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diff --git a/old/30352.txt b/old/30352.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..50b1048 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/30352.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4681 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Santa Fe's Partner, by Thomas A. Janvier + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Santa Fe's Partner + Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town + +Author: Thomas A. Janvier + +Release Date: October 28, 2009 [EBook #30352] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SANTA FE'S PARTNER *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "'LOOK! LOOK! THERE BY THOSE LITTLE BUSHES!'"] + + + + +Santa Fe's Partner + +Being Some Memorials of Events in a + +New-Mexican Track-end Town + +By + +Thomas A. Janvier + +Author of + +"The Passing of Thomas" "The Uncle of an Angel" +"The Aztec Treasure-House" "In the Sargasso Sea" Etc. Etc. + +New York and London + +Harper & Brothers Publishers + +1907 + + + + +Copyright, 1907, by HARPER & BROTHERS. + +All rights reserved. + +Published September, 1907. + + + + +TO + +C. A. J. + + + + +CONTENTS + + I. PALOMITAS 1 + II. THE SAGE-BRUSH HEN 15 + III. HART'S NEPHEW'S HOLD-UP 44 + IV. SANTA FE CHARLEY'S KINDERGARTEN 77 + V. BOSTON'S LION-HUNT 127 + VI. SHORTY SMITH'S HANGING 163 + VII. THE PURIFICATION OF PALOMITAS 208 + + + + +Illustrations + + "'LOOK! LOOK! THERE BY THOSE LITTLE BUSHES!'" _Frontispiece_ + "HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP, AND THE OLD + GENT GOT A-HOLD OF IT" 22 + "WROTE OUT A NOTICE THAT WAS TACKED UP ON THE DEEPO + DOOR" 84 + "'ONE OF THE NEW GERMAN KINDERGARTEN APPLIANCES'" 120 + "STARING 'ROUND THE PLACE SAME AS IF HE'D STRUCK A + MENAGERIE" 132 + "'IT'S HOTTER THAN SAHARA!' SAID THE ENGLISHMAN" 166 + "AND DOWN HART WENT IN A HEAP ON THE FLOOR" 196 + "'DON'T HANG HIM, SIR!' SHE GROANED OUT" 224 + + + + +SANTA FE'S PARTNER + + + + +SANTA FE'S PARTNER + +I + +PALOMITAS + + +I've been around considerable in the Western Country--mostly some +years back--and I've seen quite a little, one way and another, of the +folks living there: but I can't really and truly say I've often come +up with them nature's noblemen--all the time at it doing stunts in +natural nobility--the story-books make out is the chief population of +them parts. Like enough the young fellers from the East who write such +sorts of books--having plenty of spare time for writing, while they're +giving their feet a rest to get the ache out--do come across 'em, +same as they say they do; but I reckon the herd's a small one--and, +for a fact, if you could cross the book brand with the kind you mostly +meet on the ranges the breed would be improved. + +Cow-punchers and prospectors and such don't look like and don't act +like what tenderfoots is accustomed to, and so they size 'em up to be +different all the way through. They ain't. They're just plain human +nature, same as the rest of us--only more so, through not being herded +close in. About the size of it is, most folks needs barbed wire to +keep 'em from straying. In a rough country--where laws and constables +ain't met with frequent--a good-sized slice of the population 's apt +to run wild. With them that's white, it don't much matter. The worst +you can say against 'em is, they sometimes do a little more shooting +than seems really needed; but such doings is apt to have a show of +reason at the bottom of 'em, and don't happen often anyhow--most being +satisfied to work off their high spirits some other way. With them +that's not white, things is different. When the Apache streak gets on +top it sends 'em along quick into clear deviltry--the kind that makes +you cussed just for the sake of cussedness and not caring a damn; and +it's them that has give some parts of the Western Country--like it did +New Mexico in the time I'm talking about, when they was bunched thick +there--its bad name. + +In the long run, of course, the toughs is got rid of--being shoved out +or hung out, at first by committees and later on in regular shape by +sheriffs and marshals--and things is quieted down. It's the +everlasting truth, though, that them kind of mavericks mostly is a +blame sight commoner in parts just opened than the story-book +kind--that's always so calm-eyed and gentle-natured and generous and +brave. What's more, I reckon they'll keep on being commoner, human +nature not being a thing that changes much, till we get along to the +Day of Judgment round-up--and the goats is cut out and corralled for +keeps. + +For certain, it was goats was right up at the head of the procession +in the Territory in my time--which was the time when the railroads was +a-coming in--and in them days things was rough. The Greasers living +there to start with wasn't what you might call sand-papered; and the +kind of folks found in parts railroads has just got to, same as I've +mentioned, don't set out to be extry smooth. Back East they talked +about the higher civilization that was overflowing New Mexico; but, +for a cold fact, the higher civilization that did its overflowing on +that section mostly had a sheriff on its tracks right along up to the +Missouri--and the rest of the way done what it blame felt like, and +used a gun. + +Some of them native Mexicans wasn't bad fighters. When they went to +hacking at one another with knives--the way they was used to--they +often done right well. But when they got up against the higher +civilization--which wasn't usually less 'n half drunk, and went heeled +with two Colt's and a Winchester--they found out they'd bit off more'n +they could chew. Being sandy, they kept at it--but the civilizers was +apt to have the call. And in between times, when the two of 'em--the +Greasers and the civilizers--wasn't taking the change out of each +other, they both of 'em took it out of anybody who happened to come +along. + +Yes, sirree!--in them days things was a good deal at loose ends in the +Territory. When you went anywheres, if you was going alone, you always +felt you'd better leave word what trail you took: that is, if you was +fussy in such matters, and wanted what the coyotes left of you brought +in by your friends and planted stylish--with your name, and when it +happened, painted on a board. + +This place where the track got stuck--sticking partly because there +was trouble with the Atchison, and partly because the Company couldn't +foreclose onto a year jag any more out of the English stockholders to +build on with--was up on a bluff right over the Rio Grande and was +called Palomitas. Being only mostly Greasers and Indians living in +the Territory--leaving out the white folks at Santa Fe and the army +posts, and the few Germans there was scattered about--them kind of +queer-sounding names was what was mainly used. + +It wasn't never meant to be no sort of an American town nohow, +Palomitas wasn't--being made to start with of 'dobes (which is +Mexican for houses built of mud, and mud they was in the rainy season) +spilled around on the bluff anywheres; and when the track come along +through the middle of it the chinks was filled in with tents and +shingle-shacks and dugouts--all being so mixed up and scattery you'd +a-thought somebody'd been packing a town through them parts in a wagon +and the load had jolted out, sort of casual over the tail-board, and +stuck where it happened to come down. The only things you could +call houses was the deepo, and the Forest Queen Hotel right across +the track from it, and Bill Hart's store. Them three buildings was +framed up respectable; with real windows that opened, and doors such +as you could move without kicking at 'em till you was tired. The +deepo was right down stylish--having a brick chimney and being +painted brown. Aside the deepo was the tank and the windmill that +pumped into it. Seems to me at nights, sometimes, I can hear that +old windmill going around creaking and clumpetty-clumpetting now! + +Palomitas means "little doves"--but I reckon the number of them birds +about the place was few. For about a thousand years, more or less, it +had been run on a basis of two or three hundred Mexicans and a +sprinkling of pigs and Pueblo Indians--the pigs was the most +respectable--and it was allowed to be, after the track got there, the +toughest town the Territory had to show. Santa Cruz de la Canada, +which was close to it, was said to have took the cake for toughness +before railroad times. It was a holy terror, Santa Cruz was! The only +decent folks in it was the French padre--who outclassed most saints, +and hadn't a fly on him--and a German named Becker. He had the +Government forage-station, Becker had; and he used to say he'd had a +fresh surprise every one of the mornings of the five years he'd been +forage-agent--when he woke up and found nobody'd knifed him in the +night and he was keeping on being alive! + +But when the track come in, and the higher civilization come in +a-yelling with it and spread itself, Palomitas could give points to +the Canada in cussedness all down the line. Most of it right away was +saloons and dance-halls; and the pressure for faro accommodation was +such the padre thought he could make money by closing down his own +monte-bank and renting. Denver Jones took his place at fifty dollars a +week, payable every Saturday night--and rounded on the padre by +getting back his rent-money over the table every Sunday afternoon. +He'd a-got it back Sunday mornings if the padre hadn't been tied up +mornings to his work. (He was a native, that padre was--and went on so +extra outrageous his own folks couldn't stand him and Bishop Lamy +bounced him from his job.) Pretty much all the time there was +rumpusses; and the way they was managed made the Mexicans--being used, +same as I've said, to knives mostly--open their eyes wide. It seemed +really to jolt 'em when they begun to find out what a live man with +his back up could do with a gun! Occurrences was so frequent--before +construction started up again, and for a while after--the new cemetery +out in the sage-brush on the mesa come close to having as big a +population as the town. + +What happened--shootings, and doings of all sorts--mostly centred +on the Forest Queen. That was the only place that called itself a +hotel in Palomitas--folks being able to get some sort of victuals +there, and it having bunks in a room off the bar-room where +passers-through was give a chance to think (by morning they was +apt to think different) they was going to have a night's sleep. +Kicking against what you got--and against the throwed-in extras you'd +a-been better without--didn't do no good. Old Tenderfoot Sal, who kept +the place, only stuck her fat elbows out and told the kickers she +done the best she knowed how to, and she reckoned it was as good as +you could expect in them parts, and most was suited. If they didn't +like the Forest Queen Hotel, she said, they was free to get out of it +and go to one that suited 'em better--and as there wasn't none to go +to, Sal held the cards. + +She was a corker, Sal was! By her own account of herself, she'd +learned hotel-keeping through being a sutler's wife in the war. What +sutling had had to do with it was left to guess at, and there was +opinions as to how much her training in hoteling had done for her; but +it was allowed she'd learned a heap of other things--of one sort and +another--and her name of Tenderfoot was give her because them fat feet +of hers, in the course of her travels, had got that hard I reckon she +wouldn't a-noticed it walking on red-hot point-upwards ten-penny +nails! + +In the Forest Queen bar-room was the biggest bank there was in town. +Blister Mike--he was Irish, Blister was, and Sal's bar-keep--had some +sort of a share in it; but it was run by a feller who'd got the name +of Santa Fe Charley, he having had a bank over in Santa Fe afore Sal +give him the offer to come across to Palomitas and take charge. He +was one of the blue-eyed quiet kind, Charley was, that's not wholesome +to monkey with; the sort that's extra particular about being polite +and nice-spoken--and never makes no mistakes, when shooting-time +comes, about shooting to kill. When he was sober, though--and he had +to keep sober, mostly, or his business would a-suffered--he wasn't +hunting after rumpusses: all he did was to keep ready for 'em, and +hold his end up when they come along. He had the habit--same as some +other of the best card sharps I've met with--of dressing himself in +black, real stylish: wearing a long-tail coat and a boiled shirt and +white tie, and having a toney wide-brimmed black felt hat that touched +him off fine. With them regular fire-escape clothes on, folks was apt +to take him for one; and, when they did, he always met 'em half-way by +letting on preaching was his business--till he got 'em on the other +side of the table and begun to shake down what cards he needed from up +inside them black coat-sleeves. Mostly they ended by thinking that +maybe preaching wasn't just what you might call his strongest hold. + +It helped him in his work more'n a little, sometimes, dressing up that +way and talking to suit, like he knowed how to, real high-toned talk; +but I do believe for a fact he enjoyed the dollars he got out of it +less 'n he did the fun it give him making fools of folks by setting up +rigs on 'em--he truly being the greatest hand at rigging I ever seen. +Somehow--not having the comfort of being able to get drunk half as +often as he wanted to--it seemed like he give himself the let-out he +needed in them queer antics; and, for certain, he managed 'em always +so they went with a hum. When him and the Sage-Brush Hen played +partners in rigging anybody--as they was apt to, the Hen being much +such another and so special friends with Charley she'd come on after +him from Santa Fe--there mostly was a real down spirited game! + +She was what you might call the leading lady in the Forest Queen +dance-hall, the Sage-Brush Hen was; and if you wanted fun, and had to +choose between her and a basket of monkeys, all I've got to say +is--nobody'd ever a-took the monkeys who knowed the Hen! That girl was +up to more queer tricks than anybody of her size and shape--she had a +powerful fine shape, the Hen had--I've ever laid eyes on; and she'd +run 'em in you so slick and quiet--keeping as demure as a cat after +birds while she was doing it--you'd never suspicion anything was +happening till you found the whole town laughing its head off at you +for being so many kinds of a fool! + +Things wasn't any time what you might call too extra quiet in +Palomitas; but when them two--the Hen and Santa Fe--started in +together to run any racket you may bet your life there was a +first-class circus from the word go! Grass didn't grow much under +their feet, either. The very minute the Hen struck the town--coming on +after Santa Fe, same as I've said, and him waiting for her when she +got there--they went at their monkey-shining, finishing two-handed +what the Hen had started as a lone-hand game. Right along from then on +they kept things moving spirited, one way and another, without much +of a let-up. And they ended off--the day the two of 'em, owing to +circumstances, lit out together--by setting up on all of us what I +reckon was the best rig ever set up on anybody anywheres since rigs +was begun! + +Palomitas was a purer town, Cherry said--it was him led off in the +purifying--after we was shut of 'em, and of some others that was fired +for company; and I won't say he wasn't right in making out it was a +better town, maybe, when we'd got it so blame pure. But they had their +good points, the Hen and Santa Fe had--and after they was purified out +of it some of us didn't never quite feel as if the place was just the +same. + + + + +II + +THE SAGE-BRUSH HEN + + +The Hen blew in one day on Hill's coach, coming from Santa Fe, setting +up on the box with him--Hill run his coach all the time the track was +stuck at Palomitas, it being quicker for Santa Fe folks going up that +way to Pueblo and Denver and Leadville than taking the Atchison out to +El Moro and changing to the Narrow Gauge--and she was so all over dust +that Wood sung out to him: "Where'd you get your Sage-Brush Hen from?" +And the name stuck. + +More folks in Palomitas had names that had tumbled to 'em like that +than the kind that had come regular. And even when they sounded +regular they likely wasn't. Regular names pretty often got lost +coming across the Plains in them days--more'n a few finding it better, +about as they got to the Missouri, to leave behind what they'd been +called by back East and draw something new from the pack. Making some +sort of a change was apt to be wholesomer and often saved talk. + +Hill said the Hen was more fun coming across from Santa Fe than +anything he'd ever got up against; and she was all the funnier, he +said, because when he picked her up at the Fonda she looked like as +if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and started in with her +monkey-shines so sort of quiet and demure. Along with her, waiting +at the Fonda, was an old gent with spectacles who turned out to be +a mine sharp--one of them fellows the Government sends out to the +Territory to write up serious in books all the fool stories +prospectors and such unload on 'em: the kind that needs to be led, +and 'll eat out of your hand. The Hen and the old gent and Hill had +the box-seat, the Hen in between; and she was that particular about +her skirts climbing up, and about making room after she got +there, that Hill said he sized her up himself for an officer's wife +going East. + +Except to say thank you, and talk polite that way, she didn't open her +head till they'd got clear of the town and begun to go slow in that +first bit of bad road among the sandhills; and it was the old gent +speaking to her--telling her it was a fine day, and he hoped she liked +it--that set her stamps to working a little then. She allowed the +weather was about what it ought to be, and said she was much obliged +and it suited her; and then she got her tongue in behind her teeth +again as if she meant to keep it there--till the old gent took a fresh +start by asking her if she'd been in the Territory long. She said +polite she hadn't, and was quiet for a minute. Then she got out her +pocket-handkerchief and put it up to her eyes and said she'd been in +it longer'n she wanted, and was glad she was going away. Hill said her +talking that way made him feel kind of curious himself; but he didn't +have no need to ask questions--the old gent saving him that trouble +by going for her sort of fatherly and pumping away at her till he got +the whole thing. + +It come out scrappy, like as might be expected, Hill said; and so +natural-sounding he thought he must be asleep and dreaming--he knowing +pretty well what was going on in the Territory, and she telling about +doings that was news to him and the kind he'd a-been sure to hear a +lot of if they'd ever really come off. Hill said he wished he could +tell it all as she did--speaking low, and ketching her breath in the +worst parts, and mopping at her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief--but +he couldn't; and all he could say about it was it was better'n any +theatre show he'd ever seen. The nubs of it was, he said, that she +said her husband had taken out a troop from Fort Wingate against the +Apaches (Hill knew blame well up there in the Navajo country was no +place to look for Apaches) and the troop had been ambushed in a canon +in the Zuni Mountains (which made the story still tougher) and every +man of 'em, along with her "dear Captain" as she called him, had lost +his hair. "His loved remains are where those fierce creatures left +them," she said. "I have not even the sad solace of properly burying +his precious bones!" And she cried. + +The old gent was quite broke up, Hill said, and took a-hold of her +hand fatherly--she was a powerful fine-looking woman--and said she had +his sympathy; and when she eased up on her crying so she could talk +she said she was much obliged--and felt it all the more, she said, +because he looked like a young uncle of hers who'd brought her up, her +father being dead, till she was married East to her dear Captain and +had come out to the Territory with him to his dreadful doom. + +Hill said it all went so smooth he took it down himself at first--but +he got his wind while she was crying, and he asked her what her +Captain's name was, and what was his regiment; telling her he hadn't +heard of any trouble up around Wingate, and it was news to him +Apaches was in them parts. She give him a dig in the ribs with her +elbow--as much as to tell him he wasn't to ask no such questions--and +said back to him her dear husband was Captain Chiswick of the Twelfth +Cavalry; and it had been a big come down for him, she said, when +he got his commission in the Regulars, after he'd been a Volunteer +brigadier-general in the war. + +Hill knowed right enough there wasn't no Twelfth Cavalry nowhere, and +that the boys at Wingate was A and F troops of the Fourth; but he +ketched on to the way she was giving it to the old gent--and so _he_ +give _her_ a dig in the ribs, and said he'd knowed Captain Chiswick +intimate, and he was as good a fellow as ever was, and it was a blame +pity he was killed. She give him a dig back again, at that--and was +less particular about making room on his side. + +The old gent took it all in, just as it come along; and after she'd +finished up about the Apaches killing her dear Captain he wanted to +know where she was heading for--because if she was going home East, he +said, he was going East himself and could give her a father's care. + +She said back to him, pleasant like, that a young man like him +couldn't well be fathering an old lady like her, though it was +obliging of him to offer; but, anyway, she wasn't going straight back +East, because she had to wait awhile at Palomitas for a remittance she +was expecting to pay her way through--and she wasn't any too sure +about it, she said, whether she'd get her remittance; or, if she did +get it, when it would come. Everything bad always got down on you at +once, she said; and just as the cruel savages had slain her dear +Captain along come the news the bank East he'd put his money in had +broke the worst kind. Her financial difficulties wasn't a patch on the +trouble her sorrowing heart was giving her, she said; but she allowed +they added what she called pangs of bitterness to her deeper pain. + +The old gent--he wasn't a fool clean through--asked her what was the +matter with her Government transportation; she having a right to +transportation, being an officer's widow going home. Hill said he give +her a nudge at that, as much as to say the old gent had her. She +didn't faze a bit, though. It was her Government transportation she +was waiting for, she cracked back to him smooth and natural; but such +things had to go all the way to Washington to be settled, she said, +and then come West again--Hill said he 'most snickered out at +that--and she'd known cases when red-tape had got in the way and +transportation hadn't been allowed at all. Then she sighed terrible, +and said it might be a long, long while before she could get home +again to her little boy--who was all there was left her in the world. +Her little Willy was being took care of by his grandmother, she said, +and he was just his father's own handsome self over again--and she got +out her pocket-handkerchief and jammed it up to her eyes. + +[Illustration: "HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP, AND THE OLD GENT GOT +A-HOLD OF IT"] + +Her left hand was laying in her lap, sort of casual, and the old gent +got a-hold of it and said he didn't know how to tell her how sorry he +was for her. Talking from behind her pocket-handkerchief, she said +such sympathy was precious; and then she went on, kind of pitiful, +saying she s'posed her little Willy'd have forgot all about her before +she'd get back to him--and she cried some more. Hill said she done it +so well he was half took in himself for a minute, and felt so bad he +went to licking and swearing at his mules. + +After a while she took a brace--getting down her pocket-handkerchief, +and calling in the hand the old gent was a-holding--and said she must +be brave, like her dear Captain'd always been, so he'd see when he was +a-looking at her from heaven she was doing the square thing. And as to +having to wait around before she went East, she said, in one way it +didn't make any matter--seeing she'd be well cared for and comfortable +at Palomitas staying in the house of the Baptist minister, who'd +married her aunt. + +Hill said when she went to talking about Baptist ministers and aunts +in Palomitas he shook so laughing inside he most fell off the box. +Except the Mexican padre who belonged there--the one I've spoke of +that made a record, and Bishop Lamy had to bounce--and sometimes the +French ones from San Juan and the Canada, who was straight as +strings, there wasn't a fire-escape ever showed himself in Palomitas; +and as to the ladies of the town--well, the ladies wasn't just what +you'd call the aunt kind. It's a cold fact that Palomitas, that year +when the end of the track stuck there, was the cussedest town, same as +I've said it was, in the whole Territory--and so it was no more'n +natural Hill should pretty near bust himself trying to hold in his +laughing when the Hen took to talking so off-hand about Palomitas and +Baptist ministers and aunts. She felt how he was shaking, and jammed +him hard with her elbow to keep him from letting his laugh out and +giving her away. + + * * * * * + +Hill said they'd got along to Pojuaque by the time the Hen had +finished telling about herself, and the fix she was in because she had +to wait along with her aunt in Palomitas till her transportation come +from Washington--and she just sick to get East and grab her little +Willy in her arms. And the old gent was that interested in it all, +Hill said, it was a sight to see how he went on. + +At Pojuaque the coach always made a noon stop, and the team was +changed and the passengers got dinner at old man Bouquet's. He was a +Frenchman, old man Bouquet was; but he'd been in the Territory from +'way back, and he'd got a nice garden behind his house and things +fixed up French style. His strongest hold was his wine-making. He made +a first-class drink, as drinks of that sort go; and, for its kind, it +was pretty strong. As his cooking was first-class too, Hill's +passengers--and the other folks that stopped for grub there--always +wanted to make a good long halt. + +Hill said it turned out the old gent knowed how to talk French, and +that made old man Bouquet extra obliging--and he set up a rattling +good dinner and fetched out some of the wine he said he was in the +habit of keeping for his own drinking, seeing he'd got somebody in the +house for once who really could tell the difference between good and +bad. He fixed up a table out in the garden--aside of that queer tree, +all growed together, he thought so much of--and set down with 'em +himself; and Hill said it was one of the pleasantest parties he'd ever +been at in all his born days. + +The Hen and the old gent got friendlier and friendlier--she being more +cheerful when she'd been setting at table a while, and getting to +talking so comical she kept 'em all on a full laugh. Now and then, +though, she'd pull up sudden and kind of back away--making out she +didn't want it to show so much--and get her pocket-handkerchief to her +eyes and snuffle; and then she'd pull herself together sort of +conspicuous, and say she didn't want to spoil the party, but she +couldn't help thinking how long it was likely to be before she'd see +her little boy. And then the old gent would say that such tender +motherliness did her credit, and hers was a sweet nature, and he'd +hold her hand till she took it away. + +Hill said the time passed so pleasant he forgot how it was going, and +when he happened to think to look at his watch he found he'd have to +everlastingly hustle his mules to get over to Palomitas in time to +ketch the Denver train. He went off in a tearing hurry to hitch up, +and old man Bouquet went along to help him--the old gent saying he +guessed he and Mrs. Chiswick would stay setting where they was, it +being cool and comfortable in the garden, till the team was put to. +They set so solid, Hill said, they didn't hear him when he sung out to +'em he was ready; and he said he let his mouth go wide open and yelled +like hell. (Hill always talked that careless way. He didn't mean no +harm by it. He said it was just a habit he'd got into driving mules.) +They not coming, he went to hurry 'em, he said--and as he come up +behind 'em the Hen was stuffing something into her frock, and the old +gent was saying: "I want you to get quickly to your dear infant, my +daughter. You can return at your convenience my trifling loan. And now +I will give you a fatherly kiss--" + +But he didn't, Hill said--because the Hen heard Hill's boots on the +gravel and faced round so quick she spoiled his chance. He seemed a +little jolted, Hill said; but the Hen was so cool, and talked so +pleasant and natural about what a nice dinner they'd been having, and +what a fine afternoon it was, he braced up and got to talking easy +too. + +Then they all broke for the coach, and got away across the Tesuque +River and on through the sandhills--with Hill cutting away at his +mules and using words to 'em fit to blister their hides off--and when +they fetched the Canada they'd about ketched up again to schedule +time. After the Mexican who kept the Santa Cruz post-office had made +the mess he always did with the mail matter, and had got the cussing +he always got from Hill for doing it, they started off again--coming +slow through that bit of extra heavy road along by the Rio Grande, but +getting to the deepo at Palomitas all serene to ketch the Denver +train. + +All the way over from Pojuaque, Hill said, he could see out of the +corner of his eye the old gent was nudging up to the Hen with his +shoulder, friendly and sociable; and he said he noticed the Hen was a +good deal less particular about making room. The old gent flushed up +and got into a regular temper, Hill said, when Wood sung out as they +pulled in to the deepo platform: "Where'd you get your Sage-Brush Hen +from?"