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[HotW] Fixup chapter headers
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 1</title>
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<title>Chapter 1: Hearts and Crosses</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-1" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>I</h2>
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<h3>HEARTS AND CROSSES</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">I</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">Hearts and Crosses</span>
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</h2>
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<p>Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for anything he usually—but this is not Baldy’s story. He poured out a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second. Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire.</p>
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<p>“I’d be king if I was you,” said Baldy, so positively that his holster creaked and his spurs rattled.</p>
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<p>Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson, and made further disorder in his straw-coloured hair. The tonsorial recourse being without avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful Baldy.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 10</title>
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<title>Chapter 10: Cupid a la Carte</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-10" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>X</h2>
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<h3>CUPID A LA CARTE</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">Cupid a la Carte</span>
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</h2>
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<p>“The dispositions of woman,” said Jeff Peters, after various opinions on the subject had been advanced, “run, regular, to diversions. What a woman wants is what you’re out of. She wants more of a thing when it’s scarce. She likes to have souvenirs of things that never happened. She likes to be reminded of things she never heard of. A one-sided view of objects is disjointing to the female composition.</p>
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<p>“ ’Tis a misfortune of mine, begotten by nature and travel,” continued Jeff, looking thoughtfully between his elevated feet at the grocery stove, “to look deeper into some subjects than most people do. I’ve breathed gasoline smoke talking to street crowds in nearly every town in the United States. I’ve held ’em spellbound with music, oratory, sleight of hand, and prevarications, while I’ve sold ’em jewelry, medicine, soap, hair tonic, and junk of other nominations. And during my travels, as a matter of recreation and expiation, I’ve taken cognisance some of women. It takes a man a lifetime to find out about one particular woman; but if he puts in, say, ten years, industrious and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex. One lesson I picked up was when I was working the West with a line of Brazilian diamonds and a patent fire kindler just after my trip from Savannah down through the cotton belt with Dalby’s Anti-explosive Lamp Oil Powder. ’Twas when the Oklahoma country was in first bloom. Guthrie was rising in the middle of it like a lump of self-raising dough. It was a boom town of the regular kind—you stood in line to get a chance to wash your face; if you ate over ten minutes you had a lodging bill added on; if you slept on a plank at night they charged it to you as board the next morning.</p>
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<p>“By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed. So I looked around and found a proposition that exactly cut the mustard. I found a restaurant tent just opened up by an outfit that had drifted in on the tail of the boom. They had knocked together a box house, where they lived and did the cooking, and served the meals in a tent pitched against the side. That tent was joyful with placards on it calculated to redeem the world-worn pilgrim from the sinfulness of boarding houses and pick-me- up hotels. ‘Try Mother’s Homemade Biscuits,’ ‘What’s the Matter with Our Apple Dumplings and Hard Sauce?’ ‘Hot Cakes and Maple Syrup Like You Ate When a Boy,’ ‘Our Fried Chicken Never Was Heard to Crow’—there was literature doomed to please the digestions of man! I said to myself that mother’s wandering boy should munch there that night. And so it came to pass. And there is where I contracted my case of Mame Dugan.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 11</title>
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<title>Chapter 11: The Caballero’s Way</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-11" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>XI</h2>
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<h3>THE CABALLERO’S WAY</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XI</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">The Caballero’s Way</span>
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</h2>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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 hummingbird. 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 ridgepole, high up under the peaked grass roof, he had heard Tonia, with her Madonna face and Carmen beauty and hummingbird soul, parley with the sheriff’s posse, denying knowledge of her man in her soft /melange/ of Spanish and English.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 12</title>
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<title>Chapter 12: The Sphinx Apple</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-12" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>XII</h2>
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<h3>THE SPHINX APPLE</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XII</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">The Sphinx Apple</span>
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</h2>
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<p>Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise City, Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow had been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a level. The remainder of the road was not without peril in daylight, creeping along the ribs of a bijou range of ragged mountains. Now, when both snow and night masked its dangers, further travel was not to be thought of, said Bildad Rose. So he pulled up his four stout horses, and delivered to his five passengers oral deductions of his wisdom.</p>
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<p>Judge Menefee, to whom men granted leadership and the initiatory as upon a silver salver, sprang from the coach at once. Four of his fellow-passengers followed, inspired by his example, ready to explore, to objurgate, to resist, to submit, to proceed, according as their prime factor might be inclined to sway them. The fifth passenger, a young woman, remained in the coach.</p>
