Kitabı oku: «The Sunset Trail», sayfa 11
The Ground Owl’s address was the Wright House. It was at this hostelry he received his earliest glimpse of Mr. Allison, and organised those insult-born differences.
Mr. Allison’s country was Las Animas and the region round about. He had been over in the Panhandle, and was spurring homeward by way of Dodge. Having put his weary pony in the corral, he sought his own refreshment at the Wright House.
Mr. Allison was celebrated for force of character, and the democratic frankness of his six-shooters. His entrance into Las Animas’ social circles had been managed with effect. That was seven years before, and Mr. Hixenbaugh told this of Mr. Allison’s début.
“Which I was in the Sound Asleep Saloon,” explained Mr. Hixenbaugh, “tryin’ to fill a club flush, when the music of firearms floats over from across the street. I goes to the door on the lope, bein’ curious as to who’s hit, an thar on t’other side I observes a sport who’s sufferin’ from one of them deeformities called a clubfoot, and who’s got a gun in each hand. He’s jest caught Bill Gatling in the knee, an’ is bein’ harassed at with six-shooters by Gene Watkins an’ Len Woodruff, who’s whangin’ away at him from Crosby’s door. I lands on the sidewalk in time to see him hive Gene with a bullet in the calf of his laig. Then Gene an’ Bill an’ Len, the first two bein’ redooced to crawl on hands an’ knees by virchoo of them bullets, takes refooge in Crosby’s, an’ surveys this club-foot party a heap respectful from a winder. As I crosses over to extend congratyoolations, he w’irls on me.
“‘Be you too a hostile?’ he asks, domineerin’ at me with his guns.
“‘Hostile nothin’!’ I replies; ‘I’m simply comin’ over in a sperit of admiration. What’s the trouble?’
“‘Stranger,’ he says, ‘that question is beyond me. I’ve only been in your town four minutes, an’ yet thar seems to be a kind o’ prejewdyce ag’inst me in the minds of the ignorant few. But never mind,’ he concloods; ‘we’re all cap’ble of mistakes. My name’s Clay Allison, an’ these folks’ll know me better by an’ by. When they do know me, an’ have arrived at a complete onderstandin’ of my pecooliarities, they’ll walk ’round me like I was a swamp.’”
Following this introduction, it would appear that Mr. Allison was taken into fellowship by Las Animas. The crippled foot and the consequent limp were lost sight of when he was in the saddle. When he was afoot they went verbally unnoticed, since it was his habit to use a Winchester for a crutch.
After eight weeks in Las Animas, Mr. Allison felt as much at home as though he had founded the town. Also, he became nervously sensitive over the public well-being, and, mounted on a milk-white pony, which he called his “wah hoss,” rode into open court, and urged that convention of justice, then sitting, to adjourn. Mr. Allison made the point that a too persistent holding of court militated against a popular repose. Inasmuch as he accompanied his opinions with the crutch-Winchester aforesaid, their soundness was conceded by the presiding judge. The judge, as he ordered an adjournment, said that in the face of what practical arguments were presented by Mr. Allison he was driven to regard the whole theory of courts as at best but academic.
Later, by two months, Mr. Allison was driven to slay the Las Animas marshal. In this adventure he again demonstrated the accurate workings of his mind. The marshal, just before he drifted into the infinite, had emptied the right barrel of a Greener 10-gauge into Mr. Allison’s brother, John. A shotgun has two barrels, and the jury convoked in the premises, basing decision on that second barrel and arguing from all the circumstances that the late officer was gunning for the entire Allison family, gave a verdict of self-defence.
Mr. Allison was honourably acquitted, and the acquittal much encouraged his belief in justice. It showed him too the tolerant spirit of Las Animas, and he displayed his appreciation thereof by engaging in that rugged Western pastime known as “Standing the Town on Its Head.” Indeed, Mr. Allison made the bodily reversal of Las Animas a sacred duty to be performed twice a year; but since he invariably pitched upon Christmas and the Fourth of July for these pageantries, the public, so far from finding invidious fault, was inclined to join with him. In short, so much were Mr. Allison and Las Animas one in soul and sentiment, that the moment they had conquered the complete acquaintance of each other they – to employ a metaphor of the farms – “fell together like a shock of oats.” Mr. Allison was proud of Las Animas, while Las Animas looked upon Mr. Allison as the chief jewel in its crown.
