Part 5

|THE question of mounting the United States cavalry upon ostriches, as a matter of economy, is being agitated on the strength of their easy propagation in Arizona and New Mexico. There being now one hundred and seventeen of these birds in that region, the result of the increase from nine of them imported several years ago. However successful ostrich farming may be in and of itself, we cannot speak too highly of the feasibility of using the bird for cavalry purposes. It is an established fact that the ostrich is very swift and will live for days without food, and be verier viceable all the time.

A detachment of ostrich cavalry could light out across the enemy's country like the wind, and easily distance an equal force mounted upon horses, and after several days' march, instead of a weary, worn, and jaded-out lot of horses, there would be a flock of ostriches, hungry but in good spirits, and the quartermasters could issue some empty bottles, and some sardine boxes, and some government socks, and an old blue overcoat or two, and the irons from an old ambulance, to each bird; and at evening, while the white tents were glimmering in the twilight, the birds would lie in a little knot chewing their cud constantly, and snoring in a subdued way that would shake the earth for miles around.

One great difficulty would be to keep a sufficient guard around the arms and ammunition to prevent the cavalry from eating them up. Think of a half dozen ostriches breaking into an inclosure while the guard was asleep, or off duty, and devouring fifteen or twenty rounds of ammunition in one night, or stealing into the place where the artillery was encamped, and filling themselves up with shells and round shot, and Greek fire and gatling guns.

AN ELECTRIC BELT.

|A CHEYENNE man who was once mildly struck by lightning, calls it an "electric belt."

THE ANNUAL WAIL

|AS usual, the regular fall wail of the eastern press on the Indian question, charging that the Indians never committed any depredations unless grossly abused, has arrived. We are unpacking it this morning and marking the price on it. Some of it is on manifold, and the remainder on ordinary telegraph paper. It will be closed out very cheap. Parties wishing to supply boarding schools with essays and compositions, cannot do better than to apply at once. We are selling Boston lots, with large brass-mounted words, at two and three cents per pound. Every package draws a prize of a two-pound can of baked beans. If large orders are received from any one person, we will set up the wail and start it to running, free of cost. It may be attached to any newspaper in a few minutes, and the merest child can readily understand it. It is very simple. But it is not as simple as the tallowy poultice on the average eastern paper, who grinds them out at $4 per week, and found.

We also have some old wails, two or three years old--and older--that have never been used, which we will sell very low. Old Sioux wails, Modoc wails, etc., etc. They do not seem to meet with a ready sale in the west, and we rather suspect it's because we are too near the scene of the Indian troubles. Parties who have been shot at, scalped, or had their wives and children massacred by the Indians, do not buy eastern wails.

Eastern wails are meant for the eastern market, and if we can get this old stock off our hands, we will hereafter treat the Indian question in our plain, matter of fact way.

The namby-pamby style of Indian editorial and molasses-candy-gush that New Englanders are now taking in, makes us tired. Life is too short. It is but a span. Only as a tale that has been told. Just like the coming of a guest, who gets his meal ticket punched, grabs a tooth pick, and skins out.

Then why do we fool away the golden years that the Creator has given us for mental improvement and spiritual elevation, in trying to fill up the enlightened masses with an inferior article of taffy?

Every man who knows enough to feed himself out of a maple trough, knows, or ought to know, that the Indian is treacherous, dishonest, diabolical and devilish in the extreme, and that he is only waiting the opportunity to spread out a little juvenile hell over the fair face of nature if you give him one-sixteenth of a chance. He will wear pants and comb his hair, and pray and be a class leader at the agency for fifty-nine years, if he knows that in the summer of the sixtieth year he can murder a few Colorado settlers and beat out the brains of the industrious farmers.

Industry is the foe of the red man. He is a warrior. He has royal blood in his veins, and the vermin of the Montezumas dance the German over his filthy carcass. That's the kind of a hair pin he is. He never works. Nobody but Chinamen and plebians ever work.