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<p>Bildad had halted upon the shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the upper fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small house. Upon this house descended—or rather ascended—Judge Menefee and his cohorts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They called; they pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence they waxed restive; they assaulted and forced the pregnable barriers, and invaded the premises.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 13</title>
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<title>Chapter 13: The Missing Chord</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-13" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>XIII</h2>
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<h3>THE MISSING CHORD</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XIII</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">The Missing Chord</span>
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</h2>
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<p>I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy Fork of the Nueces. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 14</title>
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<title>Chapter 14: A Call Loan</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-14" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>XIV</h2>
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<h3>A CALL LOAN</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XIV</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">A Call Loan</span>
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</h2>
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<p>In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so inclined. The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed to him that he had more money than was decent. But when he had bought a watch with precious stones set in the case so large that they hurt his ribs, and a California saddle with silver nails and Angora skin /suaderos/, and ordered everybody up to the bar for whisky—what else was there for him to spend money for?</p>
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<p>Not so circumscribed in expedient for the reduction of surplus wealth were those lairds of the lariat who had womenfolk to their name. In the breast of the rib-sprung sex the genius of purse lightening may slumber through years of inopportunity, but never, my brothers, does it become extinct.</p>
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<p>So, out of the chaparral came Long Bill Longley from the Bar Circle Branch on the Frio—a wife-driven man—to taste the urban joys of success. Something like half a million dollars he had, with an income steadily increasing.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 15</title>
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<title>Chapter 15: The Princess and the Puma</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-15" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>XV</h2>
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<h3>THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XV</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">The Princess and the Puma</span>
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</h2>
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<p>There had to be a king and queen, of course. The king was a terrible old man who wore six-shooters and spurs, and shouted in such a tremendous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into their holes under the prickly pear. Before there was a royal family they called the man “Whispering Ben.” When he came to own 50,000 acres of land and more cattle than he could count, they called him O’Donnell “the Cattle King.”</p>
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<p>The queen had been a Mexican girl from Laredo. She made a good, mild, Colorado-claro wife, and even succeeded in teaching Ben to modify his voice sufficiently while in the house to keep the dishes from being broken. When Ben got to be king she would sit on the gallery of Espinosa Ranch and weave rush mats. When wealth became so irresistible and oppressive that upholstered chairs and a centre table were brought down from San Antone in the wagons, she bowed her smooth, dark head, and shared the fate of the Danae.</p>
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<p>To avoid /lese-majeste/ you have been presented first to the king and queen. They do not enter the story, which might be called “The Chronicle of the Princess, the Happy Thought, and the Lion that Bungled his Job.”</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 16</title>
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<title>Chapter 16: The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-16" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>XVI</h2>
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<h3>THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XVI</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson</span>
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</h2>
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<p>Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake the bottle before using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated a small sponge with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the roots of his hair. Besides sulphur there was sugar of lead in it and tincture of nux vomica and bay rum. Dry Valley found the recipe in a Sunday newspaper. You must next be told why a strong man came to fall a victim to a Beauty Hint.</p>
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<p>Dry Valley had been a sheepman. His real name was Hector, but he had been rechristened after his range to distinguish him from “Elm Creek” Johnson, who ran sheep further down the Frio.</p>
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<p>Many years of living face to face with sheep on their own terms wearied Dry Valley Johnson. So, he sold his ranch for eighteen thousand dollars and moved to Santa Rosa to live a life of gentlemanly ease. Being a silent and melancholy person of thirty-five—or perhaps thirty-eight—he soon became that cursed and earth-cumbering thing—an elderlyish bachelor with a hobby. Someone gave him his first strawberry to eat, and he was done for.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 17</title>
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<title>Chapter 17: Christmas by Injunction</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-17" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>XVII</h2>
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<h3>CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XVII</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">Christmas by Injunction</span>
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</h2>
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<p>Cherokee was the civic father of Yellowhammer. Yellowhammer was a new mining town constructed mainly of canvas and undressed pine. Cherokee was a prospector. One day while his burro was eating quartz and pine burrs Cherokee turned up with his pick a nugget, weighing thirty ounces. He staked his claim and then, being a man of breadth and hospitality, sent out invitations to his friends in three States to drop in and share his luck.</p>