On the breath of admiration some waif-word of the hardy deeds of Mr. Allison would now and again be wafted down the river to Dodge. Envious ones, who hated Dodge and resented its high repute as “a camp that was never treed,” had been even heard to prophesy that Mr. Allison would one day devote a leisure hour to subjecting Dodge to those processes of inversion which Las Animas had enjoyed, and leave its hitherto unconquered heels where its head should be. These insolent anticipations would wring the heart of Cimarron Bill.
“You can hock your spurs an’ pony,” he was wont to respond, “that if Clay ever shakes up Dodge, he’ll shake it in the smoke.”
Mr. Masterson, when the threats of an Allison invasion were brought to his notice, would say nothing. He held it unbecoming his official character to resent a hypothesis, and base declarations of war on an assumption of what might be.
“It’s bad policy,” quoth Mr. Masterson, “to ford a river before you reach it. It’ll be time to settle what Dodge’ll do with Clay, when Clay begins to do things to Dodge. He’ll have to open a game, however, that no one’s ever heard of, if Dodge don’t get better than an even break.”
“Shore!” coincided Cimarron Bill, confidently. “The idee, because Clay can bluff ’round among them Las Animas tarrapins without gettin’ called, that he can go dictatin’ terms to Dodge, is eediotic. He’d be too dead to skin in about a minute! That’s straight; he wouldn’t last as long as a drink of whiskey!”
The Ground Owl was alone in the breakfast room of the Wright House when Mr. Allison limped in. All men have their delicate side, and it was Mr. Allison’s to regard the open wearing of one’s iron-mongery as bad form. Wherefore, he was accustomed to hide the Colt’s pistols wherewith his hips were decked, beneath the tails of a clerical black coat. Inasmuch as he had left the crutch-Winchester with his sombrero at the hat-rack, even an alarmist like the Ground Owl could discover nothing appalling in his exterior. The halting gait and the black coat made for a harmless impression that went far to unlock the derision of the Ground Owl. He treated himself to an evil grin as Mr. Allison limped to a seat opposite; but since Mr. Allison didn’t catch the malicious gleam of it, the grin got by unchallenged.
It was a breakfast custom of the Wright House to provide doughnuts as a fashion of a side-dish whereat a boarder might nibble while awaiting the baking-powder biscuit, “salt hoss,” canned tomatoes, tinned potatoes, coffee and condensed milk that made up the lawful breakfast of the caravansary. Las Animas being devoid of doughnuts, Mr. Allison had never met one. Moved by the doughnut example of the Ground Owl, he tasted that delicacy. The doughnut as an edible proved kindly to the palate of Mr. Allison, and upon experiment he desired more. The dish had been drawn over to the elbow of the Ground Owl, and was out of his reach. Perceiving this, Mr. Allison pointed with appealing finger. “Pard,” said Mr. Allison, politely, “please pass them fried holes.”
“Fried holes!” cried the Ground Owl, going off into derisive laughter. “Fried holes! Say! you limp in your talk like you do in your walk! Fried holes!” and the Ground Owl again burst into uninstructed mirth.
The Ground Owl’s glee was frost-bitten in the bud. The frost that nipped it was induced by a Colt’s pistol in the hand of Mr. Allison, the chilling muzzle not a foot from his scared face. The Ground Owl’s veins ran ice; he choked and fell back in his helpless chair. Not less formidable than the Colt’s pistol was the fury-twisted visage of Mr. Allison.
Even in his terror the Ground Owl recalled the word of Mr. Masterson.
“Don’t shoot,” he squeaked. “I’m unarmed!”
