to accomplish the downfall of the Quicksand Terror without loss to

the attacking party, if possible.

The splenetic Calliope, unconscious of retributive plots, was steaming

down the channel, cannonading on either side, when he suddenly became

aware of breakers ahead. The city marshal and one of the deputies rose

up behind some dry-goods boxes half a square to the front and opened

fire. At the same time the rest of the posse, divided, shelled him

from two side streets up which they were cautiously manoeuvring from a

well-executed detour.

The first volley broke the lock of one of Calliope's guns, cut a neat

underbit in his right ear, and exploded a cartridge in his crossbelt,

scorching his ribs as it burst. Feeling braced up by this unexpected

tonic to his spiritual depression, Calliope executed a fortissimo note

from his upper register, and returned the fire like an echo. The

upholders of the law dodged at his flash, but a trifle too late to

save one of the deputies a bullet just above the elbow, and the

marshal a bleeding cheek from a splinter that a ball tore from the box

he had ducked behind.

And now Calliope met the enemy's tactics in kind. Choosing with a

rapid eye the street from which the weakest and least accurate fire

had come, he invaded it at a double-quick, abandoning the unprotected

middle of the street. With rare cunning the opposing force in that

direction--one of the deputies and two of the valorous volunteers--

waited, concealed by beer barrels, until Calliope had passed their

retreat, and then peppered him from the rear. In another moment they

were reinforced by the marshal and his other men, and then Calliope

felt that in order to successfully prolong the delights of the

controversy he must find some means of reducing the great odds against

him. His eye fell upon a structure that seemed to hold out this

promise, providing he could reach it.

Not far away was the little railroad station, its building a strong

box house, ten by twenty feet, resting upon a platform four feet above

ground. Windows were in each of its walls. Something like a fort it

might become to a man thus sorely pressed by superior numbers.

Calliope made a bold and rapid spurt for it, the marshal's crowd

"smoking" him as he ran. He reached the haven in safety, the station

agent leaving the building by a window, like a flying squirrel, as the

garrison entered the door.

Patterson and his supporters halted under protection of a pile of

lumber and held consultations. In the station was an unterrified

desperado who was an excellent shot and carried an abundance of

ammunition. For thirty yards on either side of the besieged was a

stretch of bare, open ground. It was a sure thing that the man who

attempted to enter that unprotected area would be stopped by one of

Calliope's bullets.

The city marshal was resolved. He had decided that Calliope Catesby

should no more wake the echoes of Quicksand with his strident whoop.

He had so announced. Officially and personally he felt imperatively

bound to put the soft pedal on that instrument of discord. It played

bad tunes.

Standing near was a hand truck used in the manipulation of small

freight. It stood by a shed full of sacked wool, a consignment from

one of the sheep ranches. On this truck the marshal and his men piled

three heavy sacks of wool. Stooping low, Buck Patterson started for

Calliope's fort, slowly pushing this loaded truck before him for

protection. The posse, scattering broadly, stood ready to nip the

besieged in case he should show himself in an effort to repel the

juggernaut of justice that was creeping upon him. Only once did

Calliope make demonstration. He fired from a window, and some tufts of

wool spurted from the marshal's trustworthy bulwark. The return shots

from the posse pattered against the window frame of the fort. No loss

resulted on either side.

The marshal was too deeply engrossed in steering his protected

battleship to be aware of the approach of the morning train until he

was within a few feet of the platform. The train was coming up on the

other side of it. It stopped only one minute at Quicksand. What an

opportunity it would offer to Calliope! He had only to step out the

other door, mount the train, and away.

Abandoning his breastwork, Buck, with his gun ready, dashed up the

steps and into the room, driving upon the closed door with one heave

of his weighty shoulder. The members of the posse heard one shot fired

inside, and then there was silence.

At length the wounded man opened his eyes. After a blank space he

again could see and hear and feel and think. Turning his eyes about,

he found himself lying on a wooden bench. A tall man with a perplexed

countenance, wearing a big badge with "City Marshal" engraved upon it,

stood over him. A little old woman in black, with a wrinkled face and

sparkling black eyes, was holding a wet handkerchief against one of

his temples. He was trying to get these facts fixed in his mind and

connected with past events, when the old woman began to talk.

"There now, great, big, strong man! That bullet never tetched ye! Jest

skeeted along the side of your head and sort of paralysed ye for a

spell. I've heerd of sech things afore; cun-cussion is what they names

it. Abel Wadkins used to kill squirrels that way--barkin' 'em, Abe

called it. You jest been barked, sir, and you'll be all right in a

little bit. Feel lots better already, don't ye! You just lay still a

while longer and let me bathe your head. You don't know me, I reckon,

and 'tain't surprisin' that you shouldn't. I come in on that train

from Alabama to see my son. Big son, ain't he? Lands! you wouldn't

hardly think he'd ever been a baby, would ye? This is my son, sir."

Half turning, the old woman looked up at the standing man, her worn

face lighting with a proud and wonderful smile. She reached out one

veined and calloused hand and took one of her son's. Then smiling

cheerily down at the prostrate man, she continued to dip the

handkerchief, in the waiting-room tin washbasin and gently apply it to

his temple. She had the benevolent garrulity of old age.