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<p>Not one of the invited guests sent regrets. They rolled in from the Gila country, from Salt River, from the Pecos, from Albuquerque and Phoenix and Santa Fe, and from the camps intervening.</p>
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<p>When a thousand citizens had arrived and taken up claims they named the town Yellowhammer, appointed a vigilance committee, and presented Cherokee with a watch-chain made of nuggets.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Chapter 18</title>
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<title>Chapter 18: A Chaparral Prince</title>
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<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="chapter-18" epub:type="chapter">
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<h2>XVIII</h2>
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<h3>A CHAPARRAL PRINCE</h3>
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XVIII</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">A Chaparral Prince</span>
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</h2>
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<p>Nine o’clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen’s Hotel. Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman, scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups, making the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wood and water in that turbulent and depressing hostelry.</p>
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<p>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 flatcars 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 19</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 19: The Reformation of Calliope</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-19" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>XIX</h2>
|
||||
<h3>THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">XIX</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Reformation of Calliope</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>Calliope Catesby was in his humours again. Ennui was upon him. This goodly promontory, the earth—particularly that portion of it known as Quicksand—was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of vapours. Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in soliloquy; my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold at the millinery bills of his women folk. Such recourse was insufficient to the denizens of Quicksand. Calliope, especially, was wont to express his ennui according to his lights.</p>
|
||||
<p>Over night Calliope had hung out signals of approaching low spirits. He had kicked his own dog on the porch of the Occidental Hotel, and refused to apologise. He had become capricious and faultfinding in conversation. While strolling about he reached often for twigs of mesquite and chewed the leaves fiercely. That was always an ominous act. Another symptom alarming to those who were familiar with the different stages of his doldrums was his increasing politeness and a tendency to use formal phrases. A husky softness succeeded the usual penetrating drawl in his tones. A dangerous courtesy marked his manners. Later, his smile became crooked, the left side of his mouth slanting upward, and Quicksand got ready to stand from under.</p>
|
||||
<p>At this stage Calliope generally began to drink. Finally, about midnight, he was seen going homeward, saluting those whom he met with exaggerated but inoffensive courtesy. Not yet was Calliope’s melancholy at the danger point. He would seat himself at the window of the room he occupied over Silvester’s tonsorial parlours and there chant lugubrious and tuneless ballads until morning, accompanying the noises by appropriate maltreatment of a jangling guitar. More magnanimous than Nero, he would thus give musical warning of the forthcoming municipal upheaval that Quicksand was scheduled to endure.</p>
|
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|
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 2</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 2: The Ransom of Mack</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-2" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>II</h2>
|
||||
<h3>THE RANSOM OF MACK</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">II</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Ransom of Mack</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say “old” Mack; but he wasn’t old. Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Andy,” he says to me, “I’m tired of hustling. You and me have been working hard together for three years. Say we knock off for a while, and spend some of this idle money we’ve coaxed our way.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The proposition hits me just right,” says I. “Let’s be nabobs for a while and see how it feels. What’ll we do—take in the Niagara Falls, or buck at faro?”</p>
|
||||
|
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|
||||
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
||||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 3</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 3: Telemachus, Friend</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-3" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>III</h2>
|
||||
<h3>TELEMACHUS, FRIEND</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">III</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">Telemachus, Friend</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>Returning from a hunting trip, I waited at the little town of Los Pinos, in New Mexico, for the southbound train, which was one hour late. I sat on the porch of the Summit House and discussed the functions of life with Telemachus Hicks, the hotel proprietor.</p>
|
||||
<p>Perceiving that personalities were not out of order, I asked him what species of beast had long ago twisted and mutilated his left ear. Being a hunter, I was concerned in the evils that may befall one in the pursuit of game.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That ear,” says Hicks, “is the relic of true friendship.”</p>
|
||||
|
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@ -1,14 +1,16 @@
|
||||
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
||||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 4</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 4: The Handbook of Hymen</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-4" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>IV</h2>
|
||||
<h3>THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">IV</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Handbook of Hymen</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>’Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can’t tell me why our college professors shouldn’t be transferred to the meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the main office what kind of weather to expect. But there’s the other side of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.</p>