--and that way give her what stuck fast for her name. + +As it turned out, they might a-kept on a-hashing as long as they'd a +mind to at Pojuaque; and Hill might a-let his mules take it easy, +without tiring himself swearing at 'em, on a dead walk--there being a +wash-out in the Comanche Canon, up above the Embudo, that held the +train. It wasn't much of a wash-out, the conductor said; but he said +he guessed all hands likely'd be more comfortable waiting at +Palomitas, where there was things doing, than they would be setting +still in the canon while the track-gang finished their job--and he +said he reckoned the train wouldn't start for about three hours. + + * * * * * + +The Hen and the old gent was standing on the deepo platform, where +they'd landed from the coach; and Hill said as he was taking his +mails across to the express-car he heard him asking her once more if +she hadn't better come right along East to her lonely babe; and +promising to take a father's care of her all the way. The Hen seemed +to be in two minds about it for a minute, Hill said, and then she +thanked him, sweet as sugar, for his goodness to her in her time of +trouble; and told him it would be a real comfort to go East with such +a kind escort to take care of her--but she said it wouldn't work, +because she was expected in Palomitas, and not stopping there would be +disappointing to her dear uncle and aunt. + +It was after sundown and getting duskish, while they was talking; and +she said she must be getting along. The old gent said he'd go with +her; but she said he mustn't think of it, as it was only a step to the +parsonage and she knew the way. While he was keeping on telling her +she really must let him see her safe with her relatives, up come Santa +Fe Charley--and Charley sung out: "Hello, old girl. So you've got +here! I was looking for you on the coach, and I thought you hadn't +come." + +Hill said he begun to shake all over with laughing; being sure--for +all Charley in his black clothes and white tie looked so toney--it +would be a dead give away for her. But he said she only give a little +jump when Santa Fe sung out to her, and didn't turn a hair. + +"Dear Uncle Charley, I _am_ so glad to see you!" she said easy and +pleasant; and then round she come to the old gent, and said as smooth +as butter to him: "This is my uncle, the Baptist minister, sir, come +to take me to the parsonage to my dear aunt. It's almost funny to have +so young an uncle! Aunt's young too--you see, grandfather married a +second time. We're more like sister and brother--being so near of an +age; and he always will talk to me free and easy, like he always +did--though I tell him now he's a minister it don't sound well." And +then she whipped round to Charley, so quick he hadn't time to get a +word in edgeways, and said to him: "I hope Aunt Jane's well, and +didn't have to go up to Denver--as she said she might in her last +letter--to look after Cousin Mary. And I do hope you've finished the +painting she said was going on at the parsonage--so you can take me in +there till my transportation comes and I can start East. This kind +gentleman, who's going up on to-night's train, has been offering--and +it's just as good of him, even if I can't go--to escort me home to my +dear baby; and he's been giving me in the sweetest way his sympathy +over my dear husband Captain Chiswick's loss." + +Hill said he never knowed anybody take cards as quick as Santa Fe took +the cards the Hen was giving him. "I'm very happy to meet you, sir," +he said to the old gent; "and most grateful to you for your kindness +to my poor niece Rachel in her distress. We have been sorrowing over +her during Captain Chiswick's long and painful illness--" + +"My dear Captain had been sick for three months, and got up out of his +bed to go and be killed with his men by those dreadful Apaches," the +Hen cut in. + +"--and when the news came of the massacre," Charley went right on, as +cool as an iced drink, "our hearts almost broke for her. Captain +Chiswick was a splendid gentleman, sir; one of the finest officers +ever sent out to this Territory. His loss is a bad thing for the +service; but it is a worse thing for my poor niece--left forsaken +along with her sweet babes. They are noble children, sir; worthy of +their noble sire!" + +"Oh, Uncle Charley!" said the Hen. "Didn't you get my letter telling +you my little Jane died of croup? I've only my little Willy, now!" And +she kind of gagged. + +"My poor child. My poor child!" said Santa Fe. "I did not know that +death had winged a double dart at you like that--your letter never +came." And then he said to the old gent: "The mail service in this +Territory, sir, is a disgrace to the country. The Government ought to +be ashamed!" + +Hill said while they was giving it and taking it that way he most +choked--particular as the old gent just gulped it all down whole. + +Hill said the three of 'em was sort of quiet and sorrowful for a +minute, and then Santa Fe said: "It is too bad, Rachel, but your Aunt +Jane did have to go up to Denver yesterday--a despatch came saying +Cousin Mary's taken worse. And the parsonage is in such a mess still +with the painters that I've moved over to the Forest Queen Hotel. But +you can come there too--it's kept by an officer's widow, you know, and +is most quiet and respectable--and you'll be almost as comfortable +waiting there till your transportation comes along as you would be if +I could take you home." + +Hill said hearing the Forest Queen talked about as quiet and +respectable, and Santa Fe's so sort of off-hand making an officer's +widow out of old Tenderfoot Sal, set him to shaking at such a rate he +had to get to where there was a keg of railroad spikes and set down on +it and hold his sides with both hands. + +Santa Fe turned to the old gent, Hill said--talking as polite as a +Pullman conductor--and told him since he'd been so kind to his unhappy +niece he hoped he'd come along with 'em to the hotel too--where he'd +be more comfortable, Santa Fe said, getting something to eat and drink +than he would be kicking around the deepo waiting till they'd filled +in the wash-out and the train could start. + +Hill said the Hen give Santa Fe a queer sort of look at that, as much +as to ask him if he was dead sure he had the cards for that lead. +Santa Fe give her a look back again, as much as to say he knew what +was and what wasn't on the table; and then he went on to the old gent, +speaking pleasant, telling him likely it might be a little bit noisy +over at the hotel--doing her best, he said, Mrs. Major Rogers couldn't +help having noise sometimes, things being so rough and tumble out +there on the frontier; but he had a private room for his study, where +he wrote his sermons, he said, and got into it by a side door--and so +he guessed things wouldn't be too bad. + +That seemed to make the Hen easy, Hill said; and away the three of 'em +went together to the Forest Queen. Hill knowed it was straight enough +about the private room and the side door--Santa Fe had it to do +business in for himself, on the quiet, when he didn't have to deal; +and Hill'd known of a good many folks who'd gone in that private room +by that side door and hadn't come out again till Santa Fe'd scooped +their pile. But it wasn't no business of his, he said; and he said he +was glad to get shut of 'em so he might have a chance to let out the +laughing that fairly was hurting his insides. + +As they was going away from the deepo, Hill said, he heard Santa Fe +telling the old gent he was sorry it was getting so dark--as he'd like +to take him round so he could see the parsonage, and the new church +they'd just finished building and was going to put an organ in as soon +as they'd raised more funds; but it wasn't worth while going out of +their way, he said, because they wouldn't show to no sort of advantage +with the light so bad. As the only church in Palomitas was the Mexican +mud one about two hundred years old, and as the nearest thing to a +parsonage was the Padre's house that Denver Jones had rented and had +his faro-bank in, Hill said he guessed Charley acted sensible in not +trying to show the old gent around that part of the town. + + * * * * * + +Hill said after he'd got his supper he thought he'd come down to the +deepo and sort of wait around there; on the chance he'd ketch on--when +the old gent come over to the train--to what Santa Fe and the Hen'd +been putting up on him. Sure enough, he did. + +Along about ten o'clock a starting-order come down--the track-gang by +that time having the wash-out so near fixed it would be fit by the +time the train got there to go across; and Wood--he was the agent, +Wood was--sent word over to the Forest Queen to the old gent, who was +the only Pullman passenger, he'd better be coming along. + +In five minutes or so he showed up. He wasn't in the best shape, Hill +said, and Santa Fe and the Hen each of 'em was giving him an arm; +though what he seemed to need more'n arms, Hill said, was legs--the +ones he had, judging from the way he couldn't manage 'em, not being in +first-class order and working bad. But he didn't make no exhibition of +himself, and talked right enough--only he spoke sort of short and +scrappy--and the three of 'em was as friendly together as friendly +could be. Hill said he didn't think it was any hurt to listen, things +being the way they was, and he edged up close to 'em--while they stood +waiting for the porter to light up the Pullman--and though he couldn't +quite make sense of all they was saying he did get on to enough of it +to size up pretty close how they'd put the old gent through. + +"Although it is for my struggling church, a weak blade of grass in the +desert," Santa Fe was saying when Hill got the range of 'em, "I cannot +but regret having taken from you your splendid contribution to our +parish fund in so unusual, I might almost say in so unseemly, a way. +That I have returned to you a sufficient sum to enable you to +prosecute your journey to its conclusion places you under no +obligation to me. Indeed, I could not have done less--considering the +very liberal loan that you have made to my poor niece to enable her to +return quickly to her helpless babe. As I hardly need tell you, that +loan will be returned promptly--as soon as Mrs. Captain Chiswick gets +East and is able to disentangle her affairs." + +"Indeed it will," the Hen put in. "My generous benefactor shall be +squared with if I have to sell my clothes!" + +"Mustn't think of such a thing. Catch cold," the old gent said. +"Pleasure's all mine to assist such noble a woman in her unmerited +distress. And now I shall have happiness, and same time sorrow, to +give her fatherly kiss for farewell." + +The Hen edged away a little, Hill said, and Santa Fe shortened his +grip a little on the old gent's arm--so his fatherly kissing missed +fire. But he didn't seem to notice, and said to Santa Fe: "Never knew +a minister know cards like you. Wonderful! And wonderful luck what you +held. Played cards a good deal myself. Never could play like you!" + +Santa Fe steadied the old gent, Hill said, and said to him in a +kind of explaining way: "As I told you, my dear sir, in my wild +college days--before I got light on my sinful path and headed for +the ministry--I was reckoned something out of the common as a +card-player; and what the profane call luck used to be with me all +the time. Of course, since I humbly--but, I trust, helpfully--took +to being a worker in the vineyard, I have not touched those devil's +picture-books; nor should I have touched them to-night but for my +hope that a little game would help to while away your time of +tedious waiting. As for playing for money, that would have been +quite impossible had it not been for my niece's suggestion that my +winnings--in case such came to me--should be added to our meagre +parish fund. I trust that I have not done wrong in yielding to my +impulse. At least I have to sustain me the knowledge that if you, my +dear sir, are somewhat the worse, my impoverished church is much the +better for our friendly game of chance." + +Hill said hearing Santa Fe Charley talking about chance in any game +where he had the dealing was so funny it was better'n going to the +circus. But the old gent took it right enough--and the Hen added on: +"Yes, Uncle Charley can get the organ he's been wanting so badly for +his church, now. And I'm sure we'll all think of how we owe its sweet +music to you every time we hear it played!"--and she edged up to him +again, so he could hold her hand. "It must make you very, very +happy, sir," she kept on, speaking kind of low and gentle, but not +coming as close as he wanted her, "to go about the world doing such +generous-hearted good deeds! I'm sure I'd like to thank you +enough--only there aren't any fit words to thank you in--for your +noble-hearted generous goodness to me!" + +The old gent hauled away on her hand, Hill said, trying to get her +closer, and said back to her: "Words quite unnecessary. Old man's +heart filled with pleasure obliging such dear child. Never mind about +words. Accept old man's fatherly kiss, like daughter, for good-bye." + +But he missed it that time too, Hill said--and Hill said, speaking in +his careless cuss-word way, it was pretty damn rough on him what poor +luck in fatherly kisses he seemed to have--because just then the train +conductor swung his lantern and sung out: "All aboard!" + +That ended things. Before the old gent knowed what had got him, Santa +Fe and the Hen had boosted him up the steps onto the platform of the +Pullman--where the Pullman conductor got a grip on him just in time to +save him from spilling--and then the train pulled out: with the +Pullman conductor keeping him steady, and he throwing back good-bye +kisses to the Hen with both hands. + +Hill said the Hen and Santa Fe kept quiet till the hind-lights showed +beyond the end of the deepo platform: and then the Hen grabbed Santa +Fe round the neck and just hung onto him--so full of laugh she was +limp--while they both roared. And Hill said he roared too. It was the +most comical bit of business, he said, he'd tumbled to in all his born +days! + +It wasn't till the train got clean round the curve above the station, +Hill said, that Charley and the Hen could pull 'emselves together so +they could talk. Then the Hen let a-go of Santa Fe's neck and said +comical--speaking kind of precise and toney, like as if she was an +officer's wife sure enough: "You had better return to your study, dear +Uncle Charley, and finish writing that sermon you said we'd +interrupted you in that was about caring for the sheep as well as the +lambs!" + +And then they went off together yelling, Hill said, over to the Forest +Queen. + + + + +III + +HART'S NEPHEW'S HOLD-UP + + +Hill always said he counted on coming into Palomitas some day on one +of his mules bareback--leaving the other five dead or stampeded, and +the coach stalled somewhere--and bringing his hair only because +road-agents hadn't no use for hair and his wasn't easy to get anyhow, +he being so bald on top there wasn't nothing to ketch a-hold of if +anybody wanted to lift what little there was along the sides. Of +course that was just Hill's comical way of putting it; but back of his +fool talk there was hard sense--as there was apt to be back of Hill's +talk every time. He knew blame well what he was up against, Hill did; +and if he hadn't been more'n extra sandy he never could a-held down +his job. + +Till Hill started his coach up, the only way to get across to Santa Fe +from Palomitas was to go a-horseback or walk. Both ways was unhealthy; +and the coach, being pretty near as liable to hold-ups, wasn't much +healthier. It had to go slow, the coach had--that was a powerful mean +road after you left Pojuaque and got in among the sandhills--and you +never was sure when some of them bunches of scrub-cedar wasn't going +to wake up and take to pumping lead into you. Only a nervy man, like +Hill was, ever could have took the contract; and Hill said he got so +rattled sometimes--when it happened he hadn't no passengers and was +going it alone in among them sandhills--he guessed it was only because +he had so little hair to turn anything it didn't turn gray. + +Hill slept at the Forest Queen, the nights he was in Palomitas--he +drove one way one day and the other way the next--and the boys made +things cheerfuller for him by all the time rigging him about the poor +show he had for sticking long at his job. He'd look well, they said, +a-laying out there in the sage-brush plugged full of lead waiting for +his friends to call for him; and they asked him how he thought he'd +enjoy being a free-lunch counter for coyotes; and they told him he'd +better write down on a piece of paper anything he'd like particular to +have painted on the board--and they just generally devilled him all +round. Hill didn't mind the fool talk they give him--he always was a +good-natured fellow, Hill was--and he mostly managed to hit back at +'em, one way or another, so they'd come out about even and end up with +drinks for all hands. + +The only one who really didn't like that sort of talk, and always +kicked when the boys started in on it, was the Sage-Brush Hen. She +said it was a mean shame to make a joke about a thing like that, +seeing there wasn't a day when it mightn't happen; and it wasn't like +an ordinary shooting-match, she said, that come along in the regular +way and both of you took your chances; and sometimes she'd get that +mad and worried she'd go right smack out of the room. + +You see, the Hen always thought a heap of Hill--they having got to be +such friends together that first day when he brought her over to +Palomitas on the coach and helped her put up her rig on the old gent +from Washington; and, back of her liking Hill specially, she really +was about as good-natured a woman as ever lived. Except Hart's +nephew--she did just hate Hart's nephew, who was a chump if ever there +was one--she always was as pleasant as pie with everybody; and if any +of the boys was hurt--like when Denver Jones got that jag in his +shoulder rumpussing with Santa Fe Charley; and she more friends with +Charley, of course, than with anybody else--she'd turn right in and +help all she knowed how. + +But it's a cold fact, for all her being so good-natured and obliging, +that wherever that Hen was there was a circus. It was on her account +Charley and Denver had their little difficulty; and, one way and +another, there was more shooting-scrapes about her than about all the +other girls put together in all the dance-halls in town. Why, it got +to be so that one corner of the new cemetery out on the mesa was +called her private lot. It wasn't her fault, she always said; and, in +one way, it wasn't--she always being willing to be sociable and +friendly all round. But, all the same, wherever that Sage-Brush Hen +was, there was dead sure to be an all-right cyclone. + + * * * * * + +One night when the boys at the Forest Queen was rigging Hill worse'n +usual, and the Hen all the time getting madder and madder, Santa Fe +Charley come into the game himself. Knowing how down the Hen was on +such doings he usually didn't. I guess he and she'd been having some +sort of a ruction that day, and he wanted to get even with her. +Anyhow, in he come--and the way he played his hand just got the Hen +right up on her ear. + +What Charley did was to start a thirty-day pool on Hill as to when it +would happen. Chances was a dollar apiece--the dates for thirty days +ahead being written on bits of paper, and the bits crumpled up and +put into a hat, and you took one--and the pool went to whoever got +the right date, with consolation stakes to whoever got the day before +and the day after. Charley made a comical speech, after the drawing, +telling the boys it was what you might call a quick return investment, +and he guessed all of 'em had got left who'd drawed dates more'n a +week away. Hill took it all right, same as usual; and just to show 'em +he didn't bear no malice he bought a chance himself. He was one of the +best-natured fellows ever got born, Hill was. There wasn't no Apache +in him nowhere. He was white all the way through. So he bought his +chance, that way, and then he give it to the Hen--telling her if he +pulled the pot himself it wouldn't be much good to him, and saying he +hoped she'd get it if anybody did, and asking her--if she did get +it--to have some extry nice touches put on the board. + +Well, will you believe it? When Hill give that Hen his chance she +begun to cry over it! She knew it wouldn't do to cry hard--seeing +what a mess it would make with her color when the tears got +running--and so she pulled herself up quick and mopped her eyes dry +with her pocket-handkerchief. And then she let out with all four legs +at once, like a Colorado mule, and everlastingly gave it to all hands! +It was just like the Hen, being so good-hearted, and thinking so much +of Hill, to fire up like that about Santa Fe's pool on when he'd get +his medicine; and all the boys knowed that beside the address she was +making to the whole congregation Santa Fe was going to get another, +and a worse one, when she had him off where she could play out to him +a lone hand. But the boys didn't mind the jawing she give 'em--except +they was a little ashamed, knowing putting such a rig on Hill was a +mean thing to do--and I guess the whole business would have ended +right there (only for the dressing-down Santa Fe was to get later) if +Hart's nephew hadn't taken it into his head to chip in--being +drunker'n usual, and a fool anyway--and so started what turned out to +be a fresh game. + +I do suppose Hart's nephew was about the meanest ever got born. Bill +Hart was a good enough fellow himself, and how he ever come to have +such a God-forsaken chump for a nephew was more'n anybody could tell. +Things must have been powerful bad, I reckon, on his mother's side. He +was one of the blowing kind, with nothing behind his blow; and his +feet was that tender they wasn't fit to walk on anything harder'n +fresh mush. The boys all the time was putting up rigs on him; and he'd +go around talking so big about what he meant to do to get even with +'em you'd think he was going to clean out the whole town. But he took +mighty good care to do his tall talking promiscuous: after making the +mistake of trying it once on a little man he thought he could +manage--a real peaceable little feller that looked like he wouldn't +stand up to a kitten--and getting his nose and his mouth and his eyes +all mashed into one. The little man apologized to the rest for doing +it that way, saying he'd a-been ashamed of himself all the rest of his +life if he'd gone for a thing like that with his gun. + +Well, it was this Hart's nephew--like enough he had some sort of a +name that belonged to him, but he wasn't worth the trouble of finding +out what it was--who chipped in when the Hen took to her tirading, and +so give things a new turn. Standing up staggery, and talking in his +drunk fool way, he told her the road across to Santa Fe was as safe as +a Sunday-school; and he said he'd be glad to be in Hill's boots and +drive that coach himself, seeing what an interest she took in +stage-drivers; and he asked her, sort of nasty, how she managed to get +along for company when Hill was at the other end of his run. Hart's +nephew was drunker'n usual that night, same as I've said, or even he'd +a-knowed he'd likely get into trouble talking that way to the Hen. + +For about a minute things looked real serious. The Hen straightened +right up, and on the back of her neck--where it showed, she not being +fixed red there to start with--she got as red as canned tomatoes; and +some of the boys moved a little, sort of uneasy; and Santa Fe reached +out over the piles of chips for his gun. He didn't get it, because +the Hen saw what he was doing and stopped him by looking at him +quick--and knowing what Charley was when it come to shooting, you'll +know the Hen sent that look at him about as fast as looks can go! The +game had stopped right there; and it was so quiet in the room you'd +a-thought the snoring of the two drunks asleep on benches in one +corner was a thunder-storm coming down the canon! + +Of course what we all expected the Hen to do was to wipe up the floor +with Hart's nephew by giving him such a talking to--she could use +language, the Hen could, when she started in at it--as would make him +sorrier'n usual he'd ever been born; and I guess, from the looks of +her, that was what at the first jump she meant to do. But she was a +quick-thinking one, the Hen was, and she had a way of getting more +funny notions into that good-looking head of hers than any other woman +that ever walked around on this earth alive--and so she give us all a +real jolt by playing out cards we wasn't expecting at all. Just as +sudden as a wink, she sort of twitched and twinkled--same as she +always did when she was up to some new bit of deviltry--and when she +set her stamps to going she talked like as if she was real pleased. +She didn't look, though, as good-natured as she talked--keeping on +being straightened up, and having a kind of setness in her jaws and a +snappiness in them big black eyes of hers that made everybody but +Hart's nephew, who was too drunk to know anything, dead sure she still +was mad all the way through. + +"If he'll lend 'em to you, and I guess he will, why don't you get into +Mr. Hill's boots?" she said to Hart's nephew. And then she fetched up +a nice sort of smile, and said to him real friendly-sounding: "I do +like stage-drivers, and that's a fact--and there's no telling how +pleasant I'll make things for you if you'll take the coach across to +Santa Fe to-morrow over that Sunday-school road! Will you do it?" And +then the Hen give him one of them fetching looks of hers, and asked +him over: "Will you do it--to oblige _me_?" + +Now that was more words at one time than the Hen had dropped on Hart's +nephew since he struck the camp; and as the few he'd ever got from her +mostly hadn't been nice ones, and these sounding to him--he being +drunk--like as if they was real good-natured, he was that pleased he +didn't know what to do. Of course he was dead set on the Hen, same as +everybody else was--she truly was a powerful fine woman--and it just +was funny to see how he tried to steady himself on his legs +gentlemanly, and was all over fool smiles. + +So he said back to the Hen--speaking slow, to keep his words from +tumbling all over each other--he'd just drive that coach across to +Santa Fe a-hooping if Hill'd lend it to him; and then he asked Hill if +he might have it--and told him he could trust him to handle it in good +shape, because everybody knowed he was a real daisy at driving mules. + +For a fact, Hart's nephew did manage well at mule-driving. It was one +of the blame few things that fool knowed how to do. Denver Jones +allowed it was because he was related to 'em--on the father's side. + +"Just for this once, Mr. Hill," said the Hen, speaking coaxy. And she +got her head round a little--so Hart's nephew couldn't see what she +was doing--and give Hill a wink to come into the game. + +Hill didn't know what in the world the Hen was up to--nobody ever did +know what that Hen was up to when once she got started--but he +reckoned he could take it back in the morning if he didn't think what +she wanted would answer, so in he come: telling Hart's nephew he might +have the coach to do anything (Hill was a kind of a careless talker) +he damn pleased with; and saying he'd have it hitched up and ready +down at the deepo next morning, same as usual, so he could start right +off when the Denver train come in. + +When things was settled, all quick that way, Hart's nephew took to +squirming--he seeing, drunk as he was, he'd bit off a blame sight +more'n he cared to chew. But with the Hen right after him--and Hill +and all the rest of the boys backing her, they being sure she'd dandy +cards up her sleeve for the queer game she was playing--he couldn't +make nothing by all his squirms. The boys got at him and told him +anybody could see he was afraid; and the Hen got at him and told him +anybody could see he wasn't, and she said she knew he was about the +bravest man alive; and Hill got at him and told him the road had +improved so, lately, the nearest to road-agents you ever seen on it +was burros and cotton-tail rabbits; and all of 'em together kept +getting more drinks in him right along. So the upshot of it was: first +Hart's nephew stopped his squirming; and then he took to telling what +a holy wonder he was at mule-driving; and then he went to blowing the +biggest kind--till he got so he couldn't talk no longer--about what +he'd do in the shooting line if any road-agents come around trying +their monkey-shine hold-ups on _him_! So it ended, good enough, by +their getting him fixed tight in his hole. + +The boys kept things going with him pretty late that night, and when +he showed up in the morning at the deepo--a delegation seeing to it he +got there, and Hill having the coach all ready for him--he still had +on him a fairly sizable jag. But he'd sobered up enough--having slept +quite a little, and soaked his head at the railroad tank--to want to +try all he knew how to spill himself out of his job. It took all the +Hen could do--the Hen had got up early and come down to the deepo +a-purpose to attend to him--and all the boys could do helping her, to +get him up on that coach-box and boosted off out of town. + +He was that nervous he was shaking all over; and what made him +nervouser was having no passengers--nobody for Santa Fe having come in +on the Denver train. It was just a caution to see his shooting outfit! +The box of the coach looked like it was a gun-shop--being piled up +with two Winchesters and a double-barrelled shot-gun (the shot-gun, he +said, was to cripple anybody he didn't think it was needful to kill); +and beside that he had a machete some Mexican lent him hooked on to +his belt, and along with it a brace of derringers and two forty-fives. +Hill was the only one who didn't laugh fit to kill himself over that +layout. Hill said Hart's nephew done just right