Chapter 3

"The rest of Loys's folks was in an unpleasant frame of mind, too. They sent out her brother, and while I'd have took most anything from Loys's brother, there comes a place where human nature is human nature, and the upshot of it was I planked that young man gently but firmly across my knees. Suffering Ike! But he was one sassy young man! Howsomever, the whole outfit came round in time--all except uncle and me. He used to grit his teeth together till the sparks flew when he saw me. I was afraid he'd bust a blood-vessel in one of them fits, so I quit. I hated to let go of the old ranch, but I'm pretty well fixed--I'm superintendent here. It's Kyle's ranch, you know. That's his brand--the queer-looking thing on the left hip of that critter, over the vented hash-knife. Loys's invention, that is. She says it's a cherublim, but we call it the 'flying flap-jack.' There's a right smart lot of beef critters toting that signal around this part of the country. Kyle's one of the fellers that rises like a setting of bread--quiet and gentle, but steady and sure. He's going to the State Legislature next year. 'Twon't do no harm to have one honest man in the outfit.

"Now, perhaps if I'd married some nice woman I might have had 1,000 steers of my own, and a chance to make rules and regulations for my feller-citizens--and then again I might have took to gambling and drinking and raising blazes, and broke my poor wife's broom-handle with my hard head. So I reckon we'll let it slide as it is. Now you straddle that cayuse of yours and come along with me and I'll show you some rattling colts."

The Golden Ford

Reddy was on the station platform, walking up and down, looking about him anxiously. We caught sight of each other at the same time.

"Hi, there!" said he and jumped for me. "Gad-dog your little hide!" he cried as he put my right hand in line for a pension. "I thought I was booked to go without saying good-bye to you--you got the note I pinned on your shack?"

"Sure."

"Well, there's time for a chin before the choo-choo starts--thought I'd be early, not savvying this kind of travelling a great deal. Darned if you ain't growed since I saw you--getting fat, too! Well, how's everything? I didn't say nothing to the other boys about pulling my freight, as I wanted to go sober for once. You explain to 'em that old Red's head ain't swelled, will you? Seems kind of dirty to go off that way, but I'm bound for God's country and the old-time folks, and somehow I feel that I must cut the budge out of it. 'Nother thing is I'm superstitious, as you may or may not have noticed, and I believe if you try the same game twicet you'll get just as different results as can be the second time--you heard how I hit it in the mines, didn't you? No? Well, that's so; you dint seen many people out on the flat, have you? Hum. I don't know principally where to begin. You remember Wind-River Smith's pardner that the boys called Shadder, because he was so thin? Nice feller, always willing to do you a favour, or say something comical when you least expected it--had kind of a style with him, too. Yes, sir, that's the man. Well him and me was out in the Bend one day, holding a mess of Oregon half-breeds that was to be shipped by train shortly, when old Smithy comes with the mail. 'Letter for you, Shadder,' says Smith, and passes over a big envelope with wads of sealing wax all over it. Shadder reads his letter, and folds it up. Then he takes a look over the county--the kind of a look a man gives when he's thinking hard. Then says he, 'Red, take off your hat.' I done it. 'Smithy, take off your hat.' 'All right,' says Smith; 'but you tell me why, or I'll snake the shirt off you to square things.'

"'Boys,' says Shadder, 'I'm Lord Walford.'

"'Lord Hellford;' hollers Smithy. 'You'd better call somebody in to look at your plumbing--what you been drinkin', Shadder?'

"'Read for yourself,' says Shadder, and he handed him the letter.

"Wish't you could have seen old Smithy's face as he read it! He thought his pardner had been cut out of his herd for ever.

"'It's the God's truth, Red,' says he slowly, and he had a sideways smile on his face as he turned to Shadder. 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I suppose congratulations are in order?'

"Shadder's hand stopped short on its way to the cigarette, and he looked at Smithy as if he couldn't believe what he saw.

"'To hell with 'em!' says he, as savage as a wildcat, and he jabbed the irons in and whirled his cayuse about on one toe, heading for the ranch.

