Kitabı oku: «Bill Nye and Boomerang. Or, The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary Gems», sayfa 16

CATCHING MOUNTAIN TROUT AT AN ELEVATION OF 8000 FEET

A few days ago, in company with Dr. Hayford, I went over to Dale Creek on a brief extempore trouting expedition. Dale Creek is a beautiful and romantic stream running through a rugged canon and crossed by the beautiful iron bridge of the Union Pacific Railroad.

We went up Dale Creek at this season of the year is not very much of a torrent, and on the day we went over there all the trout had gone down to the mouth of the stream to get a drink.

Every little while the Doctor would put on his glasses and hunt for the creek while I caught grasshoppers and looked at the scenery. I did not catch any trout myself, but the Doctor drove one into a prairie-dog hole and killed him. I am frantically fond of field sports although I am not always successful in securing game. I love to wander through the fragrant grass and wild flowers, listening to the song of the bobolink as he sways to and fro on some slender weed; but it delays me a good deal to stop every little while and cut on No. 4 and returned on No. 3.

TROUT FISHING

My fly hooks out of my clothes. I throw a fly very grace, fully, but when it catches under my shoulder-blades, and I try to lift myself up in that manner, my companions laugh at me and make me mad.

Dr. Hayford, who had command of the expedition, told me that we would have an hour and three quarters to fish and then we would have to go back and catch the train. Therefore we hurried a good deal, and I had to leave a decrepit trout that I had found in a dead pine tree and was almost sure of. We gathered a bouquet of wild roses and ferns and cut worms and went back to the bridge to wait for No. 3. We sat there for an hour or two on a voluptuous triangular fragment of granite, telling large three-ply falsehoods about catching fish and shooting elephants in Michigan. Then we waited two or three more long weary hours, and still the train didn't come.

After a while it occurred to me that I had been made the victim of the man who had spent the most of his life telling the public about the pleasant weather of Wyoming. He enjoyed my misery and cheered me up by saying that perhaps our train had gone, and we would have to wait for the emigrant-train. We ate what lunch we had left, told a few more lies, and suffered on.

At last the thunder of the train in the distance was borne down to us, and we rose with a sigh of relief, gathered up our bouquets and decomposed trout, and prepared to board the car. But it was a work train and didn't stop.

Then I went away by myself and tried to control my fiendish temper. I thought of the doctor's interesting family at home, and how they would mourn if I were to throw him over Dale Creek bridge, and pulverize him on the rocks below. So my better nature conquered and I went back to wait a few more weeks.

The next train that came along was a freight train, and it made better time going past us than at any other point on the road.

Toward evening the regular passenger train came along. I found out which coach the doctor was going to ride in, and I got into another one. I look my poor withered little bouquet and looked at it. All the flowers were dead and so were the bugs that were in it. It was a ghostly ruin that had cost me $9.25. An idea struck me, and I gave the bouquet to the train boy to sell. I told him what the entire array of ghastliness had cost me, and asked him to get what he could out of it.

He took the collection and sold it out to the passengers, realizing, $21.35. Passengers bought them and sent them home as flowers collected at Dale Creek bridge in the Rocky mountains. Then a kind hearted gentleman on the train, who saw how sad I looked, and how ragged my clothes were, where I had cut fish-hooks out of them, took up a collection for me.

Hereafter when a man asks me to join a fishing excursion to the mountains, I hope that I shall have the moral courage and strength of character to refuse.

HOME-MADE INDIAN RELICS

Sherman, on the Union Pacific Railroad, is the loftiest by a considerable majority of any point on the road. This fact has occasioned some little notoriety for Sherman, and on the strength of it a small reservoir of Western curiosities has been established there.

I went over to the curiosity ranche while the train was taking breath, to see what I could see and buy it if the price were not too high.

There were a great many Western curiosities from various parts of the country, and I got deeply interested in them.

I love to find some old relic of ancient times or some antique weapon of warfare peculiar to the noble Aztecs. I can ponder over them by the hour and enjoy it first-rate.

Among the living wonders I noticed a bale of Indian arrows. These arrows are beautiful to look upon, and are remarkably well preserved. They are as good as new. I asked, simply as a matter of form, if they were Indian arrows. The man said they were. Then I asked who made them, and he got mad and wouldn't speak to me.

I do not think I am unreasonable to want to know who makes my Indian arrows, am I?

I am willing to pay a fair price for the genuine Connecticut made arrow with cane shaft, and warranted cast steel point, but the Indian arrow made at Omaha is not durable.

This curiosity man would make more money and command a larger trade if he were not so quick-tempered.