to take along all the +guns he could get a-hold of; and Hill said he'd attended to the proper +loading of every one of them weepons himself. + +At last--with all the boys laughing away and firing fool talk at him, +and the Hen keeping him up to the collar by going on about how brave +he was--he did manage to whip up his mules and start off. Sick was no +name for him--and he was so scared stiff he looked like he was about +ready to cry. After he'd got down the slope, and across the bridge +over the Rio Grande, and was walking his mules on that first little +stretch of sandy road on the way to La Canada, we could see him +reaching down and fussing over his layout of guns. + +For a cold fact, there was a right smart chance that Hart's +nephew--and 'specially because his fool luck made most things come to +him contrary--really might run himself into a hold-up; and, if he did, +it was like as not his chips might get called in. For all Hill's +funny talk about meeting nothing worse'n burros and cotton-tail +rabbits, that road was a bad road--and things was liable to occur. +Hill himself was taking his chances, and he blame well knowed it, +every day. But it was the sense of the meeting that if a hold-up of +that coach attended by fatalities was coming, it couldn't come at a +better time than when Hart's nephew was on the box--the feeling being +general that Hart's nephew was one that could be spared. I guess Bill +Hart felt just the same about it as the rest of us--leastways, he +didn't strain himself any trying to keep his nephew home. + + * * * * * + +Things went kind of nervous that day at Palomitas. All the boys seemed +to have a feeling, somehow, there was going to be happenings; and we +all just sort of idled round waiting for 'em--taking more drinks 'n +usual, and in spite of the drinks getting every minute lower and lower +in our minds. Except the day Hart's aunt spent with him, and Santa Fe +Charley run the kindergarten, I reckon it was the quietest day we ever +went through--at least till we got along to the clean-up that turned +Palomitas into what some of us felt was a blame sight too much of a +Sunday-school town. + +One reason why we all was so serious was because the Sage-Brush +Hen--who started most of what happened--didn't show up as usual; and +all hands got a real jolt when some of the boys went off to the Forest +Queen to ask about her, and old Tenderfoot Sal told 'em she was laying +down in her room and wasn't feeling well. The Hen being always an +out-and-out hustler, and hard as an Indian pony, her not being well +shook us up bad. Everybody was friends with her, same as she was +friends with everybody--even when she got into one of her tantrums, +and took to jawing you, you couldn't help liking her--and knowing she +wasn't feeling like she ought to feel put a big lot more of a damper +on all hands. So we just kept on taking drinks and getting miserabler +with 'em--and feeling all the time surer something was coming bouncing +out at us from round the corner, and wondering what kind of a stir-up +we was likely to have. + +It was along about four o'clock in the afternoon the cyclone struck +us; and it was such a small-sized one, when we did get it, we didn't +know whether to laugh or swear. But the cyclone himself didn't think +there was anything small about him: being Hart's nephew--so scared to +death all the few wits he ever had was knocked clean out of him--who +come into Palomitas, white as white-wash, riding bareback one of the +coach mules. + +He just sort of rolled off the mule, in front of the Forest Queen, and +went in to the bar and got four drinks in him before he could speak a +word--and then he said he'd been held up at the Barranca Grande by +about two hundred road-agents who'd opened up on him and killed all +the mules except the one he'd got away on; and his getting away at +all, he said, was only because he'd put up such a fight he'd scared +'em--and after that because they couldn't hit him when once he was +off, and had the mule going on a dead run. Then he took two more +drinks, and told his story all over again; and as it was about the +same story both times--and he so scared, and by the time he told it +over again so set up with his drinks, it didn't seem likely he'd sense +enough left to be lying--the boys allowed like enough it was true. + +What he had to tell--except he piled on more road-agents than was +needed--was about reasonable. He said he'd done well enough as far as +Pojuaque--where he'd had his dinner and changed mules, same as usual, +at old man Bouquet's. And after he'd left Pojuaque he'd got along all +right, he said, except he had to go slow through the sandhills, till +he come to the Barranca Grande. + +It's a bad place, that barranca is. The road goes sharp down into it, +and then sharp up out of it--and both banks so steep you want all the +brakes you've got to get to the bottom of it, and more mules than +you're likely to have to get to the top on the other side. + +Well, Hart's nephew said he'd just got the coach down to the bottom of +the barranca--he'd took the last of the slope at a run, he said, and +was licking away at his mules for all he was worth to start 'em up +the far side--when the road-agents opened on him, being hid in among +the cedar-bushes, from the top of the bank and from both sides of the +trail. You never seen such a blaze of shooting in all your life, +Hart's nephew said; and he said before he'd a chance to get a gun up +all his mules was hit but one. He said he jumped quick from the box, +taking both Winchesters and the shot-gun with him, and having his guns +and the derringers in his belt beside, and got behind the one mule +that hadn't been downed and opened up on the bushes where the smoke +was and let go as hard as he knowed how. He said he must a-killed +more'n twenty of 'em, he guessed, judging by the yelling and groaning, +and by the way they slacked up on their fire. Their slacking that way +give him a chance, he said, and he took it--cutting the mule loose +from the harness with one hand, while he kept on blazing away over her +back with the other; then letting 'em have it from both hands for a +minute, from what guns he had left that wasn't empty, to sort of +paralyze 'em; and then getting quick on the mule's back and starting +her down the barranca on a dead run. + +He had balls buzzing all about him, he said, till he got out of sight +around a turn in the barranca; and he said before he made that turn he +looked back once and saw a big feller up on top of the bank letting +off at him as hard as he could go. Just to show he still had fight in +him, he said, he let off back at him with his two derringers--which +was all he had left to shoot with--and he was pretty sure, though of +course it was only luck did it with the mule bouncing him so, the big +feller went down. He was a tremendous tall man, he said; and he +guessed he was a Greaser, seeing he had a big black beard and was +dressed in Greaser clothes. + +He said he didn't mind owning up he was scared bad while he was in it; +but he said he guessed anybody would a-been scared with all them +fellers shooting away at him--and, as he'd made as good a fight of it +as he knowed how, he didn't think he was to be blamed for ending by +running from such a crowd. He kept on down the barranca for about two +miles, he said, till he struck the cross-trail to Tesuque; and he +headed north on that till he got to Pojuaque--where he give the mule a +rest, she was blowed all to bits, the mule was, he said; and he got +some of old man Bouquet's wine in him, feeling pretty well blowed to +bits himself; and then he come along home. + +Well, that seemed a straight enough story. The only thing in it you +really could pick on--except the number of road-agents, he only having +seen one, and the rest being his scared guesswork--was the mule not +being hit while he was doing all that firing over the back of her. But +all fights has their queer chances in 'em; and that was a chance that +might a-happened, same as others. Of course, the one big general thing +that didn't seem likely was that such a runt as Hart's nephew should +have stood up the way he said he did to as much as one road-agent--let +alone to the half-dozen or so that like enough had got at him. But +even a thing like Hart's nephew sometimes will put up a fight when +it's scared so bad it really don't more'n half know what it's +doing--and the boys allowed he might have done his fighting that way. + +That the size of his scare had been big enough to make him do a'most +anything showed up from the way he kept on being scared after it was +all over--he coming into Palomitas looking like a wet white rag when, +by his own showing, he'd been out of reach of anybody's hurting him +for four or five hours anyway, and had had a chance to cool off at +Pojuaque while he was loading in old man Bouquet's wine. And so, +taking the story by and large, the boys allowed that likely most of it +was true; and some of 'em even went so far as to say maybe Hart's +nephew wasn't more'n half rotten, after all. + +It was a good story to hear, anyway; and everybody was sorry the Hen +wasn't around to hear it. But when some of the boys tried to rout her +out, Tenderfoot Sal stood 'em off savage--telling 'em to go about +their business, and the Hen's head was aching bad. So the boys had to +take it out in making Hart's nephew keep on telling all he had to +tell over and over; and he was glad of the chance to, and did--till he +got so many drinks in him he couldn't tell anything; and then his +uncle, with Shorty Smith helping, took him off home. + + * * * * * + +Next morning, having pretty much slept himself sober, Hart's nephew +went cavorting around Palomitas--that little runt did--like he was +about ten foot tall! He had the whole thing over, in the course of the +day, a dozen times or more; and as he kept on telling it--now he was +sober enough to add things on--it got to be about the biggest fight +with road-agents that ever was. The thing that was biggest was the one +man he allowed he'd really seen. Why, Goliath of Gath wasn't in it +with that fellow, according to Hart's nephew! And he was that +desperate and dangerous to look at, he said, not many men would a-had +the nerve to try at him with only a derringer--and, what was more, to +bring him down. It was well along in the afternoon before we got it +for a fact that Hart's nephew really had killed the Greaser. The +thing growed that way--from his first telling how he thought he'd hit +him--until it ended with the Greaser giving a yell like a stuck pig; +and then staggering and throwing his arms up; and then rolling over +and over down the side of the barranca to the bottom of it--with his +goose cooked all the way through! + +We was all down at the deepo waiting for the Denver train to pull out, +same as usual, while Hart's nephew was doing his tallest talking--and +while he was hard at it somebody jumped up and sung out the Santa Fe +coach was coming along on the other side of the river from Santa Cruz. +Well, that was about the last thing anybody was expecting--and +everybody hustled up off the barrels and boxes where they was +a-setting and looked with all their eyes. + +Sure enough, there the old coach was--just as it always was, about +that time of day--coming along as natural as you please. After a +while, it keeping on getting nearer, we could see it was old Hill +himself up on the box driving his mules in good shape; and when he +got along near the bridge we could hear him swearing at 'em--Hill did +use terrible bad language to them mules--in just his ordinary way. +Then he rattled the mules over the bridge and brought 'em a-clipping +up the slope this side of it; and then in another minute he pulled +right up at the deepo platform where we all was. Hill was laughing all +over as he come up to us, and so was a Mexican who was setting on the +box with him--a nice tidy little chap, with a powerful big black beard +on him--and Hill sung out: "Have you boys heard about the hold-up?" +And then he and the little Mexican got to laughing so it was a wonder +they didn't fall off. + +Nobody was thinking nothing about Hart's nephew--till he let off a +yell and sung out: "That's the man held the coach up! Get a bead on +him with your guns!" And he got his own gun out--and like enough would +a-done some fool thing with it if Santa Fe Charley, who was right by +him, hadn't smacked him and jerked it out of his hand. + +Santa Fe smacked so's to hurt him; and he put his hand up to his face +and said, kind of whimpery: "What are you hitting me like that for, +Charley? I ain't done nothing. I tell you that man on the box with +Hill is the one I was held up by yesterday. He's dangerous. If we +don't get a-hold of him quick he'll be doing something to us with his +gun!" And Hart's nephew a'most broke out crying--being all worked up, +and Santa Fe having smacked him blame hard. + +At that, Denver Jones cut in with: "I thought you said the one you was +held up by was more'n fourteen foot high, and you killed him? This man +ain't big enough to hold up a baby-carriage with you in it--and he's +sure enough alive. What are you giving us--you blame fool?" + +There's no telling what kind of an answer Denver would a-got from +Hart's nephew--for he hadn't a chance to give him no answer at all. +Just then Hill did the talking, and what Hill said was: "Boys, he's +dead right about it. This here's the bad man that held the coach +up--and as I was there, and seen it done, and drove the coach on with +five mules to Santa Fe afterwards, I guess I know!" And Hill, and the +little Mexican with him, just roared. + +When Hill could talk for laughing, he went on: "I'll own up right now, +boys, I was extry over-precautious when I fixed up with empty shells +that gun-shop Hart's nephew took along on the coach when he started +out with it. For all the harm he done with them guns, I might just as +well a-left 'em loaded the usual way. He was that scared when this +here gigantic ruffian stopped him--I just happened to be a-setting in +among the cedar-bushes at the time, smoking a seegar and looking on +sort of casual--he couldn't do nothing more'n yell out he wasn't going +to shoot, and not to murder him; and then down he jumped from the +box--me a-smoking away looking at him, and this here ruffian +a-shooting his Winchester across the top of the coach to where he said +he thought he seen a jack-rabbit--and cut out the near wheeler; and +then he scrambled up anyhow on that mule's back, and away he went +down the barranca as hard as hell!" (Hill oughtn't to have said that +word. But he was careless in his talk, Hill was, and he did). + +"But Hart's nephew being scared that way," Hill went on, a'most +choking, "don't count one way or the other when you get down to the +facts. It was this here dangerous devil that done that wicked deed, +and he done it all alone by his dangerous self. At the risk of my +life, gentlemen, I've got a-hold of him to bring him to justice, and +here he is. And I guess the sooner we yank him up to the usual +telegraph-pole, and so get shut of him, the sooner it'll be safe for +folks to travel these roads. He's the most dangerous I ever see," said +Hill, and by that time Hill was so near busted with his laughing he +was purple; "and what makes him such a particular holy terror is he +goes disguised!" And then--choking so he could hardly speak +plain--Hill whipped round to the little Mexican and says to him: "Get +your disguise off of you, you murdersome critter! Get it off, I say, +and give these gentlemen a look at the terrible wicked face of +you--before you and that telegraph-pole gets to being friends!" + +And then the little Mexican switched his big black beard off--and +right smack there before us was the Sage-Brush Hen! You never heard +such a yell as the boys give in all your born days! + + * * * * * + +And you never in all your born days saw such goings on as there was +that night at the Forest Queen! Everybody in Palomitas was right +there. The other banks and bars hadn't a soul left in 'em but the +dealers and the drink-slingers--and they, not having nothing to do at +home, just shut up shop and come along too. All the girls from all the +dance-halls showed up, the Hen being real down popular with 'em--which +told well for her--and they wanting to see the fun. Cherry happened to +be down from his ranch that night; and Becker got wind of what was up +and footed it across from Santa Cruz de la Canada; and word was sent +to the Elbogen brothers--they was real clever young fellows, them two +Germans--and over they come a-kiting on their buck-board from San +Juan. I guess it was about the biggest jam the Forest Queen ever had. + +Hart's nephew was the only one around the place who hung back a +little, but he got there all right--being fished out of an empty +flour-barrel, where he'd hid under the counter in his uncle's store, +and brought along by the invitation committee sent to look for him all +dabbed over with flour. + +Some thought the way they used Hart's nephew that night was just a +little mite too hard lines--he not being let to have as much as a +single drink in him, and so kept plumb sober while the Hen give him +his medicine; but all hands allowed--after his sassy talk to her--he +didn't get no more'n she'd a right to give. She just went at him like +a blister, the Hen did; and she blistered him worse because she did it +in her own funny way--telling him she did just dote on stage-drivers, +and if he really wanted to please her he'd take Hill's job regular; +and leading the boys up to him and introducing him, lady-like, as "the +hold-up hero"; and asking him to please to tell her all about that +fourteen-foot road-agent he'd killed; and just rubbing the whole thing +in on him every way she knowed how. Before the Hen got done with him +he was about the sickest man, Hart's nephew was, you ever seen! But I +guess it learned him quite a little about how when he talked to ladies +he'd better be polite. + +Fun wasn't no name that night for that Hen! She kept on wearing her +Mexican clothes, and she did look real down cute in 'em; and she'd got +a God-forsaken old rusty pepper-box six-shooter from somewheres, and +went flourishing it about saying it was what she'd held up the coach +with; and in between times, when she wasn't deviling Hart's nephew, +she'd go round the room drawing beads on the boys with her pepper-box, +and making out she was dangerous by putting her big black beard on, +and standing up in attitudes so the boys might see, she said, how +road-agenty she looked and bad and bold! Why, the Hen did act so +comical that night all hands pretty near died with their laugh! + + + + +IV + +SANTA FE CHARLEY'S KINDERGARTEN + + +When Bill Hart, who was a good fellow and kept the principal store in +Palomitas, got word his aunt in Vermont was coming out to pay him a +visit--it being too late to stop her, and he knowing he'd have to +worry the thing through somehow till he could start her back East +again--he was the worst broke-up man you ever seen. + +"Great Scott! Joe," Hart said, when he was telling Cherry about +it, "Palomitas ain't no sort of a town to bring aunts to--and it's +about the last town I know of where Aunt Maria'll fit in! She's +the old-fashioned kind, right up to the limit, Aunt Maria is. +Sewing-societies and Sunday-schools is the hands she holds +flushes in; and she has the preacher once a week to supper; and +when it comes to kindergartens--Hart was so worked up he talked +careless--she's simply hell! What's a woman like that going to +do, I want to know, in a place like this--that's mainly made up +of saloons and dance-halls and faro-banks, and everybody mostly +drunk, and shooting-scrapes going on all the time? It just makes +me sick to think about it." And Hart groaned. + +Cherry swore for a while, sort of friendly and sociable--he was a +sympathetic man, Cherry was, and always did what he could to help--and +as Hart was too far gone to swear for himself, in a way that amounted +to anything, hearing what Cherry had to say seemed to do him good. + +"I'd stop her, if there was any stop to her," he went on, in a minute +or two, speaking hopeless and miserable; "but there ain't. She says +she's starting the day after she writes--having a chance to come +sudden with friends--and that means she's most here now. And there's +no heading her off--because she says the friends she's hooked fast to +may be coming to Pueblo and may be coming to Santa Fe. But it don't +make any difference, she says, as she's told she can get down easy by +the railroad from Pueblo, or she can slide across to Palomitas by 'a +short and pleasant coach-ride'--that's what she calls it--from Santa +Fe. + +"That's all she tells about her coming. The rest of what's in her +letter is about how glad she'll be to see me, and about how glad she +knows I'll be to see her--being lonely so far from my folks, and +likely needing my clothes mended, and pleased to be eating some of her +home-made pies. It's just like Aunt Maria to put in things like that. +You see, she brought me up--and she's never got out of her head I'm +more'n about nine years old. What I feel like doing is going out in +the sage-brush and blowing the top of my fool head off, and letting +the coyotes eat what's left of me and get me out of the way!" + +Hart really did look as if he meant it, Cherry said afterwards. He was +the miserablest-looking man, he said, he'd ever seen alive. + +Cherry said he begun to have a notion, though, while Hart was +talking, how the thing might be worked so there wouldn't be no real +trouble if it could be fixed so Hart's aunt wouldn't stay in +Palomitas more'n about a day; and he come right on down to the +Forest Queen to see if he could get the boys to help him put it +through. He left Hart clearing out the room he kept flour and meal +in--being the cleanest--trying to rig up for his aunt some sort of +a bunking-place. He was going to give her his own cot and mattress, +he said; and he could fit her out with a looking-glass and a basin +and pitcher all right because he kept them sort of things to sell; +and he said he'd make the place extra tidy by putting a new +horse-blanket on the floor. Seeing his way to getting a grip on that +much of the contract, Cherry said, seemed to make him feel a little +less bad. + +Cherry waited till the deal was over, when he got to the Forest Queen; +and then he asked Santa Fe Charley if he'd let him speak to the boys +for a minute before the game went on. He was always polite and +obliging, Santa Fe was, and he said of course he might; and he rapped +on the table with his derringer for order, and said Mr. Cherry had the +floor. Charley was old-fashioned in his ways of fighting. He always +had a six-shooter in his belt, same as other folks; but he said he +kept it mainly for show. Derringers, he said, was better and +surer--because you could work 'em around in your pocket while the +other fellow was getting his gun out, and before he was ready for +business you could shoot him right through your pants. Later on, it +was that very way Santa Fe shot Hart. But he always was friendly with +Hart till he did shoot him; and it was more his backing than anything +else--'specially when it come to the kindergarten--that made Cherry's +plan for helping Hart out go through. + +When the game was stopped, and the boys was all listening, Cherry told +about the hole Hart was in and allowed it was a deep one; and he said +it was only fair--Hart having done good turns for most everybody, one +time and another--his friends should be willing to take some trouble +to get him out of it. Hart's aunt, he said, come from a quiet part of +Vermont, and likely would be jolted bad when she struck Palomitas if +things was going the ordinary way--she being elderly, and like enough +a little set in her ways, and not used much to crazy drunks, and +shooting-matches, and such kinds of lively carryings-on. But she'd +only stay one day, or at most a day and a half--Hart having agreed to +take her right back East himself, if she couldn't be got rid of no +other way--and that gave 'em a chance to fix things so her feelings +wouldn't be hurt, though doing it was going to be hard on all hands. +And then, having got the boys worked up wondering what he was driving +at, Cherry went ahead and said he wanted 'em to agree--just for the +little while Hart's aunt was going to stay there--to run Palomitas +like it was a regular back-East Sunday-school town. He knew he was +asking a good deal, he said, but he did ask it--and he appealed to the +better feelings of the gentlemen assembled around that faro-table to +do that much to get Bill Hart out of his hole. Then Cherry said he +wasn't nobody's orator, but he guessed he'd made clear what he wanted +to lay before the meeting; and he said he was much obliged, and had +pleasure in setting up drinks for the crowd. + +As was to be expected of 'em, all the boys--knowing Hart for a +square-acting man, and liking him--tumbled right off to Cherry's plan. +Santa Fe said--this was after they'd had their drinks--he s'posed he +was chairman of the meeting, and he guessed he spoke the sense of the +meeting when he allowed Mr. Cherry's scheme was about the only way out +for their esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Hart, and it ought to go +through. But as it was a matter that seriously affected the comfort +and convenience of everybody in Palomitas, he said, it was only square +to take a vote on it--and so he'd ask all in favor of Mr. Cherry's +motion to say "Ay." And everybody in the room--except the few that was +asleep, or too drunk to say anything--said "Ay" as loud as they knowed +how. + +"Mr. Cherry's motion is carried, gentlemen," Santa Fe said; "and I +will now appoint a committee to draught a notice to be posted at the +deepo, and to call around at the other banks and saloons in the town +and notify verbally our fellow-citizens of the action we have +taken--and I will ask the Hen here kindly to inform the other ladies +of Palomitas of our intentions, and to request their assistance in +realizing them. She had better tell them, I reckon, that the way they +can come to the front most effectively in this crisis is by keeping +entirely out of sight in the rear." + +The Sage-Brush Hen, along with some of the other girls, had come in +from the back room--where the dancing was--to find out what the circus +was about; and when they caught on to what Palomitas was going to be +like when Hart's aunt struck it they all just yelled. + +[Illustration: "WROTE OUT A NOTICE THAT WAS TACKED UP ON THE DEEPO DOOR"] + +"You've come out well once as the Baptist minister, Charley," the Hen +said, shaking all over; "and I reckon you can do it again--only it +won't be so easy showing off the new church and the parsonage by +daylight as it was in the dark. About us girls laying low, maybe +you're right and maybe you're not right. Anyway, don't you worry about +us. All I'll say is, it won't be the ladies in this combine that'll +give anything away!" And she and the other girls got so to laughing +over it they all of 'em had to set down. + +Cherry was more pleased than a little the way things had gone--and he +said so to the boys, and set up drinks all round again. Then he and +Abe Simons--they was the committee to do it--wrote out a notice that +was tacked up on the deepo door and read this way: + + TO THE CITIZENS OF PALOMITAS + + Mr. William Hart's aunt is coming to pay him a visit, and will + strike this town either by the Denver train to-morrow morning or + the Santa Fe coach to-morrow afternoon. + + She is a perfect lady, and it is ordered that during her stay in + Palomitas this town has got to behave itself so her feelings won't + be hurt. She is to be took care of and given a pleasant + impression. All fights and drunks must be put off till she's + gone. Persons neglecting to do so will be taken out into the + sage-brush by members of the committee, and are likely to get + hurt. + + Mr. Hart regrets this occurrence as much as anybody, and agrees + his aunt's visit sha'n't last beyond a day and a half if she comes + down from Denver, and only one day if she comes in from Santa Fe. + + (_Signed_) THE COMMITTEE. + +When Cherry got a-hold of Hart and told him what the town had agreed +to do for him he was that grateful--being all worked up, anyway--he +pretty near cried. + +As it turned out, Hart's aunt come in on Hill's coach from Santa +Fe--her friends having gone down that way by the Atchison--and as Hill +had been at the meeting at the Forest Queen he was able to give things +a good start. Hill always was a friendly sort of a fellow, and--except +he used terrible bad language, which he said come of his having to +drive mules--he was a real first-class ladies' man. + +Hill said he spotted Hart's aunt the minute he set his eyes on her +waiting for the coach at the Fonda, there not being likely to be +more'n one in the Territory of that kind. She was a trig little old +lady, dressed up in black clothes as neat as wax, he said, with a +little black bonnet setting close to her head; and she wore gold specs +and had a longish nose. But she'd a real friendly look about her, +he said; and while she spoke a little precise and particular she +wasn't a bit stuck-up, and seemed to be taking things about as they +happened to come along. When he asked her if she wouldn't set up on +the box with him, so she could see the country, she said that was +just what would suit her; and up she come, he said, as spry as a queer +little bird. Then he whipped up his mules--being careful not to use +any language--and got the coach started, and begun right off to be +agreeable by telling her he guessed he had the pleasure of knowing +her nephew, and asking her if she wasn't the aunt of Mr. William +Hart. + +Well, of course that set things to going pleasant between 'em; and +when she'd allowed she was Hart's aunt, and said she was glad to meet +a friend of his, she started in asking all the questions about Bill +and about Palomitas she knowed how to ask. + +Hill said he guessed that day they had to lay off the regular +recording angel and put a hired first-class stenographer on his +job--seeing how no plain angel, not writing shorthand, could a-kept up +with all the lies he felt it his duty to tell if he was going to bring +Bill through in good shape and keep up the reputation of the town. It +wasn't square to charge them lies up to him, anyway, Hill said, seeing +he only was playing Cherry's hand for him; and he said he hoped they +was put in Cherry's bill. By the time he'd got through with his fairy +tales, he said, he'd give Hart such a character he didn't know him +himself; and he'd touched up Palomitas till he'd got it so it might +a-been a town just outside Boston--only he allowed they was sometimes +troubled with hard cases passing through; and he told her of course +she'd find things kind of half-baked and noisy out there on the +frontier. And she must remember, he told her, that all the folks in +the town was young--young men who'd brought their young wives with +'em, come to hustle in a new country--and she mustn't mind if things +went livelier'n the way she was used to back East. + +Hill said she said she wasn't expecting to find things like they was +at home, and she guessed she'd manage all right--seeing she always got +on well with young people, and wasn't a bit set in her own ways. And +she said she was as pleased as she was surprised to find out the kind +of a town Palomitas was--because her nephew William's letters had led +her to think it had a good many bad characters in it; and he'd not +mentioned any church but the Catholic one where the natives went; and +as to the Bible Class and the Friendly Aid Society, he'd never said a +word about 'em at all. She went on talking so cheerful and pleasant, +Hill said, it give him creeps in his back; and he got so rattled the +last half of the run--coming on from Pojuaque, where they'd had dinner +at old man Bouquet's--he hardly knowed what he'd told and what he +hadn't, and whether he was standing on his head or his heels. + +Being that way, he made the only break that gave trouble afterwards. +She asked him if there was a school in Palomitas, and he told her +there wasn't, because all the folks in town was so young--except the +natives, who hadn't no use for schools--they hadn't any children big +enough to go to one. And then she said sudden, and as it seemed to him +changing the subject: "Isn't there a kindergarten?" Hill said he'd +never heard tell of such a concern; but he sized it up to be some sort +of a fancy German garden--like the one Becker'd fixed up for himself +over to Santa Cruz--and he said he allowed, from the way she asked +about it, it was what Palomitas ought to have. So he told her there +was, and it was the best one in the Territory--and let it go at that. +He said she said she was glad to hear it, as she took a special +interest in kindergartens, and she'd go and see it the first thing. + +Hill said he knowed he'd put his foot in it somehow; but as he didn't +know how he'd put his foot in it, he just switched her off by telling +her about the Dorcas Society. He had the cards for that, he said, +because his mother'd helped run a Dorcas Society back East and he +knowed what he was talking about. The Palomitas one met Thursdays, he +told her, at the Forest Queen. That was the principal hotel, he told +her, and was kept by Mrs. Major Rogers, who was an officer's widow and +had started the society to make clothes for some of the Mexican poor +folks--and he said it was a first-rate charity and worked well. It +tickled him so, he said, thinking of any such doings at the Forest +Queen--with old Tenderfoot Sal, of all people, bossing the job!