HE WAS NOT A BURGLAR.

|THE young man who was seen climbing in a window on Center street yesterday, was not a burglar as some might suppose, but on the contrary he was a man whose wife had left the keys to the house lying on the mantel, and locked them in by means of a spring lock on the front door. He did not climb in the window because he preferred that way, but because the door unlocked better from the inside.

BEST ON, BLESSED MEMORY.

|ONE of the attractions of life at the Cheyenne Indian agency, is the reserved seat ticket to the regular slaughter-house matinee. The agency butchers kill at the rate of ten bullocks per hour while at work, and so great was the rush to the slaughter-pens for the internal economy of the slaughtered animals, that Major Love found it necessary to erect a box-office and gate, where none but those holding tickets could enter and provide themselves with these delicacies.

This is not a sensation, it is the plain truth, and we desire to call the attention of those who love and admire the Indian at a distance of 2,000 miles, and to the aesthetic love for the beautiful which prompts the crooked-fanged and dusky bride of old Fly-up-the-Creek to rob the soap-grease man and the glue factory, that she may make a Cheyenne holiday. As a matter of fact, common decency will not permit us to enter into a discussion of this matter. Firstly, it would not be fit for the high order of readers who are now paying their money for _The Boomerang_; and secondly, the Indian maiden at the present moment stands on a lofty crag of the Rocky mountains, beautiful in her wild simplicity, wearing the fringed garments of her tribe. To the sentimentalist she appears outlined against the glorious sky of the new west, wearing a coronet of eagle's feathers, and a health-corset trimmed with fantastic bead-work and wonderful and impossible designs in savage art.

Shall we then rush in and with ruthless hand shatter this beautiful picture? Shall we portray her as she appears on her return from the great slaughter-house benefit and moral aggregation of digestive mementoes? Shall we draw a picture of her clothed in a horse-blanket, with a necklace of the false teeth of the pale face, and her coarse unkempt hair hanging over her smoky features and clinging to her warty, bony neck? No, no. Far be it from us to destroy the lovely vision of copper-colored grace and smoke-tanned beauty, which the freckled student of the effete east has erected in the rose-hued chambers of fancy. Let her dwell there as the plump-limbed princess of a brave people. Let her adorn the hat-rack of his imagination--proud, beautiful, grand, gloomy and peculiar--while as a matter of fact she is at that moment leaving the vestibule of the slaughter-house, conveying in the soiled lap-robe--which is her sole adornment--the mangled lungs of a Texas steer.

No man shall ever say that we have busted the beautiful Cigar Sign Vision that he has erected in his memory. Let the graceful Indian queen that has lived on in his heart ever since he studied history and saw the graphic picture of the landing of Columbus, in which Columbus is just unsheathing his bread knife, and the stage Indians are fleeing to the tall brush; let her, we say, still live on. The ruthless hand that writes nothing but everlasting truth, and the stub pencil that yanks the cloak of the false and artificial from cold and perhaps unpalatable fact, null spare this little imaginary Indian maiden with a back-comb and gold garters. Let her withstand the onward march of centuries while the true Indian maiden eats the fricasseed locust of the plains and wears the cavalry pants of progress. We may be rough and thoughtless many times, but we cannot come forward and ruthlessly shatter the red goddess at whose shrine the far-away student of Black-hawk and other fourth-reader warriors, worship.

As we said, we decline to pull the cloak from the true Indian maiden of to-day and show her as she is. That cloak may be all she has on, and no gentleman will be rude even to the daughter of Old Bob-Tail-Flush, the Cheyenne brave.

A JUDICIAL WARBLER

|JACOB BEESON BLAIR, who has been recently renominated as associate justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming, and judge of the second judicial district, with his headquarters at this place, is one of the most able and consistent officials that Wyoming ever had. I might go further and say that he stands at the head of them all. A year ago, as an evidence of his popularity, I will say that he was unanimously nominated to represent the Territory in Congress, which nomination he gracefully declined. He has put his spare capital into mines, and shown that he is a resident of Wyoming, and not of the classic halls of Washington, or the sea-beat shores of "Maryland, my Maryland."