He had also some Western cactus as a curiosity for the tenderfoot who had never fooled with a cactus much.

It was the clear thing, however. I sat down on one to test its genuineness. It stood the test better than I did. When you have doubts about a cactus and don't know whether it is a genuine cactus or a young watermelon with its hair banged, you can test it by sitting down on it. It may surprise you at first, but it tickles the cactus almost to death.

For a high-priced house plant and gentle meek-eyed exotic that don't care much for affection, the Rocky Mountain cactus takes the cake.

It is very easy to live, and don't require much fondling. It will enjoy life better if you will get mad at it about once a week and pull it up by the roots, and kick it around the yard. Water it carefully every four years; if you water it oftener than that, it will be surprised, and gradually pine away and die.

Another item I must not forget in giving directions for the cultivation of this rare tropical plant: get some one to sit down on it occasionally – if you don't feel equal to it yourself. There's nothing that makes a cactus thrive and flourish so much as to have a victim with linen pants on, sit down on it and then get up impulsively like. If a cactus can have these little attentions bestowed upon it, it will live to a good old age, and insinuate itself through the pantaloons of generations yet unborn. Plant in a gravelly, coarse soil, and kick it every time you think of it.

Returning to our subject, however, I think the Indian is a trifle uncertain and at times tricky by nature. Of course I do not wish to say anything that would have a tendency to injure the reputation of the Indian, for in all candor I will say that he means well.

I do not wish to have what I may say published as coming from me, because the Indian has always used me well, perhaps because I never allow myself to stray into his jurisdiction, but he has little, hateful, mean ways which I despise. Some think that if he were to have more chance to learn, more normal schools and base-ball clubs and upright pianos, he would have more ambition to do right and get ahead, but I almost doubt it.

I am very humane myself, but I am more apt to be harsh in my measures with the Indian than most Eastern people of culture are. Perhaps this is because I have seen people who had been shot full of large size bullet holes by the red man. This makes a difference, and I may be prejudiced.

When the average philanthropist has seen a family lying scattered around promiscuous and shot so full of holes that even the coarsest kind of food is of no use, he begins to ask in his mind whether a more severe method of treatment would not be beneficial to the Indian.

I want to look this matter calmly in the face, and ask whether night shirts and civilization and suspenders will make good citizens out of these unfettered children of the forest or not? Is it the opinion of the gentle reader that a nation of flea-bitten, smoke-tanned beggars will come forward and submit to the ennobling influences of Christianity and duck vests and horse-shoe scarf pins and quarterly meetings and gauze underwear? Methinks not.

Nature constructed the noble red man with certain little mental, moral and physical eccentricities, and these eccentricities can be better worn away and remodeled on the evergreen shore.

Poor, weak, fallible man cannot successfully grapple with the task of working over an entire nation of human beings and changing the whole trend, so to speak, of a nation's mental and moral nature.

Let us not, therefore, usurp the prerogative or attempt to perform the Herculean task which a wise Creator has laid out for Himself.

The policy of Divine administration, if I mistake not, is to improve the Indian and reform him in a future state in a large corral where the worm dieth not. This of course is only my private opinion, and I am offering it now in packages containing six each, securely boxed and sent free to any address on receipt of $1. I would sell it cheaper were it not for the excessive freight and the recent rise in white paper.

Supposing then the above to be the correct theory, what can poor erring man do to forward the good work? Evidently he can do nothing unless it be to change the state of the red man from a discouraging and annoying mortality to a bright and shining immortality.

I would suggest that this be done so far as possible by those who can spare the time and ammunition to do so. I will give to such all the encouragement and moral support I can. I would assist in the good work, but I am most too busy now planting my raspberry jam and setting out my early Swedish dried apple pie plant.

THE PREVIOUS REPORTER

Fluke MaGilder, an old Washington reporter, who afterward was well known among Western newspaper men, was one of the most tireless and persistent news-gatherers I ever knew. He used to tell with considerable apparent pleasure how he didn't obtain the points on a prominent military court martial which was held at Cheyenne in 1876. It happened on this wise:

When it was known for a dead certainty that the court-martial had closed, and that the result was sealed up in an envelope in the possession of General Pope, who roomed at the Inter-Ocean, Fluke got up an infernal lie to tell the General, and thus got him away from his room. He induced a little negro boy, by promising him an old pair of pants, to go up and deliver a note to General Pope, saying that General Merritt was out at Fort Russell, and that he wanted to see him immediately. After the General had gone Fluke crawled into the transom of his room, and began to ransack things. It turned out, however, that the documents were safe in the General's overcoat pocket, and MaGilder was baffled. He searched all the drawers in the room, looked under the bed, rummaged the pockets of all the extra clothes in the room, and the more he searched the madder he got, and when at last it dawned upon him that he was foiled, his wrath knew no bounds. He filled his pockets with the General's cigars, drank the General's wine, and wiped his nose on the General's best clean handkerchiefs. He spit tobacco juice in the General's slippers, wiped his feet on the pillow shams, dressed the coal-stove up in the General's night shirt, and spread a few spare hairpins which he had in his pockets, under the General's pillow. He was pretty mad. He took the spittoon and stood it on the center-table, with a tooth brush sticking in the middle, and wound up by trying on the General's underclothes and tearing the ruffles off. It is so well established that Fluke had a great deal of embonpoint, that it is unnecessary to say he had a good deal of trouble to get into General Pope's apparel, as the General is a slim man. However, as MaGilder stood in the position of a boy who is just on the point of going in swimming, and had the last garment drawn over his head, so that he could not see very well, General Pope slipped in with a large snow-shovel, which he applied with great vigor. When they offered Fluke a chair at a party after that he would murmur, "No, thank you, I prefer to stand up. I've been sitting down all day and wish a change." But everybody knew that he hadn't sat down for over a week.

THE PEACE COMMISSION

EVIDENCE OF JOHNSON BEFORE THE COURT

Los Pinos, Col., Nov. 17.

Chief Johnson was again called on the stand this morning, and administered the following oath to himself in a solemn and awe-inspiring manner:

"By the Great Horn Spoons of the pale-face, and the Great Round Faced Moon, round as the shield of my fathers; by the Great High Muck-a-Muck of the Ute nation; by the Beard of the Prophet, and the Continental Congress, I dassent tell a lie!"

When Johnson had repeated this solemn oath – at the same time making the grand hailing sign of the secret order known as the Thousand and One – there was not a dry eye in the house.

Question by General Adams. – What is your name and occupation, and where do you reside?

Answer – My name is Johnson, just plain Johnson. The rest has been torn off. I am by occupation a farmer. I am a horny-handed son of toil, and don't you forget it. I reside in Greeley, Colorado.

Question – Did you, or did you not hear of a massacre at White River agency, during the fall, and if so, to what extent?

Objected to by defendant's counsel because it is irrelevant, immaterial, unconstitutional, imitation, and incongruous.

Most of the forenoon was spent in arguing the point before the court, when it was allowed to go in, whereupon the defendant's counsel asked to have the exception noted on the court's moments.

Answer – I did not hear of the massacre, until last evening, when I happened to pick up a copy of the Evanston Age and read it. It was a very sad affair, I should think.

Question – Were you, or were you not, present at the massacres?

Objected to by defendant's counsel on the ground that the witness is not bound to answer a question which would criminate himself.

Objection sustained, and question withdrawn by the prosecution.

Question – Where were you on the night that this massacre is said to have occurred?

Answer – What massacre?

Question – The one at White River?

Answer – I was attending a series of protracted meetings at Greeley, in this State.

Question – Were Douglass, Colorow and other Ute chiefs with you at that meeting in Greeley?

Answer – They were.

Court adjourned for dinner.

General Adams remarked to a reporter that he was getting down to business now, and that he had no doubt that in a few months he would convict all these Utes of falsehood in the first degree.

After dinner, court was called, with Johnson at the bat and Douglass on deck; General Adams, short stop; Ouray, center field.

Question – You say that you were not present at the White River massacre; were you ever engaged in any massacre?

Objected to, but objection afterward withdrawn.

Answer – No.

Question – Never?

Answer – Never.

Question – What! Never?

Answer – Well, dam seldom.

(Great applause and cries of "ugh!")

Question – Did you, or did you not, know a man named N. C. Meeker?

Answer – Yes.

Question – Go on and state if you know where you met him and at what time.

Answer – I met him in Greeley, Colorado, two or three years ago. After that I heard that he got an appointment as Indian Agent somewhere out west.

Question – Did you ever hear anything of him after that?

Answer – Nothing whatever.

Question – Did the account of the White River massacre that you read in the Age mention the death of Mr. Meeker?

Answer – No. Is he dead?

General Adams – Yes, he is dead.

At that the witness gave a wild whoop of pain and anguish, fell forward into the arms of General Adams, and is unconscious as we go to press.

We do not wish to censure General Adams. No doubt he is conducting this investigation to the best of his ability; but he ought to break such news as this as gently to the Indian as possible.