"'Now you go after him, you jealous old sore-head,' says I. 'Go on!' I says, as he started to argue the point, 'or I'll spread your nose all the way down your spinal column!' The only time to say 'no' to me is when I'm not meaning what I say, so away goes Wind-River, and they made it up all right in no time. Well, Shadder had to pull for England to take a squint at the ancestral estates, and all of us was right here at this station to see him off--Lord! it seems as if that happened last world!--well, it took a little bit the edge off any and all drunks a ranch as an institution had ever seen before. There was old Smithy crying around, wiping his eyes on his sleeve, and explaining to a lot of Eastern folks that it wasn't Shadder's fault--gad-hook it all! He was the best, hootin', tootin' son-of-a-sea-cook that ever hit a prairie breeze, in spite of this dum foolishness.

"'They can't make no "lord" of Shadder!' hollers Smithy. 'That is, not for long--he's a _man_, Shadder is--ain't cher, yer damned old gangle-legged hide-rack?'

"And Shadder never lost his patience at all, though it must have been kind of trying to be made into such a holy show before the kind of people he used to be used to. All he'd say was 'Bet your life, old boy!' Well, it was right enough too, as Smithy had nursed him through small-pox one winter up in the Shoshonee country, and mighty near starved himself to death feeding Shadder out of the slim grub stock, when the boy was on the mend; still some people would have forgot that.

"But did your uncle Red get under the influence of strong drink? DID he? Oh _my_! Oh MY! I wish I could make it clear to you. The vigilantes put after a horse thief once in Montana, and they landed on him in a butt-end canon, and there was all the stock with the brands on 'em as big as a patent medicine sign, as the lad hadn't had time to stop for alterations.

"'Well,' says they, 'what have you got to say for yourself?' He looked at them brands staring him in the face, and he bit off a small hunk of chewing 'Ptt-chay!' Says he, 'Gentlemen, I'm at a loss for words!' And they let him go, as a good joke is worth its price in any man's country. I'm in that lad's fix; I ain't got the words to tell you how seriously drunk I was on that occasion. I remember putting for what I thought was the hotel, and settling down, thinking there must be a lulu of a scrap in the barroom from the noise; then somebody gave me a punch in the ribs and says, 'Where's your ticket?' and I don't know what I said nor what he said after that, but it must have been all right. Then it got light and I met a lot of good friends I never saw before nor since; then more noise and trouble and at last I woke up.--in a hotel bedroom, all right, but not the one I was used to. I went to the window, heaved her open and looked out. It was a bully morning and I felt A1. There was a nice range of mountains out in front of me that must have come up during' the night. 'I'd like to know where I am,' I thinks. 'But somebody will tell me before long, so there is no use worrying about that--the main point is, have I been touched?' I dug down into my jeans and there wasn't a thing of any kind to remember me by. 'No,' I says to myself, 'I ain't been touched--I've been grabbed--they might have left me the price of a breakfast! Well, it's a nice looking country, anyhow!' So down I walks to the office. A cheerful-seeming plump kind of a man was sitting behind the desk. 'Hello!' says he, glancing up and smiling as I came in. 'How do you open up this morning?'

"'Somebody saved me the trouble,' says I. 'I'm afraid I'll have to give you the strong arm for breakfast.'

"He grinned wide. 'Oh, it ain't as bad as that, I hardly reckon,' says he. He dove into a safe and brought out a cigar-box.

"'When a gentleman's in the condition you was in last night,' he says, 'I always make it a point to go through his clothes and take out anything a stranger might find useful, trusting that there won't be no offence the next morning. Here's your watch and the rest of your valuables, including the cash--count your money and see if it's right.'

"Well, sir! I was one happy man, and I thanked that feller as I thumbed over the bills, but when I got up to a hundred and seventy I begun to feel queer. Looked like I'd made good money on the trip.

"'What's the matter?' says he, seeing my face. 'Nothing wrong, I hope!'

"'Why, the watch and the gun, and the other things is all right,' says I. 'But I'm now fifty dollars to the good, even figuring that I didn't spend a cent, which ain't in the least likely, and here's ten-dollar bills enough to make a bed-spread left over.'

"'Pshaw!' says he. 'Blame it! I've mixed your plunder up with the mining gentleman that came in at the same time. You and him was bound to fight at first, and then you both turned to to lick me, and what with keeping you apart and holding you off, and taking your valuables away from you all at the same time, and me all alone here as it was the night-man's day-off, I've made a blunder of it. Just take your change out of the wad, and call for a drink on me when you feel like it, will you?'