--he +had to work off the laugh he had inside of him by taking to licking +his mules. + +But it went all right with the little old lady; and she was that +interested he had to strain himself, he said, making up more stories +about it--till by good luck she took to telling him about the Dorcas +Society she belonged to herself, back home in Vermont; and was so full +of it she kept things going easy for him till they'd crossed the +bridge over the Rio Grande and was coming up the slope into the town +at a walk. + +Up at the top of the slope Santa Fe Charley stood a-waiting for +'em--looking, of course, in them black clothes and a white tie on, +like he was a sure-enough preacher--and as the coach come along he +sung out, pleasant and friendly: "Good-afternoon, Brother Hill. I +missed you at the Bible Class last evening. No doubt you were detained +unavoidably, and it's all right. But be sure to come next Friday. We +don't get along well without you, Brother Hill." And Santa Fe took his +hat off stylish and made the old lady the best sort of a bow. + +Hill caught on quick and played right up to Santa Fe's lead. "That's +our minister, Mr. Charles, ma'am. The one I've been telling you +about," he said. "He's just friendly and sociable like that all the +time. He looks after the folks in this town closer'n any preacher +I ever knowed." A part of that, Hill said, was dead certain +truth--seeing as Santa Fe had his eyes out straight along for +everybody about the place who'd a dollar in his pocket, and wasn't +satisfied till he'd scooped in that dollar over his table at the +Forest Queen. + +"There's the new church we're building," Hill went on, as they got to +the top of the slope and headed for the deepo. "It ain't much to look +at yet, the spire not being put on; and it won't show up well, even +when it gets its spire on it, with churches East. But we're going to +be satisfied with it, seeing it's the best we can do. You'll be +interested to know, ma'am, your nephew give the land." + +"William hasn't let on anything about it," Hart's aunt said, looking +pleased all over. "But what in the world is a church doing with a +railroad track running into it, Mr. Hill?" + +Hill said he'd forgot about the track when he settled to use the new +freight-house for church purposes; but he said he pulled himself +together quick and told her the track was temp'ry--put in so building +material could unload right on the ground. And then he took to talking +about how obliging the railroad folks had been helping 'em--and kept +a-talking that way till he got the coach to the deepo, and didn't need +to hustle making things up any more. He said he never was so thankful +in his life as he was when his stunt was done. He was just tired out, +he said, lying straight ahead all day over thirty miles of bad road +and not being able once to speak natural to his mules. + + * * * * * + +Hart was waiting at the deepo, on the chance his aunt would come in on +the coach; and when she saw him she give a little squeal, she was so +pleased, and hopped down in no time off the box--she was as brisk as a +bee in her doings--and took to hugging him and half crying over him +just like he was a little boy. + +"Oh, William," she said, "I am _so_ happy getting to you! And I'm +happier'n I expected to be, finding out how quiet and respectable +Palomitas is--not a bit what your letters made me think it was--and +such real good people living in it, and everything but the queer +country and the queer mud houses just like it is at home. Mr. Hill +has been telling me all about it, coming over, and about this new +church you're building that you gave the lot for. To think you've +never told me! Oh, William, I am so glad and so thankful that out here +in this wild region you've kept serious-minded and are turning out +such a good man!" + +Hart looked so mixed up over the way his aunt was talking, and so sort +of hopeless, that Hill cut in quick and give him a lift. "He's not +much at blowing about himself, your nephew ain't, ma'am," Hill said. +"Why, he not only give the land for the church over there"--and Hill +pointed at the freight-house, so Hart could ketch on--"but it was him +got the Company to lay them temp'ry tracks, so the building stuff +could be took right in. He's going to give a melodeon, too." + +"Dear William!" Hart's aunt said. "It rejoices my heart you're doing +all these good deeds--and all the others Mr. Hill's been telling me +about. I must kiss you again." + +"Oh, what I've done ain't nothing," Hart said, pulling himself +together while she was kissing him. "Land's cheap, cheap as it can be, +out here; and I give the Company such a lot of freight they're more'n +willing to oblige me; and as to the melodeon--" + +Hart sort of gagged when he got to the melodeon, and Santa Fe +Charley--who'd come up while they all was talking away together--reached +across the table and played his hand. "As to the melodeon, Mr. +Hart," Santa Fe put in, "you said that being in business you could get +it at a discount off. But that does not appreciably lessen your +generosity, Mr. Hart; and your aunt"--Santa Fe took off his hat and +bowed handsome--"is justified in taking pride in your good deeds. I am +glad to tell her that in her nephew our struggling church has its +stanchest pillar and its strongest stay." + +"Yes, that's the way it is about the melodeon, Aunt Maria," Hart said, +kind of weak and mournful. "Being in business, I get melodeons at such +a discount off that giving 'em away ain't nothing to me at all. And +now I guess we'd better be getting along home. It's a mighty mean home +to take you to, Aunt Maria; but there's one comfort--as you'll find +out when I get the chance to talk to you--you won't have to stay in it +long." + +There was a lot of the boys standing round on the deepo platform +watching the show, and they all took their hats off respectful--following +the lead Santa Fe give 'em--as Hart started away up the track, to where +his store was, with his aunt on his arm. The town looked like some place +East keeping Sunday: the Committee having talked strong as to what +they'd do if things wasn't quiet, and having rounded up--and coralled in a +back room Denver Jones lent the use of--the few who'd got drunk as +usual because they had to, and so had to be took care of that way. It +was a June evening, and the sun about setting; and somehow it all was +so sort of peaceful and uncommon--with everybody in sight sober, and no +fighting anywhere, and that little old lady going along, believing +Palomitas was like that always, instead of the hell on earth it +was--some of us more'n half believed we'd gone to sleep and got stuck in +a dream. + +Things was made dreamier by the looks and doings of the Sage-Brush +Hen. She was the only lady of the town, the Hen was, who took part in +the ceremonies--and likely it was just about as well, for the sake of +keeping clear of surprises, the rest of 'em laid low. As Hart and his +aunt went off together up the track, the Hen showed up coming along +down it; and she was dressed that pretty and quiet--in the plainest +sort of a white frock, and wearing a white sun-bonnet--and was looking +so demure, like she could when she'd a mind to, nobody knowed at first +who she was. + +"Being the minister's wife, I've been taking the liberty, Mr. Hart," +she said, smiling pleasant, when the three of 'em come together on the +track, "of looking around a little up at your place to see that +everything has been fixed for your company the way it should be." (She +hadn't been nowheres near Hart's place, it turned out--but Gospel +truth wasn't just what there was most of that day in Palomitas.) She +went right on down the track without stopping, passing on Hart's side, +and saying to him: "My husband expects you as usual at the Friendly +Aid meeting to-morrow evening, Mr. Hart. We never seem half to get +along, you know, when you're not there." + +Hart's aunt give a little jump, and said: "Why, William, that must be +Mrs. Charles, the minister's wife. What a pleasant-spoken lady she is! +We met her husband just as we were driving into town." + +Hart said he come pretty near saying back to her, "The hell you +did!"--Hart talked that careless way, sometimes--but he said he pulled +up before it got out, and all he did say was, "Oh!" + +"She must be at the head of the Dorcas Society that Mr. Hill was +telling me about," Hart's aunt went on; "and like enough she manages +the kindergarten, too. I suppose, William, it's not surprising you +haven't said anything in your letters about the Dorcas Society--for +all you were so liberal in helping it--but I do think you might have +told me about the kindergarten, knowing what a hobby of mine +kindergartens are. I want to go and see it to-morrow morning, the +first thing." + +"It's--it's not in running order just now," Hart said. "Most of the +children was took sick with the influenza last week, and there's +whooping-cough and measles about, and so the school committee closed +it down. And they had to stop, anyway, because they're going to put a +new roof on. I guess it won't blow in again for about a month--or +maybe more. In fact, I don't know--you see, it wasn't managed well, +and got real down unpopular--if it'll blow in again at all. I'm sorry +you won't be able to get to it, Aunt Maria. Maybe it'll be running if +you happen to come out again next year." + +"Why, how queer that is, William!" Hart's aunt said. "Mr. Hill told me +it was the best kindergarten in New Mexico. But of course you know. +Anyhow, I can see the schoolroom and the school fixtures, and Mrs. +Charles can tell me about it when I go to the Dorcas Society--and +that'll do most as well. Of course I must get to the Dorcas Society. +Mrs. Charles will take me, I'm sure. It meets, Mr. Hill says, every +Thursday afternoon." + +"Did he say where it was meeting now?" Hart asked. He was getting +about desperate, he told Cherry afterwards; and what he wanted most +was a chance to mash Hill's fool head for putting him in such a lot of +holes. + +"Of course he did, William," said Hart's aunt; "and I'm surprised you +have to ask--seeing what an interest you take in the Society, and how +you've helped it along. It was just lovely of you to give them all +those goods out of your store to make up into clothes." + +"That--that wasn't anything to do," Hart said. "What's in the store +comes with a big discount--same as melodeons. Sometimes I feel as if I +was saving money giving things away." + +"You can talk about your generosity just as you please, William," she +went on. "_I_ think it's noble of you. And Mr. Hill said that Mrs. +Major Rogers--who keeps the Forest Queen Hotel, he said, and lets the +Society have a room to meet in for nothing--said it was noble of you, +too. I want to get to know Mrs. Major Rogers right off. She must be a +very fine woman. She's an officer's widow, Mr. Hill says, and a real +lady, for all she makes her living keeping a hotel out here on the +frontier. If she's a bit like that sweet-looking Mrs. Charles I know +we'll get along. I'm surprised, William, you've never told me what +pleasant ladies live here. It must make all the difference in the +world. Don't you think it would do for me not to be formal, but just +to go to Mrs. Major Rogers' hotel to-morrow and call?" + +"I guess--well, I guess you hadn't better go right off the first thing +in the morning, Aunt Maria," Hart said. Thinking of his aunt going +calling at the Forest Queen and running up against Tenderfoot Sal, he +said, gave him the regular cold shakes. "And come to think of it," he +said, "it's no use your going to-morrow at all. Mrs.--Mrs. Major +Rogers, as I happen to know, went up to Denver yesterday; and she +won't be back, she told me, before some time on in the end of next +week--likely as not, she said, she wouldn't come then." + +By that time they'd got along to Hart's store, and Hart said: "Here's +where I live, Aunt Maria. You see what sort of a place it is. But I've +done my best to fix things for you as well as I know how. Come right +along in--and when we've had supper we've got to have a talk." + + * * * * * + +Along about ten o'clock that night Hart come down to the Forest Queen +looking pale and haggard, and he was that broke up he had to get three +drinks in him before he could say a word. Everybody was so interested, +wanting to hear what he had to tell 'em, he didn't need to ask to have +the game stopped--it just stopped of its own accord. + +When he'd had his third drink, and was beginning to feel better, he +said he couldn't thank everybody enough for the way they'd behaved; +and that his aunt had gone to bed tired out; and he'd been talking +with her steady for two hours getting things settled; and she'd ended +by agreeing she'd start back East with him the next night--he having +made out he'd smash in his business if he waited a minute longer--and +they was going by the Denver train. And he'd got her fixed he said, so +she'd keep quiet through the morning--as she was going right at +mending his stockings and things the first thing when she got up; and +after that she was full of getting to work with canned peaches and +making him a pie. + +"But what's going to happen in the afternoon," he said, "the Lord only +knows! That blasted fool of a Ben Hill"--Hart spoke just that bitter +way about it--"hasn't had no more sense 'n to go and tell her this +town's full of kindergartens, and she's so worked up there's no +holding her, as kindergartens happens to be the fullest hand she +holds. I've allowed we have one--things being as they was, I had +to--but I've told her it's out of order, and the children laid up with +whooping-cough, and the teacher sick a-bed, and the outfit damaged by +a fire we had, and--and the Lord knows what I haven't told her about +the damn thing." (Hart was that nervous he couldn't help speaking that +way.) "But all I've said hasn't made no difference. She's just dead +set on getting to what's left of that kindergarten, and I can't budge +her. See it she will, she says; and I guess the upshot of Hill's +chuckle-headed talk'll be to waste all the trouble we've took by +landing us in the biggest give-away that ever was!" And Hart called +for another drink, and had to set down to take it--looking pale. + +All the boys felt terrible bad about the hole Hart was in; and they +felt worse because none of 'em hadn't no notion what a kindergarten +did--when it did anything--and that made 'em more ashamed Palomitas +hadn't one to show. Only Becker--Becker'd happened to come over from +Santa Cruz that night--sized it up right; and Becker shook his head +sort of dismal and said there wasn't no use even thinking about +it--and that looked like a settler, because Becker seemed to know. +Nobody didn't say nothing for a minute or two; and then Ike Williams +spoke up--he was the boss carpenter on the freight-house job, Ike +was--and said if what was wanted could be made out of boards, and made +in a hurry, he'd lay off the freight-house gang the next morning and +engage to have one ready by noon. + +Santa Fe Charley'd been sitting still thinking, not saying a word. +He let out a big cuss--and Charley wasn't given to cussing--when Ike +made his offer; and then he banged his hand down on the table so hard +he set the chips to flying, and he said: "Mr. Hart, don't you +worry--we're going to put this job through!" + +Everybody jumped up at that--some of 'em scrambling for the dropped +chips--asking Santa Fe what he meant to do. But Charley wouldn't +answer 'em. "Just you trust to Ike and me, Bill," he said. "We'll fix +your kindergarten all right--only you keep on telling your aunt it +ain't a good one, and how most of it got burned up in the fire. It's +luck you let on to her there'd been a fire--that makes it as easy as +rolling off a log. All you've got to do is to bring her down here at +four o'clock to-morrow afternoon--you'd better till then keep her in +the house, mending you up and making you all the pies she has a mind +to--and when she gets here the kindergarten'll be here, too!" + +"Bring her here--to the Forest Queen?" Hart said, speaking doubtful. + +"Bring her here--right here to the Forest Queen," Santa Fe said back +to him. "You know pretty well I do things when I say I'll do 'em--and +this thing'll be done! Come to think of it," he said, "maybe it'll be +better if I go to your place and fetch her along myself. It'll help if +I do a little talking to her on the way down. Yes, we'll fix it that +way. You and she be ready at four o'clock, and I'll come for you. +That'll give her an hour here, and an hour to go home and eat her +supper--and that'll get us to train-time, and then the circus'll close +down. Now you go home and go to bed, Bill. You're all beat out. Just +you leave things to Ike and me and go right home." + +Charley wouldn't say another word--so Hart had one more drink, for +luck, and then he went home. He looked real relieved. + +When Santa Fe went to Hart's place, next afternoon, he had on his best +black clothes, with a clean shirt and a fresh white tie; and he was +that serious-looking you'd have sized him up for a sure-enough +fire-escape anywhere on sight. Hart hadn't had no trouble, it turned +out, keeping his aunt to home--she'd been working double tides ever +since she got up, he said, making him things to eat and fussing over +his clothes. They was all ready when Santa Fe come along, and the +three of 'em stepped off down the track together--Hart having his aunt +on his arm, and Santa Fe walking on ahead over the ties. Most of the +boys was standing about watching the procession; but the girls--the +Hen, likely, having told 'em to--was keeping on keeping quiet, and got +what they could of it peeping through chinks in the windows and +doors. + +"Why, where _are_ all the ladies, Mr. Charles?" Hart's aunt asked. +"Except that sweet young wife of yours, it's just the mortal truth I +haven't seen a single lady since I came into this town!" + +"They usually keep in-doors at this time of day, madam," Charley said. +"They're attending to their domestic duties--and--and most of them, +about now, are wont to be enjoying the tenderest happiness of +motherhood in nursing their little babes." + +"It's very creditable they're such good housewives, I'm sure," said +Hart's aunt; "only I do wish I could have met some of 'em and had a +good dish of talk. But we'll be finding your wife at the kindergarten, +I s'pose, and I'll have the pleasure of a talk with her. I've been +looking forward all day to meeting her, Mr. Charles. She has one of +the very sweetest faces I ever saw." + +"I deeply regret to tell you, madam," said Santa Fe, "that my wife was +called away suddenly last evening by a telegram. She had no choice in +the matter. Her call was to minister to a sick relative in Denver, and +of course she left immediately on the night train. Her disappointment +at not meeting you was great. She had set her heart on showing you +over our poor, half-ruined kindergarten--the fire did fearful +damage--but her duty was too manifest to be ignored, and she had to +leave that pleasant task to me." + +"Now that is just too bad!" said Hart's aunt. "At least, Mr. Charles, +I don't mean that exactly. It's very kind of you to take her place, +and I'm delighted to have you. But I did so like your wife's looks, +and I've been hoping she and I really'd have a chance to get to be +friends." + +That brought 'em to the Forest Queen, and Charley was more'n glad he +was let out from making more excuses why his wife had shook her +kindergarten job so sudden. "Here we are," he said. "But I must warn +you again, madam, that our little kindergarten is only the ghost of +what it was before the fire. We are hoping to get a new outfit +shortly. On the very morning after the disaster a subscription was +started--your nephew, as always, leading in the good work--and that +afternoon we telegraphed East our order for fresh supplies. By the +time that the epidemic of whooping-cough has abated--I am glad to say +that all the children are doing well--we trust that our flock of +little ones again can troop gladly to receive the elementary +instruction that they delight in, and that my wife delights to +impart." + +"Why," said Hart's aunt, "the kindergarten's in Mrs. Major Rogers' +hotel--the Forest Queen!" + +"After the fire, Mrs. Major Rogers most kindly gave us the free use of +one of her largest rooms," Santa Fe said; "and we are installed here +until our own building can be repaired. I have spared you the sight, +madam, of that melancholy ruin. I confess that when I look at it the +tears come into my eyes." + +"I don't wonder, I'm sure," said Hart's aunt. "I think I'd cry over it +myself. But what a real down good woman Mrs. Major Rogers must be! Mr. +Hill told me she gives the Dorcas Society the use of a room, too." + +"She is a noble, high-toned lady, madam," Santa Fe said. "Since her +cruel bereavement she has devoted to good works all the time that she +can spare from the arduous duties by which she wins her livelihood. +Words fail me to say enough in her praise! Come right in, madam--but +be prepared for a sad surprise!" + +Hart said he didn't know how much surprised his aunt was--but he said +when he got inside the Forest Queen, into the bar-room where Charley's +faro layout usually was, he was so surprised himself he felt as if +he'd been kicked by a mule! + +There was the little tables for drinks, right enough; and out of the +way in a corner with a cloth over it, same as usual, was the wheel. +(It was used so little, the wheel was--nobody but Mexicans, now and +then, caring for it--Santa Fe owned up afterwards he'd forgot it +clean!) That much of the place was just as it always was; and the big +table, taking up half the room, looked so natural--with the chairs up +to it, and layouts of chips at all the places--that Hart was beginning +to think Santa Fe was setting up a rig on him: 'till he seen what a +lot of queer things besides chips there was on the table--and knowed +they wasn't no game layout, and so sized 'em up to be what Charley'd +scrambled together when he set out to play his kindergarten hand. And +when he noticed the bar was curtained off by sheets he said he stopped +worrying--feeling dead certain Charley'd dealt himself all the aces he +needed to take him through. + +"You don't need to be told, madam, being such an authority on +kindergartens," said Santa Fe, "how inadequate is our little outfit +for educational purposes. But you must remember that the fire +destroyed almost everything, and that we have merely improvised what +will serve our purposes until the new supply arrives. We succeeded in +saving from the conflagration our large table, and our chairs, and +most of the small tables--used by individual children having backward +intellects and needing especial care. But nearly all of the other +appliances of the school were lost to us, and damage was done to much +of what we saved. Here, you see, is a little table with only three +legs left, the fourth having been burned." And, sure enough, Hart +said, Santa Fe turned up one of the little tables for drinks and one +of its legs _was_ burnt off! "All of our slates," he went ahead, +"similarly were destroyed--and how much depends on slates in a +kindergarten you know, madam, better than I do. Here is all that is +left of one of them"--and he showed Hart's aunt a bit of burnt wood +that looked like it had been part of a slate-frame afore it got +afire. + +"Dear me! Dear me!" said Hart's aunt. "It's just pitiful, Mr. Charles! +I wonder how you can get along at all." + +"It is not easy getting along, madam," Santa Fe said. "But we have +managed to supply ourselves with a layout--I--that is--I mean we have +provided ourselves with some of the simpler articles of most +importance; and with these, for the time being, we keep our little +pupils' hands and minds not unprofitably employed. For instance, the +ivory disks of various colors--which you see arranged upon the table +as the pupils have left them--serve very successfully to elucidate the +arithmetical processes of numeration, addition, and subtraction; and +the more intelligent children are taught to observe that the disks of +varying colors are varyingly numbered--white, 1; red, 5, and blue, +10--and so are encouraged to identify a concrete arbitrary figure with +an abstract thought." + +"That's something new in kindergartening, Mr. Charles," said Hart's +aunt; "and it's as good as it can be. I mean to put it right into use +in our kindergarten at home. Do you get the disks at the places where +they sell kindergarten supplies?" + +"Really, madam, I cannot tell you," Santa Fe said. "You see, we +ordered what would be needed through an agent East, and these came +along. I must warn you, however, that they are expensive," Hart said, +remembering what them chips had cost him, one time and another, he +allowed to himself Charley was right and they was about as expensive +as they could be! + +"Our other little appliances, madam," Santa Fe went on, "are just our +own makeshift imitations of what you are familiar with--building-blocks, +and alphabet-blocks, and dissected pictures, and that sort of thing. +Our local carpenter made the blocks for us, and we put on the lettering +ourselves--as, indeed, its poor quality shows. The dissected pictures I +am rather proud of, because Mrs. Charles may be said to have invented +them." (It really was the Hen who'd made 'em, it turned out.) "The +method is simple enough when you have thought of it, of course--and no +doubt I value my wife's work unduly because I take so much pride in +all that she does. You see, she just pasted pictures from the +illustrated papers on boards; and then Mr. Williams--our carpenter, you +know--sawed the boards into little pieces. And there you are!" + +"Now that _was_ bright of her!" said Hart's aunt. "If you don't mind, +I'll put one of the pictures together myself right now. I want to see +how it looks, made that home-fashioned way." + +"I fear that our time is getting a little short, madam," said Santa +Fe, in a hurry. "I've got my sermon to finish this afternoon, and I +must be going in a few minutes now." The fact of the matter was he had +to call her off quick. It seems the Hen hadn't had anything but +_Police Gazettes_ to work on--and while the bits looked all right +jumbled up, being put together they wouldn't have suited nohow at +all. + +"Of course I mustn't keep you," said Hart's aunt. "You've been more +than kind, Mr. Charles, to give me so much of your valuable time as it +is. I'm just like a child myself, wanting to play with dissected +pictures that way! But I must say that her making them is a thing for +your wife to be proud of--and I hope you'll tell her so for me." + +"I guess we'd better be going now, Aunt Maria," Hart said. "Mr. +Charles has his sermon to write, you know, and I want you to have time +to eat your