For one hideous moment Mr. Allison hesitated; it was in his mind to violate a precedent, and slaughter the gunless Ground Owl where he sat. But his instincts and his education made against it; he jammed his weapon back into its scabbard with the terse command:
“Go heel yourse’f, you bull-snake! Dodge’ll have you or me to plant!”
The Ground Owl groped his frightened way to the door. A moment later he was burrowing deep beneath a stack of alfalfa hay in Mr. Trask’s corral, and it would have been necessary to set fire to the hay to find him. Mr. Allison sat glaring, awaiting the Ground Owl’s return – which he never doubted. He no longer wanted breakfast, he wanted blood.
Dodge knew nothing of these ferocious doings – the insult, the flight of the Ground Owl, and the vicious waiting of Mr. Allison. The first news of it that reached Dodge was when Mr. Allison – rifle in its saddle-scabbard, six-shooters at his belt – came whooping and spurring, the sublimation of warlike defiance, into the town’s main thoroughfare. He had saddled that bronco within twenty feet of the Ground Owl, shivering beneath the hay. The explosive monologue with which he had accompanied the saddling, and wherein he promised a host of bloody experiences to the Ground Owl, rendered that recreant as cold as a key and as limp as a rag.
After a mad dash up and down the street, enlivened by divers war shouts, Mr. Allison pulled up in front of Mr. Webster’s Alamo Saloon. Sitting in the saddle, he fiercely demanded the Ground Owl at the hands of the public, and threatened Dodge with extinction in case he was denied.
Affairs stood thus when Jack turned Mr. Masterson out of his blankets. The soul of Jack was in arms. It would have broken his boy’s heart had Mr. Allison flung forth his challenge in the open causeways of Dodge and departed, unaccommodated, unrebuked, to cheer Las Animas with a recount of his prowess.
“That’s business!” exulted Jack, as the double “cluck!” of Mr. Masterson’s buffalo gun broke charmingly upon his ear. “Send daylight plumb through him! Don’t let him go back to Las Animas with a yarn about how Dodge laid down to him!”
It was the first impression of Mr. Masterson that Mr. Allison’s purpose was to merely feed his self-love by a general defiance of Dodge. He would ride and shout and shoot and disport himself unlawfully. In this he would demonstrate the prostrate sort of the Dodgeian nerve.
Mr. Masterson was clear that this contumely must be checked. It would never do to let word drift into Texas that Dodge had wilted. Were that to occur, when the boys with the Autumn herds came in, never a mirror in town would survive; the very air would sing and buzz with contemptuous bullets. Mr. Masterson, from his window, came carefully down on Mr. Allison with the buffalo gun; he would reprove that fatuous egotist, whose conceit it was to fancy that he could stand up Dodge.
Mr. Masterson would have instantly shot Mr. Allison from the saddle, but was withstood by a detail. Mr. Allison’s six-shooters were still in his belt; his Winchester was still in its scabbard beneath his leg. These innocuous conditions constrained Mr. Masterson to pause; he must, according to the rule in such case made and provided, wait until a weapon was in the overt hand of Mr. Allison.
Mr. Masterson could make neither head nor tail of what Mr. Allison was saying. For the most it was curse, and threat, coupled with pictures of what terrific punishments – to cure it of its pride – Mr. Allison would presently inflict upon Dodge. This being all, however, Mr. Masterson could do no more than wait – being at pains, meanwhile, to see the oratorical Mr. Allison through both sights of the buffalo gun. When Mr. Allison snatched a pistol from his belt, that would be Mr. Masterson’s cue; he would then drill him for the good of Dodge and the instruction of Las Animas.
Having the business wholly in hand, it was next the thought of Mr. Masterson to obviate interference. He turned to Jack:
“Skip out, and tell Kell and Short and Cimarron not to run in on Clay. Tell ’em I’ve got him covered and to keep away. If they closed in on him, they might blank my fire.”
When Jack was gone, Mr. Masterson again settled to his aim, picking out a spot under the right shoulder of Mr. Allison wherein to plant the bullet. “It’s where I’d plug a buffalo bull,” ruminated Mr. Masterson, “and it ought to do for Clay.”