Two years ago I had the pleasure of making a trip to the mines on Douglas creek, or, as it was then called, Last Chance, in company with Judge Blair and Delegate Downey, owners of the Keystone gold mine in that district. The party also included Governor Hoyt, Assayer Murphy, Postmaster Hayford, and several other prominent men. Judge Brown and Sheriff Boswell were also in the party at the mine. Judge Blair is, by natural choice, a Methodist, and renewed our spiritual strength throughout the trip in a way that was indeed pleasant and profitable. The Judge sings in a soft, subdued kind of a way that makes the walls of the firmament crack, and the heavens roll together like a scroll. When he sings--=

```How tedious and tasteless the hours

````When Jesus no longer I see,=

the coyotes and jack-rabbits within a radius of seventy-five miles, hunt their respective holes, and remain there till the danger has passed.

Looking at the Judge as he sits on the bench singeing the road agent for ten years in solitary confinement, one would not think he could warble so when he gets into the mountains. But he can. He is a regular prima donna, so to speak.

When he starts to sing, the sound is like an Æolian harp, sighing through the pine forests and dying away upon the silent air. Gradually it swells into the wild melody of the hotel gong.

A FIRE AT A BALL.

|DOWN at Gunnison last week a large, select ball was given in a hall, one end of which was partitioned off for sleeping rooms. A young man who slept in one of these rooms, and who felt grieved because he had not been invited, and had to roll around and suffer while the glad throng tripped the light bombastic toe, at last discovered a knot-hole in the partition through which he could watch the giddy multitude. While peeping through the knot-hole, he discovered that one of the dancers, who had an aperture in the heel of his shoe and another in his sock to correspond, was standing by the wall with the ventilated foot near the knot-hole. It was but the work of a moment to hold a candle against this exposed heel until the thick epidermis had been heated red hot. Then there was a wail that rent the battlements above and drowned the blasts of the music. There was a wild scared cry of "fire": a frightened throng rushing hither and thither, and then, where mirth and music and rum had gladdened the eye and reddened the cheek a moment ago, all was still save the low convulsive titter of a scantily clad man, as he lay on the floor of his donjon tower and dug his nails in the floor.

A LITTLE PUFF.

|SOME time ago the Cheyenne _Sun_ noticed that Judge Crosby, known to Colorado and Wyoming people quite well, was making strenuous efforts, with some show of success, to obtain the appointment of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming. Since that, I have noticed with great sorrow that the President, in his youthful thoughtlessness and juvenile independence, has appointed another man for the position.

I speak of this because so many Colorado and Wyoming people knew Mr. Crosby and had an interest in him, as I might say. Some of us only knew him fifty cents worth, while others knew him for various amounts up to $5 and $10. He was an earnest, unflagging and industrious borrower. When times were dull he used to borrow of me. Then I would throw up my hands and let him go through me. It was not a hazardous act at all on my part.

The Judge knew everybody, and everybody knew him, and seemed nervous when they saw him, for fear that the regular assessment was about to be made. Every few days he wanted "to buy a pair of socks," but he never bought them. Forty or fifty of us got together and compared notes the other day. We ascertained that not less than $100 had been contributed to the Crosby Sock Fund during his stay here, and yet the old man wore the same socks to Washington that he had worn in the San Juan country. A like amount was also contributed to the Wash Bill Fund, and still he never had any washing done. We often wondered why so much money was squandered on laundry expenses, and yet, that he should have the general perspective and spicy fragrance of a Mormon emigrant train. He used to come into my office and be sociable with me because he was a journalist. It surprised me at first to meet a journalist who never changed his shirt. I thought that journalists, as a rule, wore diamond studs and had to be looked at through smoked glass.