"I ain't seen my son before," she continued, "in eight years. One of

my nephews, Elkanah Price, he's a conductor on one of them railroads

and he got me a pass to come out here. I can stay a whole week on it,

and then it'll take me back again. Jest think, now, that little boy of

mine has got to be a officer--a city marshal of a whole town! That's

somethin' like a constable, ain't it? I never knowed he was a officer;

he didn't say nothin' about it in his letters. I reckon he thought his

old mother'd be skeered about the danger he was in. But, laws! I never

was much of a hand to git skeered. 'Tain't no use. I heard them guns

a-shootin' while I was gettin' off them cars, and I see smoke a-comin'

out of the depot, but I jest walked right along. Then I see son's face

lookin' out through the window. I knowed him at oncet. He met me at

the door, and squeezes me 'most to death. And there you was, sir,

a-lyin' there jest like you was dead, and I 'lowed we'd see what might

be done to help sot you up."

"I think I'll sit up now," said the concussion patient. "I'm feeling

pretty fair by this time."

He sat, somewhat weakly yet, leaning against the wall. He was a rugged

man, big-boned and straight. His eyes, steady and keen, seemed to

linger upon the face of the man standing so still above him. His look

wandered often from the face he studied to the marshal's badge upon

the other's breast.

"Yes, yes, you'll be all right," said the old woman, patting his arm,

"if you don't get to cuttin' up agin, and havin' folks shooting at

you. Son told me about you, sir, while you was layin' senseless on the

floor. Don't you take it as meddlesome fer an old woman with a son as

big as you to talk about it. And you mustn't hold no grudge ag'in' my

son for havin' to shoot at ye. A officer has got to take up for the

law--it's his duty--and them that acts bad and lives wrong has to

suffer. Don't blame my son any, sir--'tain't his fault. He's always

been a good boy--good when he was growin' up, and kind and 'bedient

and well-behaved. Won't you let me advise you, sir, not to do so no

more? Be a good man, and leave liquor alone and live peaceably and

goodly. Keep away from bad company and work honest and sleep sweet."

The black-mitted hand of the old pleader gently touched the breast of

the man she addressed. Very earnest and candid her old, worn face

looked. In her rusty black dress and antique bonnet she sat, near the

close of a long life, and epitomised the experience of the world.

Still the man to whom she spoke gazed above her head, contemplating

the silent son of the old mother.

"What does the marshal say?" he asked. "Does he believe the advice is

good? Suppose the marshal speaks up and says if the talk's all right?"

The tall man moved uneasily. He fingered the badge on his breast for a

moment, and then he put an arm around the old woman and drew her close

to him. She smiled the unchanging mother smile of three-score years,

and patted his big brown hand with her crooked, mittened fingers while

her son spake.

"I says this," he said, looking squarely into the eyes of the other

man, "that if I was in your place I'd follow it. If I was a drunken,

desp'rate character, without shame or hope, I'd follow it. If I was in

your place and you was in mine I'd say: 'Marshal, I'm willin' to swear

if you'll give me the chance I'll quit the racket. I'll drop the

tanglefoot and the gun play, and won't play hoss no more. I'll be a

good citizen and go to work and quit my foolishness. So help me God!'

That's what I'd say to you if you was marshal and I was in your

place."

"Hear my son talkin'," said the old woman softly. "Hear him, sir. You

promise to be good and he won't do you no harm. Forty-one year ago his

heart first beat ag'in' mine, and it's beat true ever since."

The other man rose to his feet, trying his limbs and stretching his

muscles.

"Then," said he, "if you was in my place and said that, and I was

marshal, I'd say: 'Go free, and do your best to keep your promise.'"

"Lawsy!" exclaimed the old woman, in a sudden flutter, "ef I didn't

clear forget that trunk of mine! I see a man settin' it on the

platform jest as I seen son's face in the window, and it went plum out

of my head. There's eight jars of home-made quince jam in that trunk

that I made myself. I wouldn't have nothin' happen to them jars for a

red apple."

Away to the door she trotted, spry and anxious, and then Calliope

Catesby spoke out to Buck Patterson:

"I just couldn't help it, Buck. I seen her through the window a-comin'

in. She never had heard a word 'bout my tough ways. I didn't have the

nerve to let her know I was a worthless cuss bein' hunted down by the

community. There you was lyin' where my shot laid you, like you was

dead. The idea struck me sudden, and I just took your badge off and

fastened it onto myself, and I fastened my reputation onto you. I told

her I was the marshal and you was a holy terror. You can take your

badge back now, Buck."

With shaking fingers Calliope began to unfasten the disc of metal from

his shirt.

"Easy there!" said Buck Patterson. "You keep that badge right where it

is, Calliope Catesby. Don't you dare to take it off till the day your

mother leaves this town. You'll be city marshal of Quicksand as long

as she's here to know it. After I stir around town a bit and put 'em

on I'll guarantee that nobody won't give the thing away to her. And

say, you leather-headed, rip-roarin', low-down son of a locoed

cyclone, you follow that advice she give me! I'm goin' to take some of

it myself, too."

"Buck," said Calliope feelingly, "ef I don't I hope I may--"

"Shut up," said Buck. "She's a-comin' back."

End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Heart of the West