diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-1.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-1.xhtml index 108e083..e42a404 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-1.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-1.xhtml @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@

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 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?”

@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@

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.

+

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?”

@@ -77,12 +77,12 @@

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.”

+

“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.
+ 
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.

@@ -118,7 +118,7 @@

“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.

+

“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?”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-10.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-10.xhtml index 7a2f45f..f39a632 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-10.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-10.xhtml @@ -59,7 +59,7 @@

“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 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!’

@@ -78,13 +78,13 @@

“ ‘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.

+

“ ‘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.’

+

“ ‘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.

+

“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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-11.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-11.xhtml index 81fe754..f2b1a82 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-11.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-11.xhtml @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@

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.

+

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.

@@ -49,14 +49,14 @@

“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 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.”

+

“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.

@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@

“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.

+

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/.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-12.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-12.xhtml index 102d98c..f021259 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-12.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-12.xhtml @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@

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.”

+

“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.

@@ -39,18 +39,18 @@

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.

+

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.”

+

“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 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.”

+

“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.”

@@ -63,16 +63,16 @@

“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.’

+

“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—”

+

“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.

+

“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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-13.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-13.xhtml index b9a0118..7280418 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-13.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-13.xhtml @@ -9,17 +9,17 @@

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.

+

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.

+

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.”

+

“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.

+

“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.

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@

“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.’

+

“ ‘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.

@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@

“ ‘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.

+

“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?’

@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@

“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.”

+

“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.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-14.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-14.xhtml index 2490c73..af5268c 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-14.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-14.xhtml @@ -15,13 +15,13 @@

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.

+

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.”

+

“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.

+

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.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-15.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-15.xhtml index 84523b0..599c372 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-15.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-15.xhtml @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@

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?”

+

“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.

@@ -35,13 +35,13 @@

“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.”

+

“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.”

+

“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!

@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@

“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.”

+

“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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-16.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-16.xhtml index 165a2a9..7f29b74 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-16.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-16.xhtml @@ -30,15 +30,15 @@

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.

+

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.

+

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.

+

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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-17.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-17.xhtml index 9c9ad7f..4acf91d 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-17.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-17.xhtml @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@

“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.

+

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.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-18.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-18.xhtml index 344e043..4535a89 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-18.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-18.xhtml @@ -13,13 +13,13 @@

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.

+

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.

+

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.
+ 
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.

@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@

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?”

+

“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.

@@ -47,11 +47,11 @@

“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.

+

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?”

+

“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.

@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@

“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.”

+

“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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-19.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-19.xhtml index 8b17e2d..77f10b1 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-19.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-19.xhtml @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@

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.

+

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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-3.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-3.xhtml index a1f0e9f..3d0eed6 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-3.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-3.xhtml @@ -27,48 +27,48 @@

“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.’

+

“ ‘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.’

+

“ ‘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.

+

“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 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.

+

“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.

+

“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.’

+

“ ‘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 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.’

+

“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.’

+

“ ‘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.’

+

“ ‘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.

+

“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?’

+

“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.”

+

“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.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-4.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-4.xhtml index b9ea3d1..79349ba 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-4.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-4.xhtml @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@

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.”

+

“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.

@@ -40,59 +40,59 @@

“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.

+

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?”

+

“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.”

+

“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.”

+

“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.”

+

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 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.”

+

“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.”

+

“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.

+

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.

+

“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.

+

“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 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?”

+

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.

+

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.

+

“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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-5.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-5.xhtml index 126cc14..21493f7 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-5.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-5.xhtml @@ -41,15 +41,15 @@

“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.’

+

“ ‘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.

+

“ ‘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.’

+

“ ‘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?’

+

“ ‘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?’

@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@

“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?’

+

“ ‘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.’

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-6.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-6.xhtml index 9143c7a..716b4f6 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-6.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-6.xhtml @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@

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.

+

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!”

@@ -24,28 +24,28 @@

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.

+

“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.’

+

“ ‘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!

+

“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.

+

“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/.

+

“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.

@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@

“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?’

+

“ ‘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.

@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ 
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?”

+

“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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-7.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-7.xhtml index dad353e..3fa864c 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-7.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-7.xhtml @@ -65,7 +65,7 @@

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.

+

“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.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-8.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-8.xhtml index e263bed..38ebda3 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-8.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-8.xhtml @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@

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.”

+

“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.”

@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@

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—”

+

“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.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-9.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-9.xhtml index 97e5ac0..03b4954 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-9.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-9.xhtml @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@

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.

+

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.

@@ -190,9 +190,9 @@

“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.

+

“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.⁠—’?”

+

“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.”