Mr. Allison maintained his verbal flow unchecked. He had elocutionary gifts, had Mr. Allison, and flaunted them. Mingling scorn with reproach, and casting defiance over all, he spake in unmeasured terms of Dodge and its inhabitants. But never once did he lay hand to gun; it was solely an exhibition of rhetoric.
Mr. Masterson waxed weary. There were spaces when the mills of Mr. Allison’s vituperation ran low; at such intervals Mr. Masterson would take the buffalo gun from his shoulder. Anon, Mr. Allison’s choler would mount, his threats and maledictions against all things Dodgeian would soar. Thereupon, hope would relight its taper in the eye of Mr. Masterson; he would again cover Mr. Allison with his buffalo gun. Mr. Allison’s energy would again dwindle, and the light of hope again sink low in the Masterson eye. The buffalo gun would be given another recess. First and last, by the later word of Mr. Masterson, Mr. Allison was covered and uncovered twenty times. It was exceedingly fatiguing to Mr. Masterson, who was losing respect for Mr. Allison, as one all talk and no shoot.
While Mr. Allison vituperated, his glance roved up and down the street.
“What’s the matter with him!” considered Mr. Masterson disgustedly. “Why doesn’t he throw himself loose!”
Mr. Masterson’s disgust became amazement when Mr. Allison turned in his saddle, and asked in tones wherein was more of complaint than challenge:
“Where’s Bat Masterson? He’s on the squar’! He won’t let no cheap store clerk put it all over me, an’ get away! Where’s Bat?”
As though seeking reply, Mr. Allison in a most pacific manner got down from the saddle, and limped away out of range into Mr. Webster’s Alamo.
Mr. Masterson pitched the buffalo gun into a corner, put on his more personal artillery, and repaired to the Alamo with the thought of investigating the phenomenon. In the Alamo he found Mr. Allison asking Mr. Webster – who looked a bit pale – to send for Mr. Masterson.
“Have somebody round Bat up,” said Mr. Allison, peevishly. “Which I want a talk with him about my injuries.”
“What’s wrong, Clay?” asked Mr. Masterson – outwardly careless, inwardly as alert as a bobcat. “What’s gone wrong?”
“Is that you, Bat?” demanded Mr. Allison, facing around on his lame foot. “Wherever have you been for the last half hour? I’ve hunted you all over camp.”
“Where have I been for a half hour? I’ve been seesawing on you with a Sharp’s for the better part of it.”
“Is that so!” exclaimed Mr. Allison, while his face lighted up with a kind of pleased conviction. “Thar, d’ye see now! While I was in that saddle I could feel I was covered every moment. It was the sperits tellin’ me! They kept warnin’ me that if I batted an eye or wagged a year I was a goner. It was shore one of them prov’dential hunches which is told of by gospel sharps in pra’r-meetin’s.”
Mr. Masterson’s indignation was extreme when he had heard the story of Mr. Allison’s ill usage. And at that, his anger rested upon the wrongs of Dodge rather than upon those of Mr. Allison.
“One may now see,” said Mr. Masterson, “the hole into which good people can be put by a cowardly outcast of the Ground Owl type. That disgusting Ground Owl might have been the means of killing a dozen men. Here he turns in an’ stirs Clay up; and then, when he’s got him keyed to concert pitch, he sneaks away and hides, and leaves us with Clay on our hands!”
Cimarron Bill came into the Alamo; his brow turned dark with the scandal of those friendly relations between Mr. Masterson and Mr. Allison, which he saw and did not understand. Drawing aside, he stood moodily at the end of the bar, keeping a midnight eye the while on Mr. Allison, thirsting for an outbreak.
Mr. Masterson approached him craftily – being diplomatic and having a mind to preserve the peace.
“There’s something I want you to do, Cimarron,” said Mr. Masterson, easily. The other brightened. “No, not that!” continued Mr. Masterson, intercepting a savage look which Cimarron bestowed upon Mr. Allison, “not Clay.”