supper comfortable before we start down to the train." + +"I do suppose we must go," said Hart's aunt. "But I hate to, William, +and that's a fact! Just because it's so make-shifty, this is the most +interesting kindergarten I've ever been in. When I get home I shall +really and truly enjoy telling the folks about it. And I know how +pleased they'll be, the same as I am, by finding what earnest-working +men and women can do--out here in this rough country--with so little +to go on but their wits and their own good hearts!" + +And then she faced round sudden on Santa Fe and said: "I see you have +your table covered with green, Mr. Charles. What's that for? You've so +many good notions about kindergartens that I'd like to know." + +"Well, you see, madam, that green cover is a--it's a sort of--" +Charley went slow for a minute, and then got a-hold of the card he +wanted and put it down as smooth as you please. "That is an invention, +madam," he said, "of my good wife's, too. Out here, where the sun is +so violent, she said we must have a green cover on the table or the +glare would be ruining all our dear little innocent children's eyes. +And it has worked, madam, to a charm! Some of the children who had bad +eyes to start with actually have got well!" + +"Well, I do declare!" said Hart's aunt. + +"That wife of yours thinks so sensible she just beats all!" + +Santa Fe give Hart a look as much as to say he'd got to get his aunt +away somehow--seeing she was liable to break out a'most anywheres, and +he'd stood about all he could stand. Hart allowed what Charley wanted +was reasonable, and he just grabbed her by the arm and begun to lug +her to the door. But she managed to give Santa Fe one more jolt, and a +bad one, before she was gone. + +"I haven't seen what this is," she said; and she broke off from Hart +and went to where the wheel was standing covered up in the corner. "I +s'pose I may look at it, Mr. Charles?" she said--and before either of +'em could get a-hold of her to stop her she had off the cloth. "For +the land's sake!" she said. "Whatever part of a kindergarten have you +got here?" + +Hart said afterwards his heart went down into his boots, being sure +they'd got to a give-away of the worst sort. Santa Fe said he felt +that way for a minute himself; then he said he ciphered on it that +Hart's aunt likely wouldn't know what she'd struck--and he braced up +and went ahead on that chance. + +"Ah," he said--speaking just as cool as if he was calling the deal +right among friends at his own table--"that is one of the new German +kindergarten appliances that even you, madam, may not have seen. We +received it as a present from a rich German merchant in Pueblo, who +was grieved by our pitiable plight and wanted to do what he could to +help us after the fire." + +"But what in the name of common-sense," said Hart's aunt, "do you do +with it--with all those numbers around in circles, and that little +ball?" + +[Illustration: "'ONE OF THE NEW GERMAN KINDERGARTEN APPLIANCES'"] + +Charley had himself in good shape by that time, and he put down his +words as sure as if they was aces--with more, if needed, up his +sleeve. "It is used by our most advanced class in arithmetic, madam," +he said. "The mechanism, you will observe, is arranged to revolve"--he +set it a-going--"in such a way that the small sphere also is put in +motion. And as the motion ceases"--it was slowing down to a stop--"the +sphere comes to rest on one of the numbers painted legibly on either a +black or a red ground. The children, seated around the table, are +provided with the numerating disks to which I have already called your +attention; and--with a varying rapidity, regulated by their individual +intelligence--they severally, as promptly as possible, arrange their +disks in piles corresponding with the number indicated by the purely +fortuitous resting-place of the sphere. The purpose of this ingenious +contrivance, as I scarcely need to point out to you, is to combine the +amusement of a species of game with the mental stimulus that the rapid +computation of figures imparts. I may add that we arouse a desirable +spirit of emulation among our little ones by providing that the child +who first correctly arranges his disks to represent the indicated +figure is given--until the game is concluded--the disks of the +children whose calculation has been slow, or at fault." + +"Well, of all things in the world, Mr. Charles," said Hart's +aunt, "to think of my finding such a good thing as this out +here in New Mexico--when I've time and again been over the best +kindergarten-supply places in Boston, and have been reading all I +could lay my hands on about kindergartens for twenty years!" + +"Oh, we do try not to be too primitive out here, madam," said Santa +Fe, taking a long breath over having got through all right; "and I am +even vain enough to think that perhaps we manage to keep pretty well +up with the times. But I must say that it is a pleasant surprise to me +to find that I have been able to give more than one point to a lady +like you, who knows every card--I should say, to whom kindergarten +processes are so exceptionally well known. + +"And now I really must beg your permission to leave you, that I may +return to my sermon. I give much time to my sermons; and I am cheered +by the conviction--you must not think me boastful--that it is time +well employed. When I look around me and perceive the lawless, and +even outrageous, conditions which obtain in so many other towns in the +Territory, and contrast them with the orderly rectitude of Palomitas, +I rejoice that my humble toil in the vineyard has brought so rich a +reward. I deeply regret, madam, that your present stay with us must be +so short; and with an equal earnestness I hope that it may be my +privilege soon again to welcome you to our happy little town." + +Hart's aunt--she was just pleased all over--was beginning to make a +speech back to him; but Santa Fe looked so wore out Hart didn't give +her the chance to go on. He just grabbed her, and got her away in a +hurry--and Charley went to fussing with the cover of the wheel, +putting it on again, so she couldn't get at him to shake hands for +good-bye. He said afterwards he felt that weak, when he fairly was +shut of her, all he could do was to flop down into a chair anyway and +sing out to Blister Mike to come and get the sheets off the bar quick +and give him his own bottle of Bourbon and a tumbler. And he said he +never took so many drinks, one right on top of another, since he was +born! + +There was more'n the usual crowd down at the deepo that night when the +Denver train pulled out--with Hart's aunt in the Pullman, and Hart +standing on the Pullman platform telling the boys up to the last +minute how much he was obliged. + +Things went that same Sunday-school way right on to the end of the +game; and Hart said his aunt told him--as they was coming along down +to the deepo--she never would a-believed there could be such a town as +Palomitas was, out in that wild frontier country, if she hadn't seen +it with her own eyes. As to the ladies of the town, he said she told +him they certainly was the most domestic she'd ever known! + +Hart was so grateful--and he had a right to be--he left a hunderd +dollars with Tenderfoot Sal and told her to blow off the town for him +that night by running a free bar. Sal done it, right enough--and that +turned out to be about the hottest night Palomitas ever had. Most of +the trouble was in the dance-hall, where it was apt to be, and had its +start, as it did generally, right around the Sage-Brush Hen: who kept +on being dressed up in her white frock and wearing her white +sun-bonnet, and looked as demure as a cotton-tail rabbit, and cut up +so reckless I reckon she about made a record for carryings on! Santa +Fe had to fix one feller because of her--shooting him like he was used +to, through his pants-pocket--and more'n a dozen got hurt in the +ordinary way. + +Some of the shooting didn't seem quite as if it was needed; but it was +allowed afterwards--even if there hadn't been no free bar--there was +excuse for it: seeing the town was all strung up and had to work +itself off. Santa Fe, of course, had more excuse than anybody, being +most strung-upest. Bluffing his way through that kindergarten game, he +said, was the biggest strain he'd ever had. But he didn't mind what +trouble he'd took, he said, seeing he'd got Hart out of his hole by +taking it; and he looked real pleased when Hill spoke up--just about +voicing what all the rest of us was thinking--saying he was ready, +after the way he'd played his kindergarten hand, to put his pile on +Santa Fe Charley to make iced drinks in hell! + +Of course Hill oughtn't to have spoke like that. But allowances was to +be made for Hill--owing to the ways he'd got into driving mules. + + + + +V + +BOSTON'S LION-HUNT + + +As I've said, folks in Palomitas mostly got for names what happened to +come handiest and fitted. Likely that dude's cuffs was marked with +something he was knowed by; but as most of us wasn't particular what +his cuffs was marked, or him either, we just called him Boston--after +the town he made out he belonged to--and let it go at that. Big game +was what he said he was looking for: and Santa Fe Charley, with Shorty +Smith and others helping, saw to it he got all he wanted and some +over--but I reckon the exercises would a-been less spirited if the +Sage-Brush Hen hadn't chipped in and played a full hand. + +He was one of the sporting kind, Boston was, that turned up frequent +in the Territory in them days. Most of 'em was friends of officers at +some of the posts, with a sprinkling throwed in of sons and nephews of +directors of the road. Big game was what they all made out they come +for; and they was apt to have about as much use for big game--when +they happened to find any--as a cat has for two tails. But they seemed +to enjoy letting off ca'tridges--and used to buy what skins was in the +market to take home. + +Boston turned out to be a nephew--nephews was apt to be worse'n sons +for stuck-upness--and he come in one morning in a private car hitched +onto the Denver train. He had a colored man along to cook and clean +his guns for him--he had more things to shoot with, and of more shapes +and sizes, than you ever seen in one place outside of a gun-store--and +he was dressed that nice in green corduroys, with new-fangled knives +and hunting fixings hanging all over him like he was a Christmas-tree, +he might have hired out for a show. He wasn't a bad set-up young +feller; but with them green clothes on, and being clean shaved and +wearing eye-glasses, he did look just about what he truly was. + +Wood had a wire a director's nephew was coming--he was the agent, Wood +was--and orders to side-track his car and see he was took care of; and +of course Wood passed the word along to the rest of us what sort of a +game was on. But he begged so hard, Wood did, the town would hold +itself in--saying if rigs was put up on a director's nephew he was +dead sure to lose his job--we all allowed we'd give the young feller a +day or two to turn round in, anyway; and we promised Wood--who was +liked--we'd let the critter get through his hunting picnic without +putting up no rigs on him if he made any sort of a show of knowing how +to behave. Howsomedever, he didn't--and things started up, and nobody +but Boston himself to blame for it, that very first night over in the +bar-room at the Forest Queen. + +He had Wood in to supper with him in his car, Boston did, the darky +cooking it; and Wood said--except it begun with their having pickled +green plums, and some sort of messed-up stuff that tasted like spoilt +salt fish and made him feel sickish--it was the best supper he ever +eat. Each of 'em had a bottle of iced wine, he said; and he said they +topped off with coffee that only wanted milk to make it a real wonder, +and a drink like rock-and-rye, but chalks better, and such seegars as +he'd never smoked in his born days. + +All the time they was hashing--and Wood said he reckoned they was at +it a'most a full hour--Boston kept a-telling what a hell of a one +(that was the sort of careless way Wood put it) he was at big-game +hunting; but Wood judged--taking all his talk together--the only thing +he'd ever really shot bigger'n a duck or a pa'tridge was a deer the +dogs had chased into a pond for him so it hadn't no chance. But it +wasn't none of Wood's business to stop a director's nephew from +blowing if he felt like it, and so he just let him fan away. Bears +wasn't bad sport, he said, and he didn't mind filling in time with +'em if he couldn't get nothing better; but what he'd come to Palomitas +for 'special, he said, was mountain-lions--he seemed to have it in his +head he'd find 'em walking all over the place, same as cats--and he +wanted to know if any'd lately been seen. + +Wood told him them animals wasn't met with frequent in them parts (and +they wasn't, for a fact, and hadn't been for about a hunderd years, +likely) and maybe he'd do better to set his mind on jack-rabbits--which +there was enough of out in the sage-brush, Wood told him, to load his +car. And then he looked so real down disappointed, seeming to think +jack-rabbits wasn't anyways satisfactory, Wood said he told him there +was chances some of the boys over at the Forest Queen--they being all +the time out in the mountains looking for prospects--might put him +on to finding a bear, anyway; and it wouldn't do no harm to go across to +the Queen and ask. And so over the both of 'em come. + +It was Wood's mistake bringing that green-corduroyed pill right in +among the boys without giving notice, and Wood owned up it was +later--allowing he'd a-been more careful if the rock-and-rye stuff on +top of the wine, not being used to either of 'em, hadn't loaded him +more'n he knowed about at the time. Boston didn't seem to be much +loaded, likely having the habit of taking such drinks and so being +able to carry 'em; but he was that high-horsey--putting on his +eye-glasses and staring 'round the place same as if he'd struck a +menagerie and the boys was beasts in cages--all hands was set spiteful +to him right off. + +Things was running about as usual at the Queen: most of the boys +setting around the table and Santa Fe dealing; a few of 'em standing +back of the others looking on; two or three getting drinks at the bar +and talking to Blister; and the girls kicking their heels on the +benches, waiting till it come time to start up dancing in the other +room. The only touch out of the common was the way the Sage-Brush Hen +had fixed herself--she being rigged up in the same white duds she'd +wore when Hart's aunt come to town, and looking so real cute and +pretty in 'em, and acting demure to suit, nobody'd ever a-sized her +for the gay old licketty-split Hen she was. + +[Illustration: "STARING 'ROUND THE PLACE SAME AS IF HE'D STRUCK A +MENAGERIE"] + +It was between deals when Wood and Boston come in, and Santa Fe got up +from the table and crossed over to 'em--Charley always was that polite +you'd a-thought he was a fish-hook with pants on--and told Boston he +hoped he seen him well, and was glad he'd come along. Then Wood told +how he was after mountain-lions, and wasn't likely to get none; and +Charley owned up they was few, and what there was of 'em was so sort +of scattered the chances for finding 'em was poor. + +Boston didn't say much of nothing at first, seeming to be took up with +trying to make out where Santa Fe belonged to--hitching on his +eye-glasses and looking him over careful, but only getting puzzleder +the more he stared. You see, Charley--in them black clothes and a +white tie on--looked for certain sure like he was a minister; and +there he was getting up red-hot from dealing faro, and having on each +side of where he set at the table a forty-five gun. It was more of a +mix-up than Boston could manage, and you could see he didn't know +where he was at. Howsomedever, Wood had told him he'd better make out +to be friendly, and take just what happened to come along without +asking no questions; and I reckon the shoat really meant, as well as +he knowed how to, to do what he was told. So he give up trying to size +Santa Fe, and said back to him he was obliged and was feeling hearty; +and then he took to grinning, like as if he wanted to make things +pleasant, and says: "Really, I am very much interested in my +surroundings. This place has quite the air of being a barbarian Monte +Carlo. It really has, you know." + +That was a non-plusser for Charley--and Santa Fe wasn't non-plustered +often, and didn't like it when he was--but he pulled himself together +and put down what cards he had: telling Boston monte was a game he +sometimes played with friends for amusement--which was the everlasting +truth, only the friends mostly was less amused than he was--and he'd +had a dog named Carlo, he said, when he was a boy. + +Boston seemed to think that was funny, and took to snickering sort of +superior. He was about a full dose for uppishness, that young feller +was: going on as if he'd bought the Territory, and as if the folks in +it was the peones he'd took over--Mexican fashion--along with the +land. Then he said he guessed Santa Fe did not ketch his meaning, and +Monte Carlo was the biggest gambling hell there was. + +Being in the business, Santa Fe was apt to get peevish when anybody +took to talking about gambling; and Boston's throwing in hell on top +of it that way was more'n he cared to stand. He didn't let on--at +least not so the fool could see it--his dander was started, setting on +himself being one of the things his work trained him to; but the boys +noticed he begun to get palish up at the top of his forehead--where +there was a white streak between his hair and where his hat come--and +all hands knowed that for a bad sign. Boston, of course--being +strangers with him--didn't know what Charley's signs was; and he just +kept on a-talking as fresh as his green clothes. + +"Not less psychologically than sociologically," says he, "is it +interesting to find in this slum of the wilderness the degenerate +Old-World vices in crude New-World garb. Here," says he, jerking his +head across to the table, "is a coarse reproduction of Monaco's +essence; and there, I observe, are other repulsive features equally +coarse"--and he jerked his head over to where Shorty Smith was setting +up drinks for Carrots at the bar. + +"If you dare to say one word more about my features, young man," says +Carrots--having a pug-nose, Carrots was techy about her features; and +she had a temper the same color as her hair--"I'll smack you in the +mouth!" + +"And Oi'll smack your whole domn head off!" put in Blister Mike. +"D'you think Oi'm going to have ladies drinking at my bar insulted by +slush like you?" And Blister reached down to where he kept it among +the tumblers to get his gun. + +It looked as if there was going to be a ruction right off. There was +Carrots red-hotter than her hair; and Blister, who was special +friends with Carrots, shooting mad at having anybody sassing her; and +Santa Fe's forehead getting whiter and whiter; and all hands on their +hind legs at having Palomitas called a slum of the wilderness--and +likely worse things said about the place in words nobody'd ever heard +tell of longer'n your arm. The only one keeping quiet was Wood. He was +sure, Wood was, trouble was coming beyond his stopping; and as he +knowed which side his bread was buttered, and how he'd be fired from +his job if things happened to go serious, he just went and sat down +in a corner and swore to himself sorrowful, and was about the +miserablest-looking man you ever seen alive. I guess it was more'n +anything else being pitiful for Wood made things take the turn they +did when the Sage-Brush Hen come into the game. + +"Now you all hear _me_!" the Hen sung out sudden--and as the Hen +wasn't much given to no such public speaking, and the boys was used to +doing quick what she wanted when she asked for it, everybody stopped +talking and Blister put his gun down on the bar. Most of us, I reckon, +had a feeling the Hen was going to let things out in some queer way +she'd thought of in that funny head of hers--same as she'd done other +times when matters was getting serious--and we all was ready to help +her with any skylarking she was up to that would put a stop to the +rumpus and so get Wood out of his hole. As for Boston--being too much +of a fool to know what he'd done to start such a racket--he was all +mazed-up by it: staring straight ahead of him like a horse with +staggers, and looking like he wished he'd never been born. + +"You all hear _me_, I tell you!" says the Hen, taking a-hold of +Boston's arm sort of motherly. "While I am the school-teacher in +Palomitas I shall not permit you boys to play your pranks on +strangers; and 'specially not on this gentleman--whom I claim as a +friend of mine because we both come from the same dear old town." + +That was the first time anybody'd ever heard the Hen wasn't +hatched-out in Kansas City. But it didn't seem as if calling her hand +would be gentlemanly, so nobody said nothing; and off she went +again--talking this time to Boston, but winking the eye away from him +at the boys. + +"It is merely a joke, sir," says the Hen, "that these young men are +playing on you--and as silly a joke as silly can be. Sometimes, in +spite of my most earnest efforts to stop them, they will go on in this +foolish way: pretending to be wild and wicked and murderous and all +such nonsense, when in reality there is not a single one among them +who willingly would hurt a fly. What Miss Mortimer said about smacking +you, as I hardly need to explain, was a joke too. Dear Miss Mortimer! +She is as full of fun as a kitten, and as sweet and gentle"--Carrots, +not seeing what the Hen was driving at, all the time was looking like +a red-headed thunder-storm--"as the kindest-hearted kitten that ever +was! + +"And now, I assure you, sir, this reprehensible practical joking--for +which I beg your indulgence--definitely is ended; and I am glad to +promise that you will find in evidence, during the remainder of your +stay in Palomitas, only the friendliness and the courtesy which truly +are the essential characteristics of our seemingly turbulent little +town." + +The Hen stopped for a minute to get her wind back--which give the boys +a chance to study over what they was told they was, and what kind of a +town it turned out to be they was living in--and then off she went +again, saying: "I beg that you will pardon me, sir, for addressing you +so informally, without waiting for an introduction. We do not always +stand strictly on etiquette here in Palomitas; and I saw that I had to +put my cards down quick--I mean that I had to intervene hurriedly--to +save you from being really annoyed. Now that I have cleared up the +trifling misunderstanding, I trust satisfactorily, we will go back to +where we ought to have started and I will ask Mr. Charles to introduce +us." And round she cracked to Santa Fe and says: "Will you be so kind +as to introduce my fellow-townsman to me, Mr. Charles?" + +Santa Fe had begun to get a little cooled off by that time; and, like +as not--it was a wonder the way them two passed cards to each +other--the Hen give him some sort of a look that made him suspicion +what her game was. Anyway, into it he come--saying to Boston, talking +high-toned and polite like he knowed how to: "I have much pleasure, +sir, in presenting you to Miss Sage, who is Palomitas's idol--and a +near relative, as you may be interested in knowing, of the eminent +Eastern capitalist of the same name. As she herself has mentioned, +Miss Sage is our school-teacher; but her modest cheek would be +suffused with blushes were I to tell you how much more she is to +us--how broadly her generous nature prompts her to construe her duties +as the instructress of innocent youth. Only a moment ago you had an +opportunity for observing that her word is our law paramount. I am +within bounds in saying, sir, that in Palomitas she is universally +adored." + +"Oh, Mr. Charles! How can you!" says the Hen, kind of turning away and +looking as if what Charley'd said really had made her feel like +blushing a little. Then she faced round again and shook hands with +Boston--who was so rattled he seemed only about half awake, and done +it like a pump--and says to him: "Mr. Charles is a born flatterer if +ever there was one, sir, and you must pay no attention whatever to his +extravagant words. I only try in my poor way, as occasion presents +itself"--she let her voice drop down so it went sort of soft and +ketchy--"to mollify some of the harsher asperities of our youthfully +strenuous community; to apply, as it were, the touchstone of Boston +social standards--the standards that you and I, sir, recognize--to the +sometimes too rough ways of our rough little frontier settlement. It +is true, though, and I am proud to say it, that the boys do like +me--of course Mr. Charles's talk about my being an idol and adored is +only his nonsense; and it is true that they always are nice about +doing what I ask them to do--as they were just now, when they were +naughty and I had to make them behave. + +"And now, since the formalities have been attended to and we have been +introduced properly, and since you and I are fellow-Bostonians and +ought to be friendly"--the Hen give him one of them fetching looks of +hers--"you must come over to the bar and have a drink on me. And while +we are performing this rite of hospitality," says the Hen--pretending +not to see the jump he give--"we can discuss your projected lion-hunt: +in which, with your permission, I shall take part." Boston give a +bigger jump at that; and the Hen says on to him, sort of explaining +matters: "You need not fear that I shall not sustain my end of the +adventure. As any of the boys here will tell you, I can handle a +forty-five or a Winchester about as well as anybody--and big-game +hunting really is my forte. Indeed, I may say--using one of our +homely but expressive colloquialisms--that when it comes to +lion-hunting I am simply hell!" + +Boston seemed to be getting worse and worse mixed while the Hen was +rattling her stuff off to him--and I reckon, all things considered, he +wasn't to be blamed. He'd got a jolt to start with, when he come in +and found what he took to be a preacher dealing faro; and he was worse +jolted when his fool-talk--and he not knowing how he'd done it--run +him so close up against a shooting-scrape. But the Hen was the limit: +she looking and acting like the school-ma'am she said she was, and yet +tangled up in a bar-room with a lot of gamblers and such as Kerosene +Kate and old Tenderfoot Sal and Carrots--and then bringing the two +ends together by talking one minute like he was used to East, and the +next one wanting to set up drinks for him and telling him she knowed +all there was to know about gun-handling and how at lion-hunting she +was just hell! I guess he was more'n half excusable, that young feller +was, for looking like he couldn't be counted on for telling for +certain on which end of him was his heels! + +What he did manage to work out clear in that fool head of his was he +had the chance to get the drink he needed, and needed bad, to brace +him; so over he come with the Hen to the bar and got it--and it seemed +to do him some good. Then Carrots--who'd begun to ketch on a little to +what the Hen was after--spoke up and told him it was true what Miss +Sage had told him about her kittenishness, and she hadn't meant +nothing when she was talking about smacking him; and to show he had no +hard feeling, she said, he must have one on her. Then Blister Mike, +having sized matters up, chipped in too: saying it would make him feel +comfortabler--having done some joking himself by talking the way he +did and getting his gun out--if they'd all have one on the bar. + +As drinks in Palomitas was sighted for a thousand yards, and carried +to kill further, by the time Boston had three of 'em in him--on top of +the ones he'd had with Wood at supper--he was loaded enough to be +careless about what was happening among the sunspots and ready to +take things pretty much as they come along. The boys was ready for +what might be coming too: allowing for sure the Hen was getting a +circus started, and only waiting to follow suit to the cards she put +down. + +What was needed, it turned out, was stacked with Shorty Smith; and the +Hen sort of picked up Shorty with her eyes and says to him: "Your +little boy Gustavus--he is _such_ a dear little fellow, and I do love +him so!