|
||||
<p>We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army through a peace conference.</p>
|
||||
<p>Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and stops to eat three cans of greengages, and leave us a newspaper of modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom of the deck was “warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,14 +1,16 @@
|
||||
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
||||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 5</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 5: The Pimienta Pancakes</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-5" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>V</h2>
|
||||
<h3>THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">V</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Pimienta Pancakes</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>While we were rounding up a bunch of the Triangle-O cattle in the Frio bottoms a projecting branch of a dead mesquite caught my wooden stirrup and gave my ankle a wrench that laid me up in camp for a week.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub wagon, and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson Odom, the camp cook. Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny, with customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein he was bereaved, for the greater portion of his time, of an audience.</p>
|
||||
<p>Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud’s obmutescence.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,14 +1,16 @@
|
||||
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
||||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 6</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 6: Seats of the Haughty</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-6" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>VI</h2>
|
||||
<h3>SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">VI</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">Seats of the Haughty</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>I first saw <abbr>Mr.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,14 +1,16 @@
|
||||
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
||||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 7</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 7: Hygeia at the Solito</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-7" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>VII</h2>
|
||||
<h3>HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">VII</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">Hygeia at the Solito</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>If you are knowing in the chronicles of the ring you will recall to mind an event in the early ‘nineties when, for a minute and sundry odd seconds, a champion and a “would-be” faced each other on the alien side of an international river. So brief a conflict had rarely imposed upon the fair promise of true sport. The reporters made what they could of it, but, divested of padding, the action was sadly fugacious. The champion merely smote his victim, turned his back upon him, remarking, “I know what I done to dat stiff,” and extended an arm like a ship’s mast for his glove to be removed.</p>
|
||||
<p>Which accounts for a trainload of extremely disgusted gentlemen in an uproar of fancy vests and neckwear being spilled from their pullmans in San Antonio in the early morning following the fight. Which also partly accounts for the unhappy predicament in which “Cricket” McGuire found himself as he tumbled from his car and sat upon the depot platform, torn by a spasm of that hollow, racking cough so familiar to San Antonian ears. At that time, in the uncertain light of dawn, that way passed Curtis Raidler, the Nueces County cattleman—may his shadow never measure under six foot two.</p>
|
||||
<p>The cattleman, out this early to catch the southbound for his ranch station, stopped at the side of the distressed patron of sport, and spoke in the kindly drawl of his ilk and region, “Got it pretty bad, bud?”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,14 +1,16 @@
|
||||
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
||||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 8</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 8: An Afternoon Miracle</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-8" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>VIII</h2>
|
||||
<h3>AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">VIII</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">An Afternoon Miracle</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed rangers sweltered in a little ‘dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful espionage upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican side.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bud Dawson, proprietor of the Top Notch Saloon, had, on the evening previous, violently ejected from his premises one Leandro Garcia, for alleged violation of the Top Notch code of behaviour. Garcia had mentioned twenty-four hours as a limit, by which time he would call and collect a painful indemnity for personal satisfaction.</p>
|
||||
<p>This Mexican, although a tremendous braggart, was thoroughly courageous, and each side of the river respected him for one of these attributes. He and a following of similar bravoes were addicted to the pastime of retrieving towns from stagnation.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -1,14 +1,16 @@
|
||||
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
||||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
|
||||
<head>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 9</title>
|
||||
<title>Chapter 9: The Higher Abdication</title>
|
||||
<link href="../css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="chapter-9" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h2>IX</h2>
|
||||
<h3>THE HIGHER ABDICATION</h3>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">IX</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Higher Abdication</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<p>Curly the tramp sidled toward the free-lunch counter. He caught a fleeting glance from the bartender’s eye, and stood still, trying to look like a business man who had just dined at the Menger and was waiting for a friend who had promised to pick him up in his motor car. Curly’s histrionic powers were equal to the impersonation; but his makeup was wanting.</p>
|
||||
<p>The bartender rounded the bar in a casual way, looking up at the ceiling as though he was pondering some intricate problem of kalsomining, and then fell upon Curly so suddenly that the roadster had no excuses ready. Irresistibly, but so composedly that it seemed almost absendmindedness on his part, the dispenser of drinks pushed Curly to the swinging doors and kicked him out, with a nonchalance that almost amounted to sadness. That was the way of the Southwest.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
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