"I said I would do that, and moreover that he was an officer and a gentleman, and that I'd stay at his hotel two weeks at least to show my appreciation, no matter where it was, but to satisfy a natural curiosity, I'd like to know what part of the country I was at present inhabiting.

"'You're at Boise, Idaho,' says he, 'one of the best little towns in the best little Territory in the United States of America, including Alaska.'

"'Well . . .' says I. 'Well . . .' for again I was at a loss for words. I had no idea I'd gone so far from home. 'I believe what you say,' says I. 'What do you do around these parts?'

"'Mining,' says he. 'You're just in time--big strike in the Bob-cat district. Poor man's mining. Placer, and durned good placer, right on the top of the ground. The mining gentleman I spoke about is having his breakfast now. Suppose you go in and have a talk with him? Nice man, drunk or sober, although excitable when he's had a little too much, or not quite enough. He might put you onto a good thing. I'm not a mining person myself.'

"'Thanks,' says I, and in I went to the dining room.

There was a great, big, fine-looking man eating his ham and eggs the way I like to see a man eat the next morning. He had a black beard that was so strong it fairly jumped out from his face.

"'Mornin',' says I.

"'Good morning', sir!' says he. 'A day of commingled lucent clarity and vernal softness, ain't it?'

"'Well, I wouldn't care to bet on that without going a little deeper into the subject,' says I; 'but it smells good at least--so does that ham and eggs. Mary, I'll take the same, with coffee extra strong.'

"'You have doubtless been attracted to our small but growing city from the reports--which are happily true--of the inexhaustible mineral wealth of the surrounding region?' says he.

"'No-o--not exactly,' says I; 'but I do want to hear something about mines. Mr. Hotel-man out there (who's a gentleman of the old school if ever there lived one) told me that you might put me on to a good thing.'

"'Precisely,' says he. 'Now, sir, my name is Jones--Agamemnon G. Jones--and my pardner, Mr. H. Smith, is on a business trip, selling shares of our mine, which we have called "The Treasury" from reasons which we can make obvious to any investor. The shares, Mr. ------'

"'Saunders--Red Saunders--Chantay Seeche Red.'

"'Mr. Saunders, are fifty cents apiece, which price is really only put upon them to avoid the offensive attitude of dealing them out as charity. As a matter of fact, this mine of ours contains a store of gold which would upset the commercial world, were the bare facts of its extent known. There is neither sense nor amusement in confining such enormous treasure in the hands of two people. Consequently, my pardner and I are presenting an interest to the public, putting the nominal figure of fifty cents a share upon it, to save the feelings of our beneficiaries.'

"'What the devil do I care?' says I. 'I'm looking for a chance to dig--could you tell a man where to go?'

"'Oh!' says he, 'when you come to that, that's different. Strictly speaking, my pardner Hy hasn't gone off on a business trip. As a matter of fact, he left town night before last with two-thirds of the money we'd pulled out of a pocket up on Silver Creek, in the company of two half-breed Injuns, a Chinaman, and four more sons-of-guns not classified, all in such a state of beastly intoxication that their purpose, route, and destination are matters of the wildest conjecture. I've been laying around town here hating myself to death, thinking perhaps I could sell some shares in a mine that we'll find yet, if we have good luck. If you want to go wild-catting over the hills and far away, I'm your huckleberry.'

"'That hits me all right,' says I. 'For, what I don't know about mining, nobody don't know. When do we start?'

"'This, or any other minute,' says he, getting up from the table.

"'Wait till I finish up these eggs,' says I. 'And there's a matter of one drink coming to me outside--I may as well put that where it won't harm any one else before we start.'

"'All right!' says he, waving his hand. 'You'll find me outside--at your pleasure, sir.'

"I swallered the rest of my breakfast whole and hustled out to the bar, where my friend and the Hotel-man was waiting. 'Now I'll take that drink that's coming, and rather than be small about it, I'll buy one for you too, and then we're off,' says I.

"'You won't do no such thing,' says the Hotel-man. 'It's a horse on me, and I'll supply the liquor. Mr. Jones is in the play as much as anybody.'