He liked me. He told me so one day when we were alone, and after I had promised to tell no one. Then he asked me for a quarter. I told him I had nothing less than a fifty-cent piece. He said he would go and get it changed. I said it would be a shame for an old man, and lame at that, to go out and get it changed; so I said I would go. I went out and played thirteen of my eternal revolving games of billiards, and about dusk went back to the office whistling a merry roundelay, knowing that he had starved out and gone away. I found him at my desk, where he had written to every Senator and Representative in Congress, and every man who had ever been a Senator or Representative in Congress; likewise every man, woman and child who ever expected to be a Senator or a Representative in Congress; also, to every superintendent and passenger agent of every known line of railway, for a pass to every known point of the civilized world, and this correspondence he had used my letter heads, and envelopes and stamps, and he wasn't done either. He was just getting animated and warming up to his work, and perspiring so that I had to open the hall door and burn some old gum overshoes and other disinfectants before I could breathe.

A large society is being formed here and in Cheyenne, called the "Crosby Sufferer Aid Association." It is for the purpose of furnishing speedy relief to the sufferers from the Crosby outbreak. We desire the cooperation and assistance of Colorado philanthropists, and will, so far as possible, furnish relief to Colorado sufferers from the great scourge.

Later.--Henry Rothschild Crosby, Esq., passed through here a few evenings since, on his way to Evanston, Wyoming, where he takes charge of his office as receiver of public moneys for the western land office.

Henry seems to feel as though I had not stood by him through his political struggle at Washington. At least I learn from other parties that he does not seem to hunger and thirst after my genial society, and thinks that what little influence I may have had, has not been used in his interest.

That is where Henry hit the nail on the head, with that far-sighted statesmanship and clear, unerring logic for which he is so remarkable.

I do not blame those who were instrumental in securing his appointment, remember. Not at all. No doubt I would have done the same thing if I had been in Washington all winter, and Henry had hovered around me for breakfast, and for lunch, and for dinner, and for supper, and for between meals, and for picnics, and had borrowed my money, and my overcoat, and my meal ticket, and my bath ticket, and my pool checks, and my socks, and my _robs de nuit_, and my tooth brush, and my gas and writing materials and stationery; but it should be born in mind that I am a resident of Wyoming. I have property here and it behooves me to do and say what I can for the interests of our people. I may have to borrow some things myself some day and I don't want to find, then, that they have all been borrowed.

Let Hank stand back a little while and give the other boys a chance.

[Note.--In order to give the gentle reader an idea of Mr. Crosby's personal appearance, I have consented to draw a picture of him myself. It isn't very pretty, but it is horribly accurate. It is so life-like, that it seems as though I could almost detect his maroon-colored breath.--B. N]

GENIUS AND WHISKY.

|I SEE in a recent issue of the _Sun_ a short article clipped from a Sidney paper, relative to William Henry Harrison, which brings to my mind fresh recollections of the long ago. I knew William too. I knew him for a small amount which I wish I had now, to give to suffering Ireland. He came upon me in the prime of summer time and said he was a newspaper man. That always gets me. When a man says to me that he is a newspaper man, and proves it by showing the usual discouraging state of resources and liabilities, I always come forward with the collateral.

William wanted to go into the mountains and recover his exhausted nerve-force, and build up his brain-power with our dry, bracing air. He knew Mr. Foley, who was then working a claim in Last Chance, so he went out there to tone up his exhausted energies. He went out there, and after a few weeks a note came in from the man with the historical cognomen, asking me to send him a gallon of best Old Crow. I went to my guide book and encyclopoedia and ascertained that this was a kind of drink. I then purchased the amount and sent it on.