“Who then?” demanded Cimarron, greatly disappointed.
“The other one,” responded Mr. Masterson. “Still I don’t want you to overplay. You must use judgment, and while careful not to do too little, be equally careful not to do too much. This is the proposition: You are to go romancing ’round until you locate that miscreant Ground Owl. Once located, you are to softly, yet sufficiently, bend a gun over his head.”
“Leave the Ground Owl to me,” said Cimarron Bill, his buoyant nature beginning to collect itself. As he went forth upon his mission, he tossed this assurance over his shoulder: “You gents’ll hear a dog howl poco tempo, an’ when you do you can gamble me an’ that Ground Owl clerk has crossed up with one another.”
“That,” observed Mr. Short, who arrived in time to hear the commission given Cimarron Bill, “that’s what I call gettin’ action both ways from the jack. You split out Cimarron from Clay here; an’ at the same time arrange to stampede that malignant Ground Owl out o’ camp. Which I always allowed you had a head for business, Bat.”
Cimarron Bill was wrong. He did not cut the trail of the vermin Ground Owl – lying close beneath the alfalfa of Mr. Trask! Neither did any dog howl that day. But Dodge was victorious without. It was rid of the offensive Ground Owl; when the sun went down that craven one crept forth, and fled by cloak of night.
“Which it goes to show,” explained Cimarron Bill, judgmatically, when a week later he was recovered from the gloom into which Mr. Allison’s escape had plunged him, “which it goes to show that every cloud has a silver linin’. Clay saves himse’f; but that Ground Owl has to go. It’s a stand-off. We lose on Clay; but we shore win on that Ground Owl man.”
CHAPTER XI – HOW TRUE LOVE RAN IN DODGE
In the old golden days, gunshot wounds were never over-soberly regarded by Dodge. Mr. Kelly, being creased by Rattlesnake Sanders and discovering that the bullet had done no more than just bore its sullen way through the muscular portion of his shoulder, came to look upon the incident as trivial, and nothing beyond a technical violation of his rights. He gave his word to that effect; and when Rattlesnake – in seclusion on Bear Creek – was made aware of that word, he returned to the ranges along the White Woman, and re-began a cowboy existence where his flight had broken it off. Mr. Kelly’s forbearance was approved by the public, the more readily since Dodge in the catholicity of its justice believed in punishing folk, not for what they did but for what they were, and Rattlesnake was an estimable youth.
This tolerant breadth was wholly of the olden day, and has not come down to modern men. Dodge now lies writhing beneath the wheel of Eastern convention. Starched shirts have crept in, derby hats have done their worst, and that frank fraternalism, so brightly a virtue of the heretofore, has disappeared. To-day the sound of a six-shooter in the timid streets of Dodge would produce a shock, and whatever gentleman was behind that alarming artillery meet the fate which would encounter him under similar explosive conditions in Philadelphia.
California is the proprietor of a past, and in moments of sentiment croons of:
The days of old,
The days of gold,
The days of Forty-nine.
Dodge also owns a day-that-was. Its memory appeals often and fondly to an hour when no one asked a stranger’s name, but politely reduced curiosity to a cautious “What may I call you?” The stranger might have been “Bill Jones” in the faraway, forgotten East. He could now become “Jack Robinson”; and if his case presented any personal argument favourable to such change, the liberality of Dodge not alone permitted but invited that amendment. The stranger’s life for Dodge commenced with his advent in its friendly midst and went no further back. His past, with all that to him appertained, had fallen from him as fall the fetters from the bond slave when once he sets foot upon the sacred soil of England. Dodge refused to be involved in any question of what that stranger had done, or who he was. It received him, trusted him, watched him, and when popular judgment concerning him had ripened, it either applauded or lynched him as circumstances seemed most to invite.