"So the Hotel-man set 'em up, and that made one drink. Then Jones said he'd never let a drink suffer from lonesomeness yet when he had the price, and that made two drinks. I had to uphold the honour of the ranch, and that made three drinks. Hotel-man said it was up-sticks now, and he meant to pay his just debts like an honest man, and that made four drinks, then Jones said--well, by this time I see I needn't have hurried breakfast so much. More people came in. I woke up the next morning in the same old bedroom. Every breakfast Aggy and me got ready to pull for the mines, and every morning I woke up in the bedroom. I should like to draw a veil over the next two weeks, but it would have to be a pretty strong veil to hold it. I tried to keep level with Aggy, but he'd spend three dollars to my one, and the consequence of that was that we went broke within fifteen minutes of each other.

"Well, sir, we were a mournful pair to draw to that day. We sat there and cussed and said, 'Now, why didn't we do this, that, and t'other thing instead of blowing our hard earned dough?'--till bimeby we just dripped melancholy, you might say. Howsomever, we weren't booked for a dull time just yet. That afternoon there was a great popping of whips like an Injun skirmish and into town comes a bull train half-a-mile long. Twelve yoke of bulls to the team; lead, swing, and trail waggons for each, as big as houses on wheels. You don't see the like of that in this country. Down the street they come, the dust flying, whips cracking and the lads hollering 'Whoa haw, Mary--up there! Wherp! whoa haw.'

"And those fellers had picked up dry throats, walking in the dust. Also, they had a month's wages aching in their pockets. We hadn't much mor'n got the thump of their arrival out of our ears, when who comes roaring into town but the Bengal Tiger gang, and they had four months' wages. Owner of the mine got on a bender and paid everybody off by mistake. You can hardly imagine how this livened up things. There ain't nobody less likely to play lame-duck than me, but there was no dodging the hospitality. The only idea prevailing was to be rid of the money as soon as possible. The effects showed right off. You could hear one man telling the folks for their own good that he was the Old Missouri River, and when he felt like swelling his banks, it was time for parties who couldn't swim to hunt the high ground; whilst the gentleman on the next corner let us know that he was a locomotive carrying three hundred pounds of steam with the gauge still climbing and the blower on. When he whistled three times, he said, any intelligent man would know that there was danger around.

"Well, sir, I put the Old Missouri River to bed that night, and he'd flattened out to a very small streamlet indeed, while the locomotive went lame before supper, and had to be put in the round-house by a couple of pushers. That's the way with fine ideas. Cold facts comes and puts a crimp in them. Once I knew a small feller I could have stuck in my pocket and forgot about, but when we went out and took several prescriptions together on a day, he spoke to me like this. 'Red,' says he, 'put your little hand in mine, and we'll go and take a bird's-eye view of the Universe.' Astonishin' idea, wasn't it? And him not weighing over a hundred pound. Howsomever, he didn't take any bird's-eye view of the Universe--he only become strikingly indisposed.

"Well, to get back to Boise, you never in all your life saw so many men and brothers as was gathered there that day, and old Aggy, he was one of the centres of attraction. That big voice and black beard was always where the crowd was thickest, and the wet goods flowing the freest. 'Gentlemen!' says he, 'Let's lift up our voices in melody!' That was one of Ag's delusions--he thought he could sing. So four of 'em got on top of a billiard table and presented 'Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep' to the company, which made me feel glad that I hadn't been brought up that way. After Ag had hip-locked the last low note, another song-bird volunteered.

"This was a little fat Dutchman, with pale blue eyes and a mustache like two streaks of darning cotton. He had come to town to sell a pair of beef-steers, but got drawn into the general hilarity, and now he didn't care a cuss whether he, she, or it ever sold another steer. He got himself on end and sung 'Leeb Fadderlont moxtrue eckstein' in a style that made you wonder that the human nose could stand the strain.

"'Aw, cheese that!' says a feller near the door. 'Come get your steers, one of 'em's just chased the barber up a telegraph pole!'

"So then we all piled out into the street to see the steers. Sure enough, there was the barber, sitting on the cross-piece, and the steer pawing dirt underneath.