Mr. Foley said that William stayed by the jug till it was dry, and then he came into town. I met him on the street and asked him how his intellect seemed after his picnic in the mountains. He said she was all right now, and he felt just as though he could do the entire staff work on the New York _Herald_ for two weeks and not sweat a hair. But he didn't pay for the Old Crow. It slipped his mind. When time hung heavy on my hands, I used to write William a note and cheerfully dun him for the amount. I would also ask him how his intellect seemed by this time, and also make other little jocular remarks. But he has never forwarded the amount. If the bill had been for pantaloons, or grub, or other luxuries, I might have excused him, but when I loan a man money for a staple like whisky. I don't think it's asking too much to hope that in the flight of time it would be paid back. However, I can't help it now. It's about time that another bogus journalist should put in an appearance. I have a few dollars ahead, and I am yearning to lay out the sum on struggling genius.

THE TWO-HEADED GIRL

|THE cultivated two-headed girl has visited the west. It is very rare that a town the size of Laramie experiences the rare treat of witnessing anything so enjoyable. In addition to the mental feast which such a thing affords, one goes away feeling better--feeling that life has more in it to live for, and is not after all such a vale of tears as he had at times believed it.

Through the trials and disappointments of this earthly pilgrimage, the soul is at times cast down and discouraged. Man struggles against ill-fortune and unlooked-for woes, year after year, until he becomes misanthropical and soured, but when a two-headed girl comes along and he sees her it cheers him up. She speaks to his better nature in two different languages at one and the same time, and at one price.

When I went to the show I felt gloomy and apprehensive. The eighteenth ballot had been taken and the bulletins seemed to have a tiresome sameness. The future of the republic was not encouraging. I felt as though, if I could get first cost for the blasted thing, I would sell it.

I had also been breaking in a pair of new boots that day, and spectators had been betting wildly on the boots, while I had no backers at three o'clock in the afternoon, and had nearly decided to withdraw on the last ballot. I went to the entertainment feeling as though I should criticise it severely.

The two-headed girl is not beautiful. Neither one of her, in fact, is handsome. There is quite a similarity between the two, probably because they have been in each other's society a great deal and have adopted the same ways.

She is an Ethiopian by descent and natural choice, being about the same complexion as Frank Miller's oil blacking, price ten cents.

She was at one time a poor slave, but by her winning ways and genuine integrity and genius, she has won her way to the hearts of the American people. She has thoroughly demonstrated the fact that two heads are better than one.

A good sized audience welcomed this popular favorite. When she came forward to the footlights and made her two-ply bow she was greeted by round after round of applause from the _elite_ of the city.

I felt pleased and gratified. The fact that a recent course of scientific lectures here was attended by from fifteen to thirty people, and the present brilliant success of the two-headed girl proved to me, beyond a doubt, that we live in an age of thought and philosophical progress.

Science may be all right in its place, but does it make the world better? Does it make a permanent improvement on the minds and thoughts of the listener? Do we go away from such a lecture feeling that we have made a grand stride toward a glad emancipation from the mental thraldom of ignorance and superstition? Do people want to be assailed, year after year, with a nebular theory, and the Professor Huxley theory of natural selections and things of that nature?

No! 1,000 times no!

They need to be led on quietly by an appeal to their better natures. They need to witness a first-class bureau of monstrosities, such as men with heads as big as a band wagon, women with two heads, Cardiff giants, men with limbs bristling out all over them like the velvety bloom on a prickly pear.

When I get a little leisure, and can attend to it,

I am going to organize a grand constellation of living wonders of this kind, and make thirteen or fourteen hundred farewell tours with it, not so much to make money, but to meet a long-felt, want of the American people for something which will give a higher mental tone to the tastes of those who never lag in their tireless march toward perfection.

THE CULTIVATION OF GUM.

|AN idea has occurred to us, that, situated as we are at a considerable elevation, and being comparatively out of the line of tropical growth, we should try to propagate plants that will withstand the severe winter and the sudden and sometimes fatal surprise of spring. Plants in this locality worry along very well through the winter in a kind of semi-unconscious state, but when spring drops down on them about the Fourth of July they are not prepared for it, and they yield to the severe nervous shock and pass with a gentle gliding motion up the flume.