--was telling me at recess to-day, Mr. Smith, that you saw a +lion when you were out in the mountains day before yesterday +prospecting. I think that very likely you may have seen the fierce +creature even more recently; and perhaps you will have the kindness to +tell us"--the Hen winked her off eye at Shorty to show him what was +wanted--"where he probably may be found at the present time?" + +Some of the boys couldn't help snickering right out when the Hen took +to loading up Shorty with little Gustavuses; but Boston didn't notice +nothing, and Shorty--who had wits as sharp as pin-points, and could be +counted on for what cards was needed in the kind of game the Hen was +playing--put down the ace she asked for and never turned a hair. + +"Gustavus will be tickled out of his little boots, Miss," says Shorty, +"when I tell him how nice you've spoke about him; and I'm much obliged +myself. He give it to you straight, the kid did, about that lion. I +seen him, all right--and so close up it most scared the life out of +me! And you're right, Miss, in thinking I've ketched onto him +since--seeing I was a blame sight nearer to him than I wanted to be +less'n four hours ago. Yes, ma'am, as I was coming in home to-night +from the Canada I struck that animal's tracks in the mud down by the +ford back of the deepo--he'd been down to the river for a drink, I +reckon--and they was so fresh he couldn't a-been more'n five minutes +gone. When I got to thinking what likely might a-happened if I'd come +along them five minutes sooner, Miss, I had cold creeps crawling all +up and down the spine of my back!" + +Them statements of Shorty's set the boys to snickering some +more--there not being no ford on the Rio Grande this side of La +Chamita, and the wagon-bridge being down back of the deepo where he +said his ford was--but Shorty paid no attention, and went on as smooth +as if he was speaking a piece he'd got by heart. + +"As you know, Miss, being such a hunter," says he--making up what +happened to be wanted about lions, same as he'd done about fords--"them +animals takes a drink every four hours in the night-time as regular +as if they looked at their watches. Likely that feller's bedded just a +little way back in the chaparral so's to be handy for his next one; +and I reckon if this sport here feels he needs lions"--Shorty give his +head a jerk over to Boston--"he'll get one by looking for it right now. +But for the Lord's sake, Miss, don't you think of taking a hand in +tackling him! He's a most a-terrible big one--the out and out biggest +I ever seen. The first thing you knowed about it, he'd a-gulped you +down whole!" + +"How you do go on, Mr. Smith!" says the Hen, laughing pleasant. "Have +you so soon forgotten our hunt together last winter--when I came up +and shot the grizzly in the ear just as he had you down and was +beginning to claw you? And are you not ashamed of yourself, after +that, to say that any lion is too big for me?" + +Without stopping for Shorty to strain himself trying to remember that +bear-hunt, round she cracked to Boston--giving Shorty and Santa Fe a +chance to get in a corner and talk quick in a whisper--and says to +him: "We just _are_ in luck! These big old ones are the real fighters, +you know. Only a year ago there was a gentleman from the East here on +a lion-hunt--it was his first, and he did not seem to know quite how +to manage matters--and one of these big fierce ones caught him and +finished him. It was very horrible! The dreadful creature sprang on +him in the dark and almost squeezed him to death, and then tore him to +pieces while he still was alive enough to feel it, and ended by eating +so much of him that only a few scraps of him were left to send East +to his friends. This one seems to be just that kind. Isn't it +splendid! What superb sport we shall have in getting him--you and I!" + +What the Hen had to say about the way lions done business--'specially +their eating hunters like they was sandwiches on a free-lunch +counter--seemed to take some of the load off Boston, and as he got +soberer he wasn't so careless as he'd been. From his looks it was +judged he was thinking a lion some sizes smaller would be a better fit +for him; but he couldn't well say so--with the Hen going on about +wanting hers as big as they made 'em--so he took a brace, and sort of +swelled himself out, and said the bigger this one was the better he'd +be pleased. + +"But I cannot permit you, my dear young lady," he says, "to share with +me the great danger incident to pursuing so ferocious a creature. I +alone must deal with it. To-morrow I shall familiarize myself with the +locality where Mr. Smith has found its tracks; and to-morrow night, or +the night after--as the weather may determine. Of course nothing can +be done in case of rain--I will seek the savage brute in its lair. And +then we shall find out"--Boston worked up as much as he could of a +grin, but it seemed to come hard and didn't fit well--"which of us +shall have the other's skin!" + +"Danger for me!" says the Hen, giving him another of them looks of +hers. "Just as though I would not be as safe, with a brave man like +you to protect me, as I am teaching school! And to-morrow night, +indeed! Do you think lions are like dentists--only the other way round +about the teeth!" and the Hen laughed hearty--"and you can make +appointments with them a week ahead! Why, we must be off, you and I, +this very minute! I'll run right round home and get my rifle--and meet +you at your car as soon as you've got yours. To think of our having a +lion this way almost sitting on the front-door step! It's a chance +that won't come again in a thousand years!" + +Away the Hen went a-kiting; and, there not being no hole he could see +to crawl out of, away went Boston--only the schedule he run on was +some miles less to the hour. To make sure he didn't try to side-track, +Shorty went with him--leaving Santa Fe to fix matters with the Hen, +and do what talking was needed to ring in the boys. + +Shorty put through his part in good shape: helping Boston get as many +of his guns as he thought was wanted to hunt lions with--which was as +many as he could pack along with him--and managing sort of casual to +slip out the ca'tridges, so he wouldn't hurt nobody. It turned out +Shorty needn't a-been so extry-precautious--but of course he couldn't +tell. By the time Shorty had him ready, the Hen come a-hustling +up--having finished settling things with Santa Fe--and sung out to him +to get a move on, or likely the lion would a-had his drink and gone. +The move he got wasn't much of a one; but he did come a-creeping out +of the car at last, and having such a load of weepons on him as give +him some excuse for going slow. + +"Good luck to you!" says Shorty, and off he skipped in a hurry to get +at the rest of his part of the ceremonies--not paying no attention to +Boston's most getting down on his knees to him begging him to come +along. Then Boston wanted the colored man to come--who was scared out +of his black skin at the notion, and wouldn't; and if the Hen hadn't +ended up by grabbing a-hold of him--saying as it was dark, and she +knowed the way and he didn't, she'd better lead him--likely she +wouldn't a-got him started at all. Pulling him was more like what she +did than leading him, the Hen said afterwards; but she didn't kick +about his going slow and wanting to stop every minute, she said, +because it give Santa Fe and Shorty more time. + +The night was the kind that's usual in New Mexico, and just what was +wanted. There was no moon, and the starshine--all the stars looked to +be about the size of cheeses--give a hazy sort of light that made +everything seem twice as big as it really was, and shadows so black +and solid you'd think you could cut 'em in slices same as pies. And it +was so still you could a-heard a mouse sneezing half a mile off. The +rattling all over him of Boston's weepons sounded like there was +boilers getting rivetted close by. + +The Hen yanked him along easy, but kept him a-moving--and passed the +time for him by telling all she could make up about what desprit +critters lions was. Starting from where his car was side-tracked, they +went round the deepo; and then down the wagon-road pretty near to the +bridge, but not so near he could see it; and then across through the +sage-brush and clumps of mesquite till they come to the river--where +there was a break in the bluff, and a flat place going on down into +the water that looked like it was the beginning of a ford. For a fact, +it was where the Mexican women come to do their clothes-washing, and +just back from the river was a little 'dobe house--flat-topped, and +the size and shape of a twelve-foot-square dry-goods box--the women +kept their washing things in. But them was particulars the Hen didn't +happen to mention to Boston at the time. + +When they come to the 'dobe she give him a jerk, to show him he was to +stand still there; and then she grabbed him close up to her, so she +could whisper, and says: "It was here that Mr. Smith saw the ferocious +animal's foot-marks almost precisely four hours ago. The habits of +these creatures are so regular, as Mr. Smith mentioned, that this one +certainly will return for his next drink when the four hours are +ended--and so may be upon us at any moment. I hope that we may see him +coming. If he saw us before we saw him--well, it wouldn't be nice at +all!" + +The Hen let that soak in a little; and then she snuggled up to Boston, +all sort of shivery, and says: "I wish that we had taken the +precaution to ask Mr. Smith from which direction the tracks came. +These lions, you know, have a dreadful way of stealing up close to you +and then springing! That was what happened to that poor young man. So +far as was known, his first notice of his peril was finding himself +crushed to the ground beneath the creature's weight--and the next +instant it was tearing him with its teeth and claws. I--I begin to +wish I hadn't come!" And the Hen snuggled up closer and shivered +bad. + +Boston seemed to be doing some shivers on his own account, judging +from the way his guns rattled; and his teeth was so chattery his +talking come queer. But he managed to get out that if they was inside +the house they'd have more chances--and he went to work trying to open +the door. When he found he couldn't--it being locked so good there was +no budging it--he got worse jolted, and his breath seemed to be coming +hard. + +The Hen got a-hold of him again and done some more shivers, and then +she says: "It all will be over, one way or the other, in a very few +moments now. And oh, how thankful I am--since so needlessly and so +foolishly I have placed myself in this deadly peril--that I have for +my protector a brave man! If salvation is possible, you will save me I +am sure!" + +Boston tried to say something, but he'd got so he was beyond talking +and only gagged; and while he was a-gagging there come a queer +noise--sounding like it was a critter crawling around in among the +bushes--that made him most jump out of his skin! Down went his guns on +the ground all in a clatter; and he was scared so limp he'd a-gone +down a-top of 'em if the Hen hadn't got a good grip on him with both +arms. They stood that way more'n a minute, with him a-shaking all over +and the Hen doing some shaking for company--and then she hiked him +round so he pointed right and says: "Look! Look! There by those little +bushes! Oh how horrible!" And the Hen give a groan. + +What was wanted to be looked at was on hand, right enough--and I +reckon it showed to most advantage by about as much light as it got +from the stars. All they could make sure of was something alive, +moving sort of awkward and jumpy, coming out from a tangle of mesquite +bushes not more'n three rods off and heading straight for 'em; and +seeing it the way they did--just a black splotch all mixed in with the +shadows of the bushes--it looked to be most as big as a cow! Limp as +he was--so you'd a-thought there wasn't any yell in him--Boston let +off a yell that likely was heard clear across the mesa at San Juan! + +"Shoot!" says the Hen. "I can't. I'm too frightened. Shoot quick--or +we are lost!" She let go of him, so he could reach down to where he'd +spilled his gun-shop and get a weepon; but Boston wasn't on the shoot, +and he hadn't no use for weepons just then. All he wanted to do was to +run; and if the Hen hadn't got a fresh grip on him and held him--she +was a strapping strong woman, the Hen was--he would a-made a bolt for +it certain sure. + +"No! No! Don't attempt to run!" says the Hen, talking scared and +desprit. "In an instant, should we turn our backs on him, the terrible +creature would be upon us with one long cruel bound!" + +From the way the terrible creature, as the Hen called him, was a-going +on--sort of hopping up and down, and not making much headway--it +didn't look as if long cruel bounds was what he was most used to. But +Boston wasn't studying the matter extra careful, and as the Hen found +he took pretty much what she give him she just cracked along. + +"To run, I tell you," says the Hen, "is but to court the quicker +coming of the torturing death to which we are doomed. It will come +quick enough, anyway!"--and she handed out a fresh lot of shivers, and +throwed in sobs. Then she give a jump, as if the notion'd just struck +her, and says: "There is a chance for us! Up on the roof of this house +we may be safe. Lions can spring enormous distances horizontally, you +know; but, save in exceptional cases, their vertical jumping powers +are restricted to a marked degree. Quick! Put your foot in my hand and +let me start you. When you are up, you can pull me up after you. Now +then!"--and the Hen reached her hand down so she could get a-hold of +Boston's foot and give him a send. + +Her using them long words about the way lions did their jumping--being +the kind of talk he was used to--seemed to sort of brace him. +Anyways--the lion helping hurry things by just then giving another +jump or two--he managed to have sense enough to put his foot in the +Hen's hand, same as she told him; and then she let out her muscle and +give him such an up-start he was landed on the roof of the 'dobe afore +he fairly knowed he'd begun to go! Being landed, he just sprawled out +flat--and getting the Hen up after him seemed to be about the last +thing he had on his mind. + +"Help! Help!" sung out the Hen. "The lion is almost on me! Give me +your hand!" But Boston wasn't in no shape to give hands to nobody. All +he did was to kick his legs about and let off groans. + +"Oh, I understand, now," says the Hen in a minute. "You are crying out +in the hope of luring the creature into trying to reach you--as he +can, if he happens to be one of the exceptional jumpers--and so give +me a chance to get away. How noble that is of you! I shall take the +chance, my brave preserver, that your self-sacrifice gives me--and I +shall collect, and bedew with tears of gratitude, all that the savage +monster leaves me of your bones! Heaven bless you--and good-bye!" And +away the Hen cut--leaving Boston high and dry on the roof of the +'dobe, so scared he just lay there like a wet rag. + +She didn't cut far, the Hen didn't. The rest of us was a-setting +around under the mesquite bushes, and she joined the party and set +down too--stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, and holding both +hands jammed tight over it, to keep from yelling out with the laugh +that was pretty near cracking her sides. + +Then we all waited till daylight--with Shorty, who had charge of the +lion, working that animal as seemed to be needed whenever Boston +quieted down with his groans. All hands really enjoyed theirselves, +and it was one of the shortest nights I think I ever knowed. + +Daylight comes sudden in them parts. One minute it's so darkish you +can't see nothing--and the next minute the sun comes up with a bounce +from behind the mountains and things is all clear. + +When the sun did his part of the work and give all the light was +needed, we done ours--which was coming out from among the mesquite +bushes and saying good-morning polite to Boston, up on the roof of the +'dobe, and then taking the hobbles off old man Gutierrez's jackass so +it could walk away home. + +The Hen felt she needed to have one more shot, and she took it. "My +brave preserver!" says the Hen, speaking cheerful. "Come down to +me--that I may bedew with tears of gratitude your bones!" + + + + +VI + +SHORTY SMITH'S HANGING + + +Some of them summer days in Palomitas was that hot they'd melt the +stuffing out of a lightning-rod, and you could cook eggs in the +pockets of your pants. When things was that way the town was apt to +get quieted down--most being satisfied to take enough drinks early to +make it pleasant spending the rest of the day sleeping 'em off +somewheres in the shade. Along late in the afternoon, though, the wind +always breezed down real cool and pleasant from the mountains--and +then the boys would wake up and get a brace on, and whatever was going +to happen would begin. + +Being that sort of weather, nobody was paying no attention worth +speaking of to nothing: and when the Denver train come in--being +about three hours late, like it had a way of being, after a +wash-out--the place was in such a blister that pretty much all you +could hear to show anybody was alive in Palomitas was snores. Besides +Wood--who had to be awake to do his work when the train got there--and +the clump of Mexicans that always hung around the deepo at train-time, +there wasn't half a dozen folks with their eyes open in the whole +town. + +Santa Fe Charley was one of the few that was awake and sober. He made +a point, Santa Fe did, of being on hand when the train come in because +there always was chances somebody might be aboard he could do business +with; and he had to keep sober, mostly, same as I've said, or he +couldn't a-done his work so it would pay. He used to square things +up--when he really couldn't stand the strain no longer--by knocking +off dealing and having a good one lasting about a week at a time. It +was while he was on one of them tears of his, going it worse'n usual, +he got cleaned out in Denver Jones's place--and him able, when he +hadn't a jag on, to wipe up the floor with Denver!--and then went +ahead the next day, being still jagged, and shot poor old Bill Hart. +But them is matters that happened a little later, and will be spoke of +further on. + + * * * * * + +When the train pulled in alongside the deepo platform it didn't seem +at first there was nobody on it but the usual raft of Mexicans with +bundles in the day-coach--who all come a-trooping out, cluttered up +with their queer duds, and went to hugging their aunts and uncles who +was waiting for 'em in real Mexican style. Charley looked the lot over +and seen there was nothing in it worth taking time to; and then he got +his Denver paper from the messenger in the express-car and started off +to go on back to his room in the Forest Queen. + +Down he come along the platform--he was a-looking at his _Tribune_, +and not paying no attention--and just as he got alongside the Pullman +a man stepped off it and most plumped into him; and would a-plumped +if he hadn't been so beat out by the hot weather he was going slow. +He was a little round friendly looking feller, with a red face and +little gray side-whiskers; and he was dressed up in black same as +Charley was--only he'd a shorter-tailed coat, and hadn't a white tie +on, and was wearing a shiny plug hat that looked most extra unsuitable +in them parts on that sort of a day. + +"I beg your pardon, sir!" says the little man, as he pulled himself up +just in time to keep from bumping. + +Charley bowed handsome--there was no ketching off Santa Fe when it +come to slinging good manners, his being that gentlemanly he could +a-give points to a New York bar-keep--and says back: "Sir, I beg +yours! Heedlessness is my besetting sin. The fault is mine!" And then +he said, keeping on talking the toney way he knowed how to: "I trust, +sir, that you are not incommoded by the heat. Even for New Mexico in +August, this is a phenomenally hot day." + +[Illustration: "'IT'S HOTTER THAN SAHARA!' SAID THE ENGLISHMAN"] + +"Incommoded is no name for it!" says the little man, taking off his +shiny hat and mopping away at himself with his pocket-handkerchief. +"I've never encountered such heat anywhere. It's hotter than Sahara! +In England we have nothing like it at all." Then he mopped himself +some more, and went ahead again--seeming glad to have somebody to let +out to: "My whole life long I've been finding fault with our August +weather in London. I'll never find fault with it again. I'd give fifty +pounds to be back there now, even in my office in the City--and I'd +give a hundred willingly if I could walk out of this frying-pan into +my own home in the Avenue Road! If you know London, sir, you know that +St. John's Wood is the coolest part of it, and that the coolest part +of St. John's Wood--up by the side of Primrose Hill--is the Avenue +Road; and so you can understand why thinking about coming out from the +Underground and walking homeward in the cool of the evening almost +gives me a pain!" + +Santa Fe allowed he wasn't acquainted with that locality; but he said +he hadn't no doubt--since you couldn't get a worse one--it was a +better place in summer than Palomitas. And then he kind of chucked it +in casual that as the little man didn't seem to take much stock in +Palomitas maybe he'd a-done as well if he'd stuck at home. + +Charley's talking that way brought out he wasn't there because he +wanted to be, but because he was sent: coming to look things over for +the English stockholders--who was about sick, he said, of dropping +assessments in the slot and nothing coming out when they pushed the +button--before they chipped in the fresh stake they was asked for to +help along with the building of the road. He said he about allowed, +though, the call was a square one, what he'd seen being in the road's +favor and as much as was claimed for it; but when it come to the +country and the people, he said, there was no denying they both was as +beastly as they could be. Then he turned round sudden on Santa Fe and +says: "I infer from your dress, sir, that you are in Orders; and I +therefore assume that you represent what little respectability this +town has. Will you kindly tell me if it is possible in this filthy +place to procure a brandy-and-soda, and a bath, and any sort of decent +food?" + +It always sort of tickled Santa Fe, same as I've said, when a +tenderfoot took him for a fire-escape; and when it happened that way +he give it back to 'em in right-enough parson talk. So he says to the +little man, speaking benevolent: "In our poor way, sir, we can satisfy +your requirements. At the Forest Queen Hotel, over there, you can +procure the liquid refreshment that you name; and also food as good as +our little community affords. As for your bath, we can provide it on a +scale of truly American magnificence. We can offer you a tub, sir, +very nearly two thousand miles long!" + +"A tub two thousand miles long?" says the little man. "Oh, come now, +you're chaffing me. There can't be a tub like that, you know. There +really can't!" + +"I refer, sir," says Santa Fe, "to the Rio Grande." + +The little man took his time getting there, but when he did ketch up +he laughed hearty. "How American that is!" says he. And then he says +over again: "How American that is!"--and he laughed some more. Then he +said he'd start 'em to getting his grub ready while he was bathing in +that two-thousand-mile bath-tub, and he'd have his brandy-and-soda +right away; and he asked Charley--speaking doubtful, and looking at +his white necktie--if he'd have one too? + +Charley said he just would; and it was seeing how sort of surprised +the little man looked, he told the boys afterwards, set him to +thinking he might as well kill time that hot day trying how much +stuffing that sort of a tenderfoot would hold. He said at first he +only meant to play a short lone hand for the fun of the thing; and it +was the way the little man swallowed whatever was give him, he said, +that made the game keep on a-growing--till it ended up by roping in +the whole town. So off he went, explaining fatherly how it come that +preachers and brandys-and-sodas in Palomitas got along together first +class. + +"In this wildly lawless and sinful community, sir," says he, "I find +that my humble efforts at moral improvement are best advanced by +identifying my life as closely as may be with the lives of those whom +I would lead to higher planes. At first, in my ignorance, I held aloof +from participating in the customs--many of them, seemingly, +objectionable--of my parishioners. Naturally, in turn, they held aloof +from me. I made no impression upon them. The good seed that I +scattered freely fell upon barren ground. Now, as the result of +experience, and of much soulful thought, I am wiser. Over a friendly +glass at the bar of the Forest Queen, or at other of the various bars +in our little town, I can talk to a parishioner with a kindly +familiarity that brings him close to me. By taking part in the games +of chance which form the main amusement of my flock, I still more +closely can identify their interests with my own--and even materially +improve, by such winnings as come to me in our friendly encounters, +our meagre parish finances. I have as yet taken no share in the +gun-fights which too frequently occur in our somewhat tempestuous +little community; but I am seriously considering the advisability of +still farther strengthening my hold upon the respect and the affection +of my parishioners by now and then exchanging shots with them. I am +confident that such energetic action on my part will tend still more +to endear me to them--and, after all, I must not be too nicely +fastidious as to means if I would compass my end of winning their +trust and their esteem." + +While Santa Fe was talking along so slick about the way he managed his +parsoning, the little man's eyes was getting bulgier and bulgier; and +when it come to his taking a hand in shooting-scrapes they looked like +they was going to jump out of his head. All he could say was: "Good +Lord!" Then he kind of gagged, and said he'd be obliged if he could +get his brandy-and-soda right off. + +Charley steered him across to the Forest Queen, and when he had his +drink in him, and another on top of it, he seemed to get some of his +grip back. But even after his drinks he seemed like he thought he must +be asleep and dreaming; and he said twice over he'd never heard tell +of such doings in all his born days. + +Santa Fe just give a wink across the bar to Blister Mike--who didn't +need much winking, being a wide-awake one--and then he went ahead with +some more of the same kind. "No doubt, my dear sir, in the older +civilization to which you are accustomed my methods would seem +irregular--perhaps even reprehensible. In England, very likely, +unfavorable comment would be made upon a pastor who cordially drank +with members of his flock at public bars; who also--I do not hesitate, +you see, to give our little games of chance their harshest name--in a +friendly way gambled with them; and I can imagine that the spectacle +of a parish priest engaging with his parishioners, up and down the +street of a quiet village, in a fight with six-shooters and +Winchesters would be very generally disapproved." + +"It is impossible, quite impossible," says the little man, sort of +gaspy, "to imagine such a horrible monstrosity!" + +"Very likely for you, sir," says Charley, speaking affable, "it +is. But you must remember that ours is a young and a vigorous +community--too young, too vigorous, to be cramped and trammelled by +obsolete conventions and narrow Old-World rules. Life with us, you +see, has an uncertain suddenness--owing to our energetic habit of +settling our little differences promptly, and in a decisive way. +At the last meeting of our Sunshine Club, for instance--as the +result of a short but heated argument--Brother Michael, here, felt +called upon to shoot a fellow-member. While recognizing that the +occurrence was unavoidable, we regretted it keenly--Brother Michael +most of all." + +"Sure I did that," said Blister, playing out quick to the lead Charley +give him. "But your Reverence remembers he drew on me first--and if +he'd been sober enough to shoot straight it's meself, and not him, +would be by now living out in the cemetery on the mesa; and another'd +be serving your drinks to you across this bar. I had the rights on my +side." + +"Precisely," says Charley. "You see, sir, it was a perfectly fair +fight. Brother Michael and his fellow-member exchanged their shots in +an honorable manner--and, while we mourn the sudden decease of our +friend lost to us, our friend who survives has suffered no diminution +of our affectionate regard. Had the shooting been unfair, then the +case would have gone into another category--and our community promptly +would have manifested the sturdy sense of justice that is inherent in +it by hanging the man by whom the unfair shot had been fired. Believe +me, sir"--and Santa Fe stood up straight and stuck his chest +out--"Palomitas has its own high standards of morality: and it never +fails to maintain those standards in its own stern way!" + +The little man didn't say nothing back. He looked like he was sort of +mazed. All he did was to ask for another brandy-and-soda; and when +he'd took it he allowed he'd skip having his bath and get at his +eating right away--saying he was feeling faintish, and maybe what he +needed was food. Of course that was no time of day to get victuals: +but Santa Fe was a good one at managing, and he fixed it up so he had +some sort of a hash layout; and before he went at it he give him a +wash-up in his own room. + +It was while he was hashing, Charley said, the notion come to him how +Palomitas might have some real sport with him--the same kind they had +when Hart's aunt come on her visit, only twisting things round so it +would be the holy terror side of the town that had the show. And he +said as he'd started in with the preacher racket, he thought they +might keep that up too--and make such an out and out mix-up for the +little man as would give cards to any tenderfoot game that ever was +played. Santa Fe always was full of his pranks: and this one looked to +pan out so well, and was so easy done, that he went right across to +the deepo and had a talk with Wood about how things had better be +managed; and Wood, who liked fun as much as anybody, caught on quick +and agreed to take a hand. + +The little man seemed to get a brace when he had his grub inside of +him; and over he went to the deepo and give Wood the order he had +from the President to see the books--and was real intelligent, Wood +said, in finding out how railroading in them parts was done. But when +he'd cleaned up his railroad job, and took to asking questions about +the Territory, and Palomitas, and things generally--and got the sort +of answers Santa Fe had fixed should be give him, with some more +throwed in--Wood said his feet showed to be that tender he allowed it +would a-hurt him with thick boots on to walk on boiled beans. + +Wood said he guessed he broke the lying record that afternoon; and he +said he reckoned if the little man swallowed half of what was give +him, and there wasn't much of anything he gagged at, he must a-thought +Palomitas--with its church twice Sundays and prayer-meetings regular +three times a week, and its faro-bank with the preacher for dealer, +and its Sunshine Club that was all mixed in with shooting-scrapes, and +its Friendly Aid Society that attended mostly to what lynchings was +needed--was something like a bit of heaven that had broke out from +the corral it belonged in and gone to grazing in hell's front yard! + +When he'd stuffed him as much as was needed, Wood told him--Santa