"'He done made me come a fast heat from de cohner,' says the barber. 'I kep' hollerin' "next!" but he ain't pay no 'tention--he make it "next" fur me, shuah! Yah, yah, yah! You gents orter seen me start at de bottom, an' slide all de way up disyer telegraft pole!'

"One of the bull-whackers went out to rope the steers, and Ag gave directions from the sidewalk. He wasn't very handy with a riata, and that's a fact, but the way Ag lit into him was scandalous. When he'd missed about six casts of his rope, Ag opened up on him:

"'Put a stamp on it and send it to him by mail,' says Aggy, in his sourcastic way. 'Address it, "Bay Steer, middle of Main St., Boise, Idaho. If not delivered within ten days, return to owner, who can use it to hang himself." Blast my hide if I couldn't stand here and throw a box-car nearer to the critter! Well, _well_, WELL! How many left hands have you got, anyhow? Do it up in a wad and heave it at him for general results--he might get tangled in it.'

"It rattled the bull-whacker, having so much attention drawn to him, and he stepped on the rope and twisted himself up in it and was flying light generally.

"'Say!' says Ag, appealing to the crowd, 'won't some kind friend who's fond of puzzles go down and help that gentleman do himself?'

"That made the whacker mad. He was as red in the face as a lobster.

"'You come down and show what _you_ can do," says he. 'You've got gas enough for a balloon ascension, but that may be all there is to you.'

"'Oh, I ain't so much,' says Aggy, 'although I'm as good a man to-day as ever I was in my life--but I have a little friend here who can rope, down, and ride that critter from here to the brick-front in five minutes by the watch; and if you've got a twenty-five dollar bill in your pocket, or its equivalent in dust, you can observe the experiment.'

"'I'll go you, by gosh!' says the bull-whacker, slapping his hat on the ground and digging for his pile.

"'Say, if you're referring to me, Ag,' I says, 'it's kind of a sudden spring--I ain't what you might call in training, and that steer is full of triple-extract of giant powder.'

"'G'wan!' says Ag. 'You can do it--and then we're twenty-five ahead.'

"'But suppose we lose?'

"'Well . . . It won't be such an awful loss.'

"'Now you look here, Agamemnon G. Jones,' says I, 'I ain't going to stand for putting up a summer breeze ag'in' that feller's good dough--that's a skin game, to speak it pleasantly.'

"Then Aggy argues the case with me, and when Aggy started to argue, you might just as well 'moo' and chase yourself into the corral, because he'd get you, sure. Why, that man could sit in the cabin and make roses bloom right in the middle of the floor; whilst he was singing his little song you could see 'em and smell 'em; he could talk a snowbank off a high divide in the middle of February. Never see anybody with such a medicine tongue, and in a big man it was all the stranger. 'Now,' he winds up, 'as for cheating that feller, _you_ ought to know me better, Red--why, I'll give him my note!'

"So, anyhow, I done it. Up the street we went, steer bawling and buck-jumping, my hair a-flying, and me as busy as the little bee you read about keeping that steer underneath me, 'stead of on top of me, where he'd ruther be, and after us the whole town, whoopin', yellin', crackin' off six-shooters, and carryin' on wild.

"Then we had twenty-five dollars and was as good as anybody. But it didn't last long. The tin-horns come out after pay-day, like hop-toads after a rain. 'Twould puzzle the Government at Washington to know where they hang out in the meantime. There was one lad had a face on him with about as much expression as a hotel punkin pie. He run an arrow game, and he talked right straight along in a voice that had no more bends in it than a billiard cue.

"'Here's where you get your three for one any child may do it no chance to lose make your bets while the arrow of fortune swings all gents accommodated in amounts from two-bits to double-eagles and bets paid on the nail,' says he.

"'Red,' says Aggy, 'I can double our pile right here--let me have the money. I know this game.' You'd hardly believe it, but I dug up. 'Double-or-quits?' says he to the dealer.

"'Let her go,' says the dealer; the arrow swung around. 'Quits,' says the dealer, and raked in my dough. It was all over in one second.

"I grabbed Aggy by the shoulder and took him in the corner for a private talk. 'I thought you knew this game?' says I.

"'I do,' says he. 'That's the way it always happens.' And once more in my life I experienced the peculiar feeling of being altogether at a loss for words.