It is good to shut one’s eyes and ruminate upon a past. The old days are ever golden, and for those of Dodge this should be their portrait. What might the heart of the stranger desire that they do not offer him? If he be a-weary, there is the Wright House whereat he may repose himself. Does he crave relaxation, there is Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall, called sometimes the Bird Cage, where to the lively observations of the fiddle he shall loosen the boards of the floor until refreshed. At all hours of the night the master of ceremonies is to be heard above the subdued muttering of exuberant feet:
“Ally man left – all sasshay! Balance to yer podners – all hands ’round! Grand right an’ left – dozy do! Chaat ’n’ swing – right arm to yer podner! All prom’nade to the bar!”
If mere trade be the stranger’s purpose, where is that emporium superior to Mr. Wright’s? Should the appetite of speculation seize him, is there not the Alamo, the Alhambra and the Long Branch? From those latter clapboard palaces of chance, where Fortune holds unflagging court, comes the inviting soft flutter of chips, punctuated by such terse announcements from roulette wheel and faro table as “All’s set an’ th’ ball’s rollin’!” or “Ace lose, trey win!” Now and again a hush descends while through the blue tobacco smoke two sisters of charity – looking with their white faces and black hoods like pale pictures set in jet – make the silent round of the games, seeking aid for their hospital in Santa Fé. Each courtier of Fortune cashes a handful of chips, and passes the proceeds to them over his shoulder; knowing that should sickness lay skeleton hand upon him he will be welcome at their merciful gates.
If the stranger be not only strange but tender – having just made his appearance, possibly, on some belated “buckboard” from the South, where he has been touring the Panhandle or ransacking the ranges with thoughts of buying a ranch – the all-night whirl of Dodge excites his wonder. In such round-eyed case, he sets forth at four o’clock in the morning his amazement to Mr. Short.
“Aren’t you open rather late?” mildly observes the tender stranger.
“It is rather late,” responds Mr. Short, with an eye of tolerant cynicism, “it is rather late for night before last, but it’s jest th’ shank of th’ evenin’ for to-night.”
The tender stranger makes no response, for his faculties have become engaged upon an ebullient cowboy who, with unsteady step, swings in through the Long Branch’s open door, spurs a-jingle, wide hat set at an arrogant slant.
“I’m Palo Duro Pete,” the invader remarks. “Which blood’s my colour, gents, an’ I kin whip my weight in wolves!”
The strain on the tender stranger’s nerves is redeemed by Mr. Short, who languidly fells Palo Duro Pete with his six-shooter. The strain gains additional relief when Palo Duro picks himself up with a gratified air, and says:
“Gents, this is shorely the sociablest crowd I’ve crossed up with as yet. Let’s libate!”
In a daze of admiration the tender stranger “libates” with Palo Duro, while Mr. Short makes a careless third. Mr. Short suggests cigars at the expense of the Long Branch, and Palo Duro, after lighting one, goes jingling out into the night to continue his happy exploits at the Alamo or the Alhambra.
Those old days are golden days! True, a centipede now and then makes a promenade of one’s slumbering countenance; or a stinging lizard employs his sting upon one with all of the burning first effects that attend being shot with a Colt’s-45; or some sleepy rattlesnake insinuates himself into one’s unbidden blankets, having a plan to bunk in with one and a settled resolve to give battle if refused an honest half of the bed. But these adventures overtake one only in hottest summer weather, and this seasonal fact so narrows interest that Dodge seldom wears them on its mind.
In those old golden days Dodge is a democracy. Caste does not occur; no hill, no hollow of human inequality ruffles the bland surface of the body politic. There is but one aristocracy and that is the aristocracy of courage, but one title of nobility and that the name of “a square man.”