Fe +having fixed it that way--there was a Mexican church about a thousand +years old over in the Canada that was worth looking at; and he told +him he'd take him across on his buck-board to see it if he cared to +go. He bit at that, just as Santa Fe counted on; and about four +o'clock off they went--it was only three mile or so down to the +Canada--in good time to get him back and give him what more was coming +to him before he started off North again on the night train. Wood said +the ride was real enjoyable--the little man showing up as sensible as +anybody when he got to the church and struck things he knowed about; +and it turned out he could talk French, and that pleased the padre--he +was that French one I've spoke about, who was as white as they make +'em--and so things went along well. + + * * * * * + +The wind had set in to blow down the valley cool and pleasant as they +was getting along home; and coming down on it, when they got about +half a mile from Palomitas, they begun to hear shooting--and it kept +on, and more of it, the closer they come to town. Knowing what Santa +Fe had set the boys up to, Wood said he pretty near laughed out when +he heard it; but he held in, he said--and told the little man, when he +asked what it meant, that it didn't mean nothing in particular: being +only some sort of a shooting-scrape, like enough--the same as often +happened along about that time in the afternoon. + +He said the little man looked queerish, and wanted to know if the men +in the town was shooting at a target; and when Wood said he guessed +they was targetting at each other, and likely there'd be some +occurrences, he said he looked queerisher--and said such savagery was +too horrible to be true. But he wasn't worried a bit about himself, +Wood said--he was as nervy a little man, Wood said, as he'd ever got +up to--and all he wanted was to have Wood whip the mules up, so he'd +get there quick and see what was going on. Wood whipped up, right +enough, and the mules took 'em a-kiting--going at a full run the last +half-mile or so, and not coming down to a walk till they'd crossed the +bridge over the Rio Grande and was most to the top of the hill. At the +top of the hill they stopped--and that was a good place to stop at, +for the circus was a-going on right there. + +Things really did look serious; and Wood said--for all he'd been told +what was coming--he more'n half thought the boys had got to rumpussing +in dead earnest. Three or four was setting on the ground with their +sleeves and pants rolled up tying up their arms and legs with their +pocket-handkerchiefs; there was a feller--Nosey Green, it turned out +to be--laying on one side in a sort of mixed-up heap like as if he'd +dropped sudden; right in the middle of the road Blister Mike was +sprawled out, with Santa Fe--his black clothes all over dust and his +hat off--holding his head with one hand and feeling at his heart with +the other; and just as the buck-board stopped, right in the thick of +it, Kerosene Kate come a-tearing along, with the Sage-Brush Hen close +after her, and plumped down on Mike and yelled out: "Oh, my husband! +My poor husband! He is foully slain!" + +It was all so natural, Wood said, that seeing it sudden that way give +him a first-class jolt. For a minute, he said, he couldn't help +thinking it was the real thing. As for the little man--and he likely +would have took matters just the same, and no blame to him, if his +feet had been as hard as anybody's--he swallowed the show whole. "Good +Heavens!" says he, getting real palish. "What a dreadful thing this +is!" + +Santa let go of Mike's head and got up, brushing his pants off, and +says solemn: "Our poor brother has passed from us. Palomitas has lost +one of its most useful citizens--there was nobody who could mix drinks +as he could--and the world has lost a noble man! Take away his +stricken wife, my dear," he says, speaking to the Sage-Brush Hen. +"Take poor Sister Rebecca home with you to the parsonage--my duties +lie elsewhere at present--and pour out to her from your tender heart +the balm of comfort that you so well know how to give." + +Then he come along to the buck-board, and says to the little man: "I +greatly regret that this unfortunate incident should have occurred +while you are with us. From every point of view the event is +lamentable. Brother Green, known familiarly among us because of his +facial peculiarity as Nosey Green--the gentleman piled up over there +on the other side of the road--was as noble-hearted a man as ever +lived; so was Brother Michael, whom you met in all the pride of his +manly strength only this morning at the Forest Queen bar. Both were +corner-stones of our Sunshine Club, and among the most faithful of my +parishioners. In deep despondency we mourn their loss!" + +"It is dreadful--dreadful!" says the little man. And then he wanted to +know how the shooting begun. + +"The dispute that has come to this doubly fatal ending," says Santa +Fe, shaking his head sorrowful, "related to cock-tails. In what I am +persuaded was a purely jesting spirit, Brother Green cast aspersions +upon Brother Michael's skill as a drink-mixer. The injustice of his +remarks, even in jest, aroused Brother Michael's hot Celtic nature and +led to a retort, harshly personal, that excited Brother Green's +anger--and from words they passed quickly to a settlement of the +matter with their guns. However, as the fight was conducted by both of +them in an honorable manner, and was creditable equally to their +courage and to their proficiency in the use of arms, it is now a back +number and we may discharge it from our minds. Moreover, my dear sir, +our little domestic difficulties must not be suffered to interfere +with the duties of hospitality. It is high time that you should have +your supper; and I even venture to ask that you will hurry your meal a +little--to the end that you may have opportunity, before the departure +of your train this evening, to see something of the brighter side of +our little town. After this sombre scene, you will find, I trust, +agreeable mental refreshment in witnessing--perhaps even in +participating in--our friendly card-playing, and in taking part with +us in our usual cheerful evening dance. By your leave, Brother Wood, I +will seat myself on the rear of your buck-board and drive along with +you into town." + +The little man was too jolted to say anything--and up Charley hiked +on the back of the buck-board, and away they went down the road. +The rest followed on after: with the Hen holding fast to Kerosene, +and Kerosene yelling for all she was worth; and behind come some of +the boys toting Blister's corpse--with Blister swearing at 'em for the +way they had his legs twisted, and ending by kicking loose and +making a break by the shortcut back of the freight-house for home. +The other corpse--seeing the way Blister was monkeyed with--stood +off the ones that wanted to carry him, allowing he'd be more +comfortable if he walked. + + * * * * * + +When the buck-board got down to the deepo the little man said he felt +sickish--not being used to such goings-on--and didn't care much for +eating his supper; and he said he thought likely he'd be better if he +had a brandy-and-soda to settle his insides. So him and Santa Fe went +across to the Forest Queen to get it--and the first thing they struck +was Blister, come to life again, behind the bar! + +Santa Fe hadn't counted on that card coming out--but he shook one to +meet it down his sleeve, and played it as quick as he knowed how. "Ah, +Patrick," says he, "so you have taken your poor brother's place." And +to the little man, who was staring at Blister like a stuck pig, he +says: "They were twin brothers, sir, this gentleman and the +deceased--and, as you see, so alike that few of their closest friends +could tell them apart." + +"It was worse than that," says Blister, following right along with the +same suit. "Only when one of us was drunk and the other sober, and +that way there being a difference betwane us, could we tell our own +selves apart--and indade I'm half for thinking that maybe it's meself, +and not poor Mike, that's been killed by Nosey Green this day. But +whichever of us it is that's dead, it's a domn good job--if your +Reverence will excuse me saying so--the other one of us has made of +Nosey: bad luck to the heart and lights of him, that are cooking this +blessed minute in the hottest corner of hell!" + +"Tut! Tut! Brother Patrick," says Santa Fe, speaking friendly but +serious. "You know how strongly I feel about profanity--even when, as +in the present instance, justly aroused resentment lends to it a +colorable excuse. And also, my dear brother, I beg you to temper with +charity your views as to Brother Green's present whereabouts. It is +sufficient for all purposes of human justice that he has passed away. +And now, if you please, you will supply our visitor, here--whose +nerves not unnaturally are shaken by the tragic events of the past +hour--with the brandy-and-soda that I am satisfied he really needs. In +that need, my own nerves being badly disordered, I myself share; and +as the agonizing loss that you have suffered has put a still more +severe strain upon your nerves, Brother Patrick, I beg that you will +join us. The drinks are on me." + +"Sure your Reverence has a kind heart in you, and that's the holy +truth," says Blister. "It's to me poor dead brother's health I'll be +drinking, and with all the good-will in the world!" + +They had another after that; and then Blister said there was luck in +odd numbers, and he wanted to show Palomitas knowed how to be +hospitable to strangers, and they must have one on the bar. They had +it all right, and by that time--having the three of 'em in him--the +little man said he was feeling better; but, even with his drinks to +help him, when he come to eating his supper he didn't make out much of +a meal. He seemed to be all sort of dreamy, and was like he didn't +know where he was. + +Santa Fe kept a-talking away to him cheerful while they was hashing; +and when they'd finished off he told him he hoped what he'd see of the +bright side of Palomitas--before his train started--would make him +forget the cruelly sorrowful shadows of that melancholy afternoon. He +was a daisy at word-slinging, Charley was--better'n most auctioneers. +Then they come along together back to the bar-room--where the cloth +was off the table, and the cards and chips out, ready for business to +begin. All the boys was jammed in there--Nosey Green with his face +tied up like he had a toothache, so it didn't show who he was--waiting +to see what more was coming; and they was about busting with the +laughs they had inside 'em, and ready to play close up to Santa Fe's +hand. + +Charley set down to deal, same as usual, and asked the little man to +set down aside of him--telling him he'd likely be interested in +knowing that what come to the bank that night would go to getting the +melodeon the Sunday-school needed bad. And then he shoved the cards +round the table, and things begun. The little man took it all +dreamy--saying kind of to himself he'd never in all his born days +expected to see a minister making money for Sunday-school melodeons by +running a faro-bank. But he wasn't so dreamy but he had sense enough +to keep out of the game. Santa Fe kept a-asking him polite to come +in; but he kept answering back polite he wouldn't--saying he was no +sort of a hand at cards. + +About the size of it was, in all the matters he could see his way to +that little man had as good a load of sand as anybody--and more'n +most. Like enough at home he'd read a lot of them fool Wild West +stories--the kind young fellers from the East, who swallow all that's +told 'em, write up in books with scare pictures--and that was why in +some ways he was so easy fooled. But I guess it would a-been a mistake +to pick him up for a fool all round. Anyhow, Santa Fe got a set-back +from him on his melodeon-faro racket--and set-backs didn't often come +Santa Fe's way. + +It wasn't a real game the little man was up against, and like enough +he had the savey to ketch on to what was being give him. For the look +of the thing they'd fixed to start with a baby limit, and not raise it +till he got warmed up and asked to; and it was fixed only what he +dropped--the rest going back to the boys--should stay with the bank. +But as he didn't warm up any worth speaking of, and wasn't giving +himself no chances at all to do any dropping, Santa Fe pretty soon +found out they might as well hang up the melodeon fund and go on to +the next turn. + + * * * * * + +The Sage-Brush Hen managed most of what come next, and she done it +well. She'd dressed herself up in them white clothes of hers with a +little blue bow tied on at the neck--looking that quiet and tidy and +real lady-like you'd never a-notioned what a mixed lot she was +truly--and she'd helped the other girls rig out as near the same way +as they could come. Some of 'em didn't come far; but they all done as +well as they knowed how to, and so they wasn't to be blamed. Old +Tenderfoot Sal--she was the limit, Sal was--wasn't to be managed no +way; so they just kept her out of the show. + +When Santa Fe come to see faro-banking for melodeons wasn't +money-making, he passed out word to the Hen to start up her part of +the circus--and in the Hen come, looking real pretty in her white +frock, and put her hand on his shoulder married-like and says: "Now, +my dear, it isn't fair for you gentlemen to keep us ladies waiting +another minute longer. We want our share in the evening's amusement. +Do put the cards away and let us have our dance." And then she says to +the little man, nice and friendly: "My husband is so eager to get our +melodeon--and we really do need it badly, of course--that I have +trouble with him every night to make him stop the game and give us +ladies the dance that we do so enjoy." And then she says on to Charley +again: "How has the melodeon fund come out to-night, my dear?" + +"Very well indeed. Very well indeed, my angel," Charley says back to +her. "Eleven dollars and a half have been added to that sacred +deposit; and the contributions have been so equally distributed that +no one of us will feel the trifling loss. But in interrupting our +game, my dear, you are quite right--as you always are. Our guest is +not taking part in it; and--as he cannot be expected to feel, as we +do, a pleasurable excitement in the augmentation of our cherished +little hoard--we owe it to him to pass to a form of harmless diversion +in which he can have a share." And then he says to the little man: "I +am sure, sir, that Mrs. Charles will be charmed to have you for her +partner in the opening dance of what we playfully term our ball." + +"The pleasure will be mine," says the little man--he was a real +friendly polite little old feller--and up he gets and bows to the Hen +handsome and gives her his arm: and then in he went with her to the +dance-hall, with Santa Fe and the rest of us following on. It give us +a first-class jolt to find all the girls so quiet-looking; and they +being that way braced up the whole crowd to be like a dancing-party +back East. To see the boys a-bowing away to their partners, while +Jose--he was the fiddler, Jose was--was a tuning up, you wouldn't +a-knowed where you was! + +It was a square dance to start in with: with the little man and +the Hen, and Charley and Kerosene Kate, a-facing each other; and +Denver Jones with Carrots--that was the only name she ever had in +Palomitas--and Shorty Smith and Juanita, at the sides. Them three was +the girls the Hen had done best with; and she'd fixed 'em off so well +they most might have passed for back-East school-ma'ams--at least, in +a thickish crowd. Everybody else just stood around and looked +on--and that time, with all the Forest Queen ways of managing dancing +upset, it was the turn of the Palomitas folks to think they'd struck a +dream! The little man, of course, didn't know he'd struck anything +but what went on always--and the way he kicked around spirited on +them short little fat legs of his was just a sight to see! + +Like as not he hadn't got a good sight of Kerosene Kate while she was +doing her killed husband act before supper; or, maybe, it was her +being dressed up so tidy made a difference. Anyways, he didn't at +first ketch on to her being about the freshest-made widow he'd ever +tumbled to in a dancing-party. But he got there all right when the +square dance was over, and Jose flourished his fiddle and sung out for +the Senores and Senoritas to take partners for a _valsa_, and the Hen +brought up Kerosene to foot it with him--telling him she was the +organist who was going to play the melodeon when they got it, and he'd +find her a nice partner as she was about the best dancer they had. + +When he did size her up he was that took aback he couldn't talk +straight. "But--but," says he, "isn't this the lady whose husband +was--was--" and he stuck fast. + +"Whose husband met with an accident this afternoon," says the Hen, +helping him out with it. "Yes, this is our poor sister Rebecca--but +the accident happened, you know, so many hours ago that the pang of it +has passed; and--as Mr. Green, the gentleman who shot her husband, was +shot right off himself--she feels, as we all do, that the incident is +closed." + +And then Kerosene put in: "Great Scott, mister, you don't know +Palomitas! Widows in these parts don't set round moping their +heads off all the rest of their lives. They wait long enough for +politeness--same as I've done--and then they start in on a new deal." + +The little man likely was too mixed up to notice Kerosene didn't talk +pretty, like Santa Fe and the Hen knowed how to; and he was so +all-round jolted that before he knew it--Kerosene getting a-hold of +his hand with one of hers, and putting the other on his shoulder--he +had his arm round her waist kind of by instinct and was footing it +away with her the best he knowed how. But while he was a-circling +about with her he was the dreamiest looking one you ever seen. +Kerosene said afterwards she heard him saying to himself over and +over: "This can't be real! This can't be real!" + +What happened along right away after was real enough for him--at +least, he thought it was, and that come to the same thing. He was so +dizzied up when Kerosene stopped dancing him--she was doing the most +of it, she said, he keeping his little fat legs going 'cause she +swung him round and he had to--all he wanted was to be let to set +down. So Kerosene set him--and then the next act was put through. + +Bill Hart and Shorty Smith come up to Kerosene right together, and +both of 'em asked her polite if she'd dance. She said polite she'd be +happy to; but she said, seeing both gentlemen had spoke at once for +her, they must fix it between 'em which one had the call. All the +same, she put her hand on Hart's arm, like as if he was the one she +wanted--and of course that pleased Hart and made Shorty mad. Then +the two of 'em begun talking to each other, Hart speaking sarcastic +and Shorty real ugly, and so things went on getting hotter and +hotter--till Kerosene, doing it like she meant to break up the rumpus, +shoved Hart's arm round her and started to swing away. Just as they +got a-going, Shorty out with his gun and loosed off at Hart with +it--and down Hart went in a heap on the floor. + +[Illustration: "AND DOWN HART WENT IN A HEAP ON THE FLOOR"] + +The whole place, of course, right away broke into yells and cusses, +and everybody come a-crowding into a heap--some of the boys picking up +Hart and carrying him, kicking feeble real natural, out into the +kitchen; and some more grabbing a-hold of Shorty and taking away his +gun. Kerosene let off howls fit to blow the roof off--only quieting +down long enough to say she'd just agreed to take Hart for her second, +and it was hard luck to be made a widow of twice in one day. Then she +howled more. Really, things did go with a hum! + +Santa Fe and the rest come a-trooping back from the kitchen--leaving +the door just a crack open, so Hart could peep through and see the +fun--and Santa Fe jumped up on a bench and sung out "Order!" as loud +as he could yell. Knowing what was expected of 'em, the boys quieted +down sudden; and the Hen got a-hold of Kerosene and snuggled her up to +her, and told her to weep on her fond breast--and Kerosene started in +weeping on the Hen's fond breast all right, and left off her howls. +The room was that quiet you could a-heard a cat purr. + +"My brethren," says Charley, talking sad-sounding and digging away at +his eyes with his pocket-handkerchief, "Brother Hart has left +us"--Hart being in the kitchen that was dead true--"and for the third +time to-day our Sunshine Club has suffered a fatal loss. Still more +lamentable is the case of our doubly stricken sister Rebecca--only +just recovered, by time's healing touch, from the despair of her +tragic widowhood, and at the threshold of a new glad life of wedded +happiness--who again is desolately bereaved." (Kerosene give a +dreadful groan--seeming to feel something was expected of her--and +then jammed back to the Hen's fond breast again and kept on a-weeping +like a pump.) "Our hearts are with Sister Rebecca in her woe," says +Charley. "She has all our sympathy, and the full help of our +sustaining love." + +"If I know anything about the sense of this meeting," Hill chipped in, +"it's going to do a damn sight more'n sling around sympathy." (Hill +had a way of speaking careless, but he didn't mean no harm by it.) +"That shooting wasn't a square one," says Hill; "and it's likely +there'll be another member missing from the Sunshine Club for doing +it. There's telegraph-poles," says Hill, "right across the way!" + +"Brother Hill is right," Santa Fe went on, "though I am pained that +his unhappy disposition to profanity remains uncurbed. The shot that +has laid low Brother Hart was a foul one. Justice, my friends, +exemplary justice, must be meted out to the one who laid and lowered +him; and I reckon the quicker we get Brother Smith over to the deepo, +and up on the usual telegraph-pole--as Brother Hill has suggested--the +better it'll be for the moral record of our town. All in favor of such +action will please signify it by saying 'Ay.'" And the whole +crowd--except Shorty, who voted against it--yelled out "Ay" so loud it +shook all the bottles in the bar. + +"The ayes have it," says Santa Fe, "and we will proceed. Brother Wood, +as chairman of the Friendly Aid Society, I beg that you will go on +ahead to the deepo and get ready the rope that on these occasions you +so obligingly lend us from the Company's stores. Brother Jones and +Brother Hill, you will kindly bring along the prisoner. The remaining +Friendly Aiders present will have the goodness, at the appropriate +moment, to render the assistance that they usually supply." And off +Charley went, right after Wood, with the rest of us following on: Hill +and Denver yanking along Shorty and flourishing their guns savage; the +girls in a pack around the Hen holding on to Kerosene; and Kerosene +doing her share of what was wanted by letting out yells. + +The little man was left to himself a-purpose; and he was so shook up, +while he was coming along with the crowd over to the deepo, he +couldn't say a word. But he managed to get his stamps going, though +they didn't work well, when we was all on the platform--waiting while +Wood rigged up the rope on the telegraph-pole--and he asked Santa Fe, +speaking husky, what the boys meant to do. + +"Justice!" says Charley, talking as dignified as a just-swore-in +sheriff. "As I explained to you this morning, sir, nobody in Palomitas +ever stands in the way of a fair fight--like the one you happened to +come in on at the finish a few hours ago--any more than good citizens, +elsewhere and under different conditions, interfere with the processes +of the courts. But when the fight is not fair, as in the present +instance--the gravamen of the charge against Brother Smith being that +he loosed off into Brother Hart's back when the latter did not know it +was coming and hadn't his gun out--then the moral sense of our +community crystallizes promptly into the punitive action that the case +demands: as you will see for yourself, inside of the next ten minutes, +when you see Brother Smith run up on that second telegraph-pole to the +left and kicking his legs in the air until he kicks himself into +Kingdom Come!" + +"Good Heavens!" says the little man. "You're not going to--to hang +him?" + +"We just rather are!" says Santa Fe. And then he says, talking kind of +cutting: "May I ask, sir, what you do in England with murderers? Do +you pay 'em salaries, and ask 'em out to tea-parties, and hire +somebody to see they have all the drinks they want?" + +The little man begun telling how English folks manage such matters, +and was real excited. But nobody but the Hen paid no attention to him. +The Hen--she and Kerosene was standing close aside of him--turned +round to him and said pleasant she always enjoyed most the hangings +they had by moonlight (the moon was at the full, and shining +beautiful) because the moonlight, she said, cast over them such a +glamour of romance. And her looking at moonlight hangings that way +seemed to give him such a jolt he stopped talking and give a kind of a +gasp. There wasn't no more time for talking, anyway--for just then the +train backed in to the platform and the conductor sung out the +Friendly Aiders had got to get a move on 'em, if them going by it was +to see the doings, and put Shorty through. + +Being moonlight, and the shadows thick, helped considerable--keeping +from showing how the boys had fixed Shorty up so his hanging wouldn't +come hard: with a lariat run round under his arms, his shirt over it, +and a loop just inside his collar where they could hitch the rope +fast. When they did hitch to it, things looked just as natural as you +please. + +Shorty got right into the hanging spirit--he always was a comical +little cuss, Shorty was--pleading pitiful with the boys to let up on +him; and, when they wouldn't, getting a halt on 'em--same as he'd seen +done at real hangings--by beginning to send messages to all the folks +he ever had. Santa Fe let him go on till he'd got to his uncles and +cousins--and then he said he guessed the rest of the family could make +out to do with second-hand messages from them that had them; and as it +was past train-time, and the distinguished stranger in their +midst--who was going on it--would enjoy seeing the show through, the +hanging had got to be shoved right along. When Charley'd give his +order, Carver come up--he was the Pullman conductor, Carver was, and +he had his points how to manage--and steered the little man onto the +back platform of the Pullman, where he could see well; and so had +things all ready for the train to pull out as soon as Shorty was swung +off. + +Wood, who'd had experience, had the rope rigged up in good shape over +the cross-bar of the telegraph-pole; and Hill and Denver fetched old +Shorty along--with Shorty letting on he was scared stiff, and yowling +like he'd been ashamed to if it hadn't been a bunco game he was +playing--and hitched him to it, with the boys standing close round in +a clump so they hid the way it was done. + +The little man was so worked up by that time--it likely being he +hadn't seen much of hangings--he was just a-hopping: with his plug hat +off, and sousing the sweat off his face with his pocket-handkerchief, +and singing out what was going on wasn't any better than murder, and +begging all hands not to do what he said was such a dreadful deed. + +But nobody paid no attention to him (except Carver, he was a friendly +feller, Carver was, kept a lookout he didn't tumble himself off the +platform) and when Denver sung out things was ready, and Santa Fe +sung out back for the Friendly Aiders to haul away, the boys all +grabbed onto the rope together--and up Shorty went a-kicking into the +air. + +Shorty really did do his act wonderful: kicking every which way at +first, and then only sort of squirming, and then quieting down gradual +till he just hung limp--with the kick all kicked out of him--turning +round and round slow! + +When he'd quieted, the train conductor swung his lantern to start her, +and off she went--the little man standing there on the back platform +of the Pullman, a-grabbing at the railing like he was dizzy, looking +back with all his eyes. And old Shorty up on the telegraph-pole, +making a black splotch twisting about in the moonlight, was the last +bit of Palomitas he seen! + + * * * * * + +Next day but one Carver come down again on his regular run, and he +told the boys the little man kept a-hanging onto the platform railing +and a-looking back hard till the train got clean round the curve. +Then he give a kind of a coughing groan, Carver said, and come inside +the Pullman--there wasn't no other passengers that night in the +Pullman--and plumped himself down on a seat anyways, a-looking as +white as a clean paper collar; and for a while he just set there, like +he had a pain. + +At last he roused up and reached for his grip and got his flask out +and had a good one; and when he'd had it he says to Carver, as savage +as if Carver--who hadn't had no hand in the doings--was the whole +business: "Sir, this America of yours is a continent of chaos--and you +Americans are no better than so many wild beasts!" Then he had +another; and after that he went on, like he was talking to himself: +"All I ask is to get out of this nightmare of a country in a +hurry--and safe back to my own home in the Avenue Road!" And from then +on, Carver said, till it was bedtime--except now and then he took +another--he just set still and glared. + +Carver said it wasn't any funeral of his, and so he didn't see no +need to argue with him. And he allowed, he said, maybe he had some +call to feel the way he did about America, and to want to get quick +out of it, after being up against Palomitas for what he guessed you +might say was a full day. + + + + +VII + +THE PURIFICATION OF PALOMITAS + + +In the long run, same as I said to start with, all tough towns gets to +where it's needed to have a clean-up. Shooting-scrapes is a habit that +grows; and after a while decent folks begins to be