SOME ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

Lock Malone, Beaver, Utah, writes as follows:

"I am now making some important scientific experiments with Limberger cheese as a motor, but have no data whereby to work. So new and unusual is the motor to science, that I am unable to get anything relative to its history.

"1. When was Limberger cheese first discovered, and by whom?

"2. What did he do it for anyway?

"3. To what do you attribute the bad odor in which Limberger cheese is held by scientists?

"4. Looking from what may be termed a purely utilitarian standpoint, and not allowing ourselves to be influenced by incongruous incandescence, should you say in all respects that virtually in view of the heterogeneous mobility of attended animalculate it might had or couldn't possibly was?"

ANSWER

1. Limberger cheese was first discovered by Galileo, floating through space, during his studies relative to the heavenly bodies.

This was about 1609.

The body had, however, been floating through space for many millions of years previous to that, as Galileo remarks in his diary that he wasn't proud of it at all for it was evidently in a very poor state of preservation.

Galileo caught some of it and tamed it, but the scientific minds of that age had not yet made the attempt to utilize it as a motor.

The discovery was purely accidental. At about the time referred to, Galileo had constructed his powerful telescope which would bring the moon down so that the valleys and hills of that body were plainly visible. One day the telescope brought down a fragment of Limberger cheese that was floating through space. It magnified the cheese to such an extent that Galileo could smell it distinctly.

This was the true cause of Galileo's abandonment of the Copernican theory and eventually of astronomy.

3. The last answer really disposes of your third question.

4. Grappling with the abstruse and alarmingly previous usufruct embodied in the omnipresent, and constantly emanating and noticeably refractory diagnosis, herein set forth, and still wandering on through the ever changing yet constantly invariable and fluctuating, yet undeviating perihelion of the heavenly bodies, with unprejudiced mind and unbiased judgment.

Arriving at the conclusion that perhaps in some cases it might not, or yet again it might or might not, and still it might.

Numerous Husband, writes from Jehosephat Valley as follows:

"I am twenty-seven and am going on twenty-eight years of age. A few years ago I joined on to the Mormon Church, and with my usual enthusiasm begun to get married.

"I have been getting married with more or less recklessness ever cents. When times was dull and I was out of employment, I Would go and get married.

"The ofishal count shows that I am an easy and graceful marryer.

"I now find that I am hopelessly involved financially. I had intended this summer to build a collosle villa for my multitoodinous wife; but it will cost me more than I can now command.

"Besides that the surkass is now on the weigh, and I am called upon to secure voluptuous woven wire mattress stuffed opera reserved seats, for my household aggregation of living wonders.

"I am willing to take all I can pay for if she will sit on a hard blue seat with me, and let her feet dangle down; but I cannot abide by the excessive tariff for preserved seats.

"I love the high moral tone of the sho, and dearly love the grand display of arenick tallent, but I cannot croll under the canvuss with my domestic carryvan, without attracting attention.

"When I was a boy and had not yet entered with my wild impetuous nacher in 2 the mattrymoniall biziness, I used to carry water to the elephant, and thus see the World's Congress of Rair and Beautyful Zoologickal Wonders, but I cood not do that now.

"By the time I got the Jordan carried up to the elephant, to pay my admittance, the sho would be over and gone, and I would be more or less left.

"I thereupon ask in all kandor for your valyable advise on these points?"

ANSWER

The case before us is one which would evoke sympathy from the stoniest heart. It is also one which requires a close scrutiny and cool, deliberate investigation.

You probably at first married a wife whom you considered a treasure, and at once set yourself about amassing wealth of this kind until you find that you are carrying over on your inventory year after year, a large stock of undesirable wives which you are unable to dispose of.

You probably thought when you first married, that there were only two or three unmarried young ladies in the broad and beautiful universe who were worthy of you.

This was a fatal error, and one very common to the bran new bridegroom.

The census will show that there are several, if not more, desirable young ladies who are still on deck.

I am sorry that you have placed yourself in the position you have, and so far as possible will assist you; but these suggestions which I might offer, could only be partially successful.

Could you earlier in the season have given your wives say a dozen able-bodied hens apiece, with instructions that they were to be stimulated to the utmost by their respective owners, the egg-crop might have assisted very materially in purchasing circus tickets with the consequent concert tickets and vermilion lemonade.

There are other suggestions that might be made but it is too late now to make them. I can only offer one more balm to your deeply wounded and disappointed heart. You might by economy and frugality, secure an available point on the route with your mass meeting of household gods and goddesses, where you could sit on the fence and see the elephant meander by.

Yours, enveloped in a large wad of dense gloom.