And Dodge can exercise forbearance. Your cowboy, uplifted of Old Jordan, may ride his pony through the streets and spur it to the pace of meteors. But he must not ride it upon the sidewalks, for that would mean insult to the dignity and defiance of the power of Dodge. He may freely empty his midnight pistol, so that he empty it at the moon. But he must not enfilade the causeways or turn its muzzle upon any house of entertainment, however much the latter has offended. In brief, he may wax either vigorous or vociferous to what pitch best suits his fancy, saving this that his vigours and vociferations must not be transacted at the public’s expense. Dodge, too, takes cognisance of an impulse and construes a motive. When Palo Duro Pete, from his seat in the Dodge Opera House, arises in a torrent of tears, pulls his six-shooter and slams away at Miss Witherspoon, while that cantatrice is singing “Home, Sweet Home,” Dodge wholly understands the sobbing, shooting Palo Duro. Had he ridden away on another’s pony, or sought to shift the title to a mule by heating a running iron and changing its brand, Dodge would not have attributed the act to any excess of emotion. It would have recognised a crime, and dealt coldly with Palo Duro as with a criminal taken in the felon fact. On the Opera House occasion, however, it is plain that Palo Duro has opened upon Miss Witherspoon in on ecstasy of admiration. The shot is in its way a compliment, and meant for the exaltation of that celebrated soprano. The weeping Palo Duro is moved, not of murderous impulse, but a spirit of adoration that can only explain itself with a gun. Dodge knows this. Dodge feels it, admits it; and since Palo Duro works no harm with his testimonial, Dodge believes it has fully corrected him when it drags him from the theatre, and “buffaloes” him into a more week-a-day and less gala frame of mind.
While Dodge is capable of toleration, it can also draw the line. When Mr. Webster accepts a customer’s wooden leg as security for drinks, and sets the pledge behind the Alamo bar, it does much to endanger his standing. Mr. Webster averts a scandal only by returning the wooden leg; and at that Cimarron Bill has already given his opinion.
“Any gent,” observes Cimarron Bill, “who’ll let a party hock personal fragments of himse’f that a-way for licker, is onfit to drink with a nigger or eat with a dog,” and Dodge in the silence with which it receives this announcement, is held by many as echoing the sentiment expressed.
Those old days be golden days, and the good citizenry of Dodge are at their generous best. And this is the rule of conduct: Should you go broke, everybody comes to your rescue; should you marry, everybody rejoices at the wedding; should a child be born unto you to call you “father,” everybody drinks with you; should you fall ill, everybody sits up with you; should you die, everybody comes to the funeral – that is, everybody who is out of jail.
Rattlesnake Sanders, forgiven by Mr. Kelly and restored to his rightful art of cows as theretofore practiced by him along the White Woman, had frequent flour, bacon, and saleratus reason to visit Dodge. Being in Dodge, he dined, supped and breakfasted at the Wright House, and it was at that place of regale he met Miss Barndollar. The young lady was a waitress, and her intimates called her “Calamity Carry” for the crockery that she broke. Her comings in and going out were marked of many a crash, as a consignment of dishes went grandly to the floor. But help was sparse and hard to get, and the Wright House management overlooked these mishaps, hoping that Miss Barndollar, when she had enlarged her experience, would be capable of better things.
On the day that Rattlesnake Sanders first beheld Miss Barndollar, he came into the dining-room of the Wright House seeking recuperation from the fatigues of a 60-mile ride. When he had drawn his chair to the table, and disposed of his feet so that the spurs which graced his heels did not mutually interfere, Miss Barndollar came and stood at his shoulder.
“Roast beef, b’iled buffalo tongue, plover potpie, fried antelope steak, an’ baked salt hoss an’ beans,” observed Miss Barndollar in a dreamy sing-song. The Wright House did not print its menu, and the bill of fare was rehearsed by the waitresses to the wayfarer within its walls.
At the sound of Miss Barndollar’s voice, Rattlesnake Sanders looked up. He made no other response, but seemed to drift away in visions born of a contemplation of the graces of Miss Barndollar.
This last was the more odd since Miss Barndollar, in looks, was astray from any picture of loveliness. Perhaps Cimarron Bill when later he discussed with Mr. Short the loves of Miss Barndollar and Rattlesnake Sanders, fairly set forth the state of affairs.
“Which of course,” remarked Cimarron Bill, gallantly cautious, “thar was never the lady born I’d call ugly; but speakin’ of this Calamity Carry, I’m driven to remark that she has a disadvantageous face.”