sort of sick of +such doings--and of having things all upside-downey generally--and +then something a little extry happens, bringing matters to a head, and +the white men take hold and the toughs is fired. Just to draw a card +anywheres from the pack--there was Durango. What made a clean town of +Durango was that woman getting killed in bed in her tent--the boys +being rumpussing around, same as usual, and a shot just happening her +way and taking her. It was felt that outsiders--and 'specially +ladies--oughtn't to get no such treatment; and so they had a spring +house-cleaning--after what I reckon was the worst winter a town ever +went through--and Durango was sobered right down. + +Palomitas went along the same trail, and took the same pass over the +divide. All through that year, while the end of the track hung there, +things kept getting more and more uncomfortabler. When construction +started up again--the little Englishman, in spite of the dose we give +him, reported favorable on construction and the English stockholders +put up the stake they was asked to--things got to be worse still. +Right away, as soon as work begun, the place was jammed full of +Greasers getting paid off every Saturday night, and all day Sunday +being crazy drunk and knifing each other, and in between scrappings +having their pay sucked out of 'em at the banks and dance-halls--and +most of the boys going along about the same rate, except they used +guns instead of knives to settle matters--so the town really was just +about what you might call a quarter-section of hell's front yard. + +Being that way, it come to be seen there'd got to be a clean-up; and +what was wanted for a starter was give by Santa Fe Charley shooting +Bill Hart. There was no real use for the shooting. The two of 'em +just got to jawing in Hart's store about which was the best of two +brands of plug tobacco--Hart being behind the counter, and Charley, +who had a bad jag on, setting out in the middle of the store on a +nail-kag--and the first thing anybody knowed, Charley'd let go +with his derringer through his pants-pocket and Hart was done for. +If Santa Fe hadn't been on one of his tears at the time, the thing +wouldn't a-happened--him and Hart always having been friendly, and +'specially so after the trouble they'd had together over Hart's +aunt. But when it did happen--being so sort of needless, and Hart +popular--most of us made our minds up something had got to be done. + + * * * * * + +Joe Cherry headed the reform movement. He had a bunch of sheep up in +the Sangre de Cristo mountains, Cherry had, but was in town frequent +and always bunked at Hart's store--him and Hart having knowed each +other back East and being great friends. That made him take a 'special +interest in the matter; and when he come a-riding in about an hour +after things was over--likely he'd a-fixed Santa Fe himself if he'd +been there when it happened--he got right up on his ear. He said he +meant to square accounts for Bill's shooting, and he reckoned +telegraph-poling Charley was about what was needed to square 'em; and +he said it was a good time, with that for a starter, for rounding-up +and firing all the toughs there was in town. The rest of us allowed +Cherry's notions was reasonable, and it was seen there'd better be no +fooling over 'em; and so we went straight on and had a meeting, with +Cherry chairman, and fixed up a Committee--and the Committee begun +business by corralling Santa Fe, and then set to work and made out a +list of them that was to be fired. + +There was about a dozen of 'em in the list; and they was told--the +notice being posted at the deepo--they had twenty-four hours to get +out in; and it was added that them that wasn't out in twenty-four +hours would find 'emselves landed on the dumps for keeps. A few of 'em +kicked a little--saying it was a free country, and they guessed they'd +a right to be where they'd a mind to. But when the Committee said back +it just was a free country, and one of the freest things in it was +telegraph-poles--as Santa Fe Charley was going to find out for +certain, and as them that was ordered to get up and get and didn't +would find out along with him--even the kickingest of 'em seen they'd +better just shut their heads and andy along. + +It wasn't till the Committee come to tackle the Sage-Brush Hen there +was any trouble--and then they found their drills was against quartz! +Two or three of Charley's worst shootings was charged to the Hen, she +being 'special friends with him; and just because she was such a +good-natured obliging sort of a woman, always wanting to please +everybody, she was at the roots of half the fights that started +in--so there'd come to be what was called the Hen's Lot out in the +cemetery on the mesa, as I've mentioned before. The Committee put her +in their list because they knowed for a fact there was bound to be +ructions in Palomitas as long as she stayed there; and so they found +'emselves in a deepish hole when she said plump Palomitas suited her, +and she didn't mean to be fired. The Hen knowed as well as they did +she had a cinch on 'em. If they didn't like her staying, she said, +they could yank her up to the next telegraph-pole to Charley's--and +then she asked 'em, kind of cool and cutting, if they didn't think +hanging a lady would give a nice name to the town! + +The Committee was in session in the waiting-room at the deepo while +the Hen was doing her talking, and Santa Fe--with handcuffs on, and +tied to the express messenger's safe--was in the express office, with +the door open between. Everybody seen the Hen was right, and hanging +her would be ungentlemanly, and nobody seemed to know what they'd +better do. While they was all setting still and thinking, Santa Fe +spoke up from the express office--saying he had the reputation of the +town at heart as much as anybody, and to make a real clean-up the Hen +ought to quit along with the others, and if they'd let him have five +minutes private talk with her he'd fix things so she'd go. + +The Committee didn't much believe Santa Fe could deliver the goods; +but they seen it would be a way out for 'em if he did--and so they +agreed him and the Hen should have their talk. To make it private, he +was took out and hitched fast to a freight-car laying on the siding +back of the deepo--the Committee standing around in easy shooting +distance, but far enough off not to hear nothing, with their +Winchesters handy in case the Hen took it into her head to cut the +rope and give him a chance to get away. She didn't--and she and Santa +Fe talked to each other mighty serious for a while; and then they +begun to snicker a little; and they ended up in a rousing laugh. + +Charley sung out they'd finished, and the Committee closed in and +unhitched him, and took him back to the express office and hitched him +to the safe again--where he was to stay till hanging-time, with +members of the Committee taking turns keeping him quiet with their +guns. He said he was much obliged to 'em, and the Hen had agreed to +quit--and everybody was pleased all round. + +"I don't like not being here when Charley gets his medicine," the Hen +said, "him and me being such good friends; but he says it would only +worry him having me in the audience, and so I've promised him I'll +light out"--and she kept her word, and got away for Denver by that +night's train. Her going took a real load off the Committee's mind. + +Some of the other fired ones went off on the same train. The rest took +Hill's coach across to Santa Fe--and made no trouble, Hill said, +except they held the coach for two hours at Pojuaque while all +hands got drunk at old man Bouquet's. Hill said all the rest of the +way they was yelling, and firing off their guns, and raising hell +generally--that was the way Hill put it--but they didn't do no real +harm. + +It was Joe Cherry's notion that Santa Fe should be took along to +Hart's funeral, and not hung till everybody got back to town again. +Joe was a serious-minded man, and he said the moral effect of running +things that way would pan out a lot richer than if they just had a +plain hanging before the funeral got under way. + +Santa Fe kicked at that, at first; and a good many of the boys +felt he had a right to. Santa Fe said it was all in the game to run +him up to the telegraph-pole in front of the deepo, the same as +other folks; but no committee had no right, he said, to make a +circus of him by packing him all round the place after poor old +Bill--who always had been plain in his tastes, and would have been +the last man in Palomitas to want that kind of a fuss made over +him--and he didn't mean to take a hand in no such fool carryings-on. +He didn't want anybody to think he was squirming, he said, for he +wasn't. Some men got up against telegraph-poles, and others got up +against guns or pneumonia or whatever happened to come along--and it +was all in the day's work. But when they did get up against +it--whatever it turned out to be--that was the one time in their +lives when it wasn't fair to worry 'em more'n was needed. Nobody +but chumps, he said, would want to hurt his feelings by making him +do trick-mule acts at poor old Bill's funeral--'specially as him and +Bill always had been friendly, and nobody was sorrier than he was +about the accident that had occurred. + +Santa Fe was a first-rate talker, and everybody but Cherry allowed +what he was letting out had a good deal of sense in it. He ended up by +saying that if they did make any such fool show of him he'd like 'em +to put it through quick and get him back to the deepo and telegraph +him off to Kingdom Come in a hurry--as he'd be glad at any price to be +shut of a crowd that would play it on anybody that low down! + +Cherry stuck it out, though, to have things his way. Palomitas was +going in for purification, Cherry said, and the moral effect of having +Santa Fe along at Bill's funeral was part of the purifying. The very +fact that Santa Fe was kicking so hard against it, he said, showed it +was a good thing. There was sense in that, too; and so the upshot of +it was the boys come round to Cherry's plan. The only serious thing +against it was it meant waiting over another day, till the funeral +outfit got down from Denver--all hands having chipped in to give Hart +a good send-off, and telegraphed his size to a first-class Denver +undertaker, with orders to do him up in style. Making him wait around +so long, sort of idle, was what Santa Fe kicked hardest against at +first. But after his talk with the Hen, as was remembered afterwards, +he didn't do any more kicking; and some of the boys noticed he was a +little nervous, and kept asking, off and on, if they still meant to +run the show that way. + +The boys did what they could to make the time go for him--setting +around sociable in the express office telling stories about other +hangings they'd happened to get up against, and trying all they knowed +how to amuse him, and giving him more seegars and drinks than he +really cared to have. But as he was kept hitched to both handles of +the safe right enough, and handcuffed, and as the two members of the +Committee watching him--while they was as pleasant with him as +anybody--never had their hands far off their guns, it's likely there'd +been other times when he'd enjoyed himself more. + + * * * * * + +Things was spirited at the deepo when the Denver train got in. All +there was of Palomitas was on deck, and Becker'd come over from Santa +Cruz de la Canada, and old man Bouquet from Pojuaque, and Sam and +Marcus Elbogen had driven across on their buck-board from San +Juan--and Mexicans had come in from all around in droves. + +The Elbogen brothers had been asked over for the funeral 'special--because +they both had good voices, and the Committee thought like enough, being +Germans, they'd know some hymns. It turned out they didn't--but they +blew off "The Watch on the Rhine" in good shape, when singing time come +out at the cemetery; and as it was a serious-sounding tune it done +just as well. Singing it made trouble, though: because Hart's nephew--who +knowed German and was a pill--hadn't no more sense'n to tell old man +Bouquet, coming back to town, what the words meant; and that started old +man Bouquet off so--the war not being long over, and his side +downed--that it took two of us, holding him by his arms and legs, to keep +him from trying to fight both the Elbogens at once. Being good-natured +young fellows, the Elbogens didn't take offence, but behaved like +perfect gentlemen--telling old man Bouquet they didn't mean to hurt +his feelings, and was sorry if they had--and it ended up well by their +having drinks together at the Forest Queen. All that, though, has no +real bearing on the story. It happened along later in the day. + +Before the train got in, to save time, a rope had been rigged for +Santa Fe over the cross-bar of the usual telegraph-pole--and Cherry, +who knowed how to manage better'n most, had seen to it the rope was +well soaped so as to run smooth. Cherry said he'd knowed things go +real annoying, sometimes, when the soap had been forgot. Santa Fe +looked well. He'd had a good brush up--and he needed it, after being +tied fast to the safe for three days and sleeping in a blanket on the +express-office floor--and he'd put on a clean shirt, and blacked his +boots, and had a shave. He always was a tidy sort of a man. + +When the train pulled in, being on time for a wonder, some fellows +from Chamita and the Embudo--come to see the doings--got out from the +day-coach and shook hands; and the Denver undertaker got out from the +express-car and helped the messenger unload the fixings he'd brought +for poor old Bill. Everybody stood around quiet like, and as serious +as you please. You might have thought it was a Sunday morning back in +the States. + +Except now and then a drummer--bound for Santa Fe on Hill's +coach--nobody much ever come to Palomitas on the Pullman; and so there +was something of a stir-up when the Pullman conductor helped a lady +out of the car--landing her close to where Charley in his clean shirt +and handcuffs on was standing between two members of the Committee +holding guns. She was a fine-shaped woman, but looked oldish--as well +as you could see for the veil she had on--having a sad pale face a +good deal wrinkled and a bunch of gray hair. She was dressed in measly +old black clothes, and had an old black shawl on, and looked poor. + +Getting out into that crowd of men seemed to rattle her, and she +didn't for a minute look at nobody. It wasn't till she a'most butted +into Charley she seen him--and when she did see him she let off a yell +loud enough to give points to a locomotive! And then she sort of +sobbed out: "My husband!"--and got her arms around Santa Fe's neck and +begun to cry. + +"My God! It's my wife!" said Charley. And if the members of the +Committee hadn't caught the two of 'em quick they'd likely tumbled +down. + +Santa Fe was the first to get his wind back. "My poor darling!" he +said. "To think that you should have come to me at last--and in this +awful hour!" + +"What does it mean, Charley? Tell me, what does it mean?" she moaned. + +Santa Fe snuggled her up to him--as well as he could with his hands +handcuffed--and said back to her: "It means, Mary, that in less than +two hours' time I am to be hung! In the heat of passion I have killed +a man. It was more than half an accident, as everybody here +knows"--and he looked over her head at the boys as they all jammed in +to listen--"but that don't matter, so far as the dreadful result is +concerned. I loved the man I shot like my own brother, and shooting +him in that chance way has about broken my heart. But that don't count +either. Justice must be done, my darling. Stern justice must be done. +You have come just in time to see your husband die!" He was quiet for +a minute, with the woman all in a shake against him--and a kind of a +snuffling went through the crowd. Then he said, sort of choky: "Tell +me, Mary, how are our dear little girls?" + +She was too broke up to answer him. She just kept on hugging him, and +crying as hard as she could cry. + +"Gentlemen," said Santa Fe, "it is better that this painful scene +should end. Take my poor wife from me, and let me pay the just penalty +of my accidental crime. Take her away, please--and hang me as quick as +you can!" + +"They sha'n't hang you, Charley! They sha'n't! They sha'n't!" she sung +out--and she jerked away from him and got in front of Cherry and +pitched down on the deepo platform on her knees. "Don't hang him, +sir!" she groaned out. "Spare him to me, and to our dear little girls +who love him with all their little hearts! Oh, sir, say that he shall +be saved!" + +"Get up, ma'am, please," Cherry said, looking as worried as he could +look. "That's no sort of a way for a lady to do! Please get up right +away." + +"Never! Never!" she said. "Never till you promise me that the life of +my dear husband shall be spared!"--and she grabbed Cherry round the +knees and groaned dreadful. He really was the most awkward-looking +man, with her holding onto his legs that way, you ever seen! + +[Illustration: "'DON'T HANG HIM, SIR!' SHE GROANED OUT"] + +"Oh, Lord, ma'am, _do_ get up!" he said. "Having you like that for +another minute'll make me sick. I'm not used to such goings-on"--and +Cherry did what he could to work loose his legs. + +But she hung on so tight he couldn't shake her, and kept saying, "Save +him! Save him!" and uttering groans. + +Cherry wriggled his legs as much as he could and looked around at the +boys. They all was badly broke up, and anybody could see they was +weakening. "Shall we let up on Santa Fe this time?" he asked. "I guess +it's true he didn't more'n half mean, being drunk the way he was, to +shoot Bill--and it makes things different, anyway, knowing he's got +kids and a wife. Bill himself would be the first to allow that. Bill +was as kind-hearted a man as ever lived. Do please, ma'am, let go." + +Nobody spoke for a minute--but it was plain how the tide was +setting--and then Santa Fe himself chipped in. "Gentlemen," he said, +"you all know I've faced this music from the first without any +squirming, and even come into Joe Cherry's plan for making me do +circus stunts at the funeral for the good of the town. I'm ready to go +through the whole fool business right now, and come back here when +it's all over and be hung according to contract--" + +"Save him! Save him!" the woman sung out; and she give such a jerk to +Cherry's legs it come close to spilling him. + +"But I will say this much, gentlemen," Santa Fe went on: "I am willing +to ask for the sake of my dear wife and helpless innocent infants what +I wouldn't be low down enough to ask for myself--and that is that you +call this game off. This dreadful experience has changed me, +gentlemen. It has changed me right down to my toes. Being as close to +a telegraph-pole as I am now makes a man want to turn over a new leaf +and behave--as some of you like enough'll find out for yourselves if +you don't draw cards from my awful example and brace up all you know +how. Give me another show, gentlemen. That's what I ask for--give me +another show. Let me go home with my angel wife to the dear old farm +in Ohio, where my aged mother and my sweet babes are waiting for me. +Like enough they're standing out by the old well in the front yard +looking down the road for me now!" Santa Fe gagged so he couldn't go +on for a minute. But he pulled himself together and finished with his +chest out and his chin up and speaking firm. "Let me go home, I say, +to the old farm and my dear ones--and take a fresh start at leading +bravely the honest life of an honest man!" + +Then he lowered down his chin and took his chest in and said, sort of +soft and gentle: "Let go of Mr. Cherry's legs and come and kiss me, my +darling! And please wipe the tears from my eyes--with my poor shackled +hands I can't!" + +The woman give Cherry's legs one more rousing jerk, and said, sort of +imploring: "Save him! Save him for his old mother's sake, and for +mine, and for the sake of our little girls!" Then she got up and wiped +away at Santa Fe's eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, and went to +kissing him for all she was worth--holding on to him tight around the +neck with both arms. + +The boys was all as uncomfortable as they could be--except Cherry +seemed to feel better at getting his legs loose--and some of 'em +fairly snuffled out loud. They stood around looking at each other, and +nobody said a word. Then Santa Fe kind of wrenched loose from her +kissing him and spoke up. "Which is it to be, gentlemen?" he said. "Is +it the telegraph-pole--or is it another chance?" The woman moaned fit +to break her heart. + +The silence, except for her moaning, hung on for a good minute. Then +Hill broke it. "Oh, damn it all!" said Hill--it was Hill's way to talk +sort of careless--"Give him another chance!" + +That settled things. In another minute they had the handcuffs off of +Santa Fe and all the boys was shaking hands with him. And then they +was asking to be introduced to his wife--she was all broke to bits, +and crying, and kept her veil down--and shaking hands with her too; +and they ended off by giving Charley and his wife three cheers. You +never seen folks so pleased! The only one out of it was the Denver +undertaker--who couldn't be expected to feel like the rest of us; and +was in a hurry, anyway, to put through his job so he could start back +home on the night train. + +"You come along with me in the coach, Charley," Hill said--Hill always +was a friendly sort of a fellow--"and I'll jerk you over to Santa Fe +in no time, and you can start right off East by the 6.30 train. +That'll be quicker'n going up to Pueblo, and it'll be cheaper too. The +ride across sha'n't cost you a cent. If you and your lady come in my +coach, you come free. And I say, boys," Hill went on, "let's open a +pot for them little girls! Here's my hat, with ten dollars in it for a +warmer. I'd make it more if I could--and nobody'll hurt my feelings by +raising my call." + +All hands made a rush for Hill's hat--and when Hill handed it to that +poor woman, who had her pocket-handkerchief up to her eyes under her +veil and was crying so she shook all over, there was more'n two +hunderd dollars in it, mostly gold. "This is for them children, ma'am, +with all our compliments," Hill said--and he and Charley helped her +hold her shawl up, so it made a kind of a bag, while he turned his hat +upside-down. + +"Speaking for my dear little girls, I thank you from my heart, +gentlemen," Santa Fe said. "This is a royal gift, and it comes at a +mighty good time. Some part of it must be used to pay our way +East--back to the dear old home, where those little angels are waiting +for us sitting cuddled up on their grandmother's knees. What remains, +I promise you gentlemen, shall be a sacred deposit--to be used in +buying little dresses, and hats, and things, for my sweet babes. I +hate to use a single cent of it for anything else, but the fact is +just now I'm right down to the hardpan." And everybody--remembering +Santa Fe'd took advantage of being on his drunk to get cleaned out at +Denver Jones's place the night before the shooting--knowed this was +true. + +"Well, Charley, we must be andying along," Hill said. "Waiting here +to see you hung has put me more'n an hour behind on my schedule. I'll +have to hustle them mules like hell"--that was the careless way Hill +talked always--"if we're going to ketch that 6.30 train." + +Everybody shook hands for good-bye with Santa Fe and his wife, and +Santa Fe had his pockets stuffed full of seegars, and more bottles was +put in the coach than was needed--and then we give 'em three cheers +again, and away they went down the slope to the bridge over the Rio +Grande, with Hill whipping away for all he was worth and cussing +terrible at his mules. Whipping done some good, Hill used to say; but +cuss-words was the only sure things to make mules go. + +"Well, boys," said Cherry, when the yelling let up a little. "I guess +getting shut of Santa Fe that way is better'n hanging him; and I +guess--with him and the Hen and the rest of 'em fired out of it--we've +got Palomitas purified about down to the ground. And what's to all our +credits, we've ended off by doing a first-class good deed! Them +little girls'll be pleased and happy when their mother gets back to +'em with our money in her pocket, and brings along in good shape their +father--who'd just about be in the thick of his kicking on that +telegraph-pole, by this time, if she hadn't romped in the way she did +on the closest kind of a close call! + +"And now let's turn to and get poor old Bill planted. We've kind of +lost sight of Bill in the excitement--and we owe him a good deal. If +Santa Fe hadn't started the reform movement by shooting him, we'd +still be going on in the same old way. You may say it's all Bill's +doings that Palomitas has been give the clean-up it wanted, and wanted +bad!" + + * * * * * + +When Hill drove into town next afternoon--coming to the deepo, where +most of the boys was setting around waiting for the train to pull +out--he was laughing so he was most tumbling off the box. + +"I've got the damnedest biggest joke on this town," Hill said--Hill +had the habit of talking that off-hand way--"that ever was got on a +town since towns begun!" + +Hill was so full of it he couldn't hold in to make a story. He just +went right on blurting it out: "Do you boys know who that wife of +Charley's was that blew in yesterday from Denver? I guess you don't! +Well, I do--she was the Sage-Brush Hen! Yes sirree," Hill said, so +full of laugh he couldn't hardly talk plain; "that's just who she was! +All along from the first there was something about her shape I felt I +ought to know, and I was dead right. It come out while we was stopping +at Bouquet's place at Pojuaque for dinner--they both knowing I'd see +it was such a joke I wouldn't spoil it by giving it away too soon. She +went in the back room at Bouquet's to have a wash and a brush up--and +when she come along to table she'd got over being Charley's wife and +was the Hen as good as you please! She hadn't a gray hair or a wrinkle +left nowhere, and was like she always was except for her black +clothes. When she saw my looks at seeing her, she got to laughing fit +to kill herself--just the same gay old Hen as ever; and she always +was, you know, the most comical-acting sort of a woman, when she +wanted to be, anybody ever seen. + +"When she quieted down her laughing a little she told me the whole +story. She and Charley'd fixed it up between 'em, she said; and she'd +whipped up to Denver on one train and down again on the next--buying +quick her gray hair and her black outfit, and getting somebody she +knowed at the Denver theatre to fix her face for her so she'd look all +broke up and old. She nearly gave the whole thing away, she said, when +Charley asked her about the little girls. He just throwed that in, +without her expecting it--and it set her to laughing and shaking so, +back of her veil, that we'd a-ketched up with her sure, she said, if +Charley hadn't whispered quick to pretend to cry and carry off her +laughing that way. She had another close call, she said, when Charley +was talking about the old farm in Ohio--she all the time knowing for a +fact he was born in East St. Louis, and hadn't any better acquaintance +with Ohio than three months in the Cincinnati jail. Charley ought to +go on the stage, she says--where she's been herself. She says he'd lay +Forrest and Booth and all them fellows out cold! + +"She and Charley just yelled while she was telling it all to me; and +they was laughing 'emselves 'most sick all the rest of the way across +to Santa Fe. When we got into town I drove 'em to the Fonda; and then +the Hen rigged herself out in good clothes she bought at Morse's--it +was the pot we made up for them sweet babes paid for her outfit--and +give her old black duds to one of the Mexican chambermaids. They +allowed--knowing I could be trusted not to go around talking in Santa +Fe--they'd stay on at the Fonda till to-morrow, anyway: so I might let +'em know, when I get back again, how you boys took it when you was +told how they'd played it on you right smack down to the ground! + +"Charley sent word he hoped there wouldn't be no hard feeling--as +there oughtn't to be, he said, seeing he was so drunk when he shot +Bill it was just an accident not calling for hanging; and the whole +thing, anyways, being all among friends. And the Hen sent word she +guessed the two of 'em had give you a first-class theatre show worth +more'n you put in my hat for gate-money, and you all ought to be +pleased. And they both said they'd been treated so square by you +fellows they'd be real sorry to have any misunderstanding, and they +hoped you'd take the joke friendly--the same as they meant it +themselves." + + * * * * * + +Well, of course we all did take it friendly--it wouldn't a-been +sensible to take as good a joke as that was any other way. Cherry was +the only one that squirmed a little. "It's on us, and it's on us +good," Cherry said; "and I'm not kicking--only you boys haven't got no +notion what it is having a woman a-grabbing fast to your legs and +groaning at you, and how dead sick it makes you feel!" + +Cherry stopped for a minute, and looked as if he was a'most sick with +just thinking about it. Then he sort of shook himself and got a brace +on, and went ahead with his chin up like he was making a speech in +town-meeting--and it turned out, as it don't always in town-meeting +speeches, what he said was true. + +"Gentlemen," said Cherry, "there's this to be said, and we have a +right to say it proudly: we've give this town the clean-up we set out +to give it, and from now on it's going to stay clean. There won't be +any more doings; or, if there is, the Committee 'll know the reason +why. Palomitas is purified, gentlemen, right down to the roots; and I +reckon I'm mistook bad--worse'n I was when the Hen was yanking my legs +about--if the Committee hasn't sand enough and rope enough to keep on +keeping it pure!" + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Santa Fe's Partner, by Thomas A. 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