Part 8

“I was helpless as a child; couldn’t grab lever, wheel nor nothing. Finally one leg toppled off an edge of rock and then--! Well, she shot the cook’s shanty across the stream two hundred yards first whack. It was so sudden it didn’t even put the fire out. The boys took their solemn oaths the kitchen stove went across, smoking as calm and peaceful as anything, just like it had decided to take a little fly. Nothing to interrupt business, but just the kind of exercise you would think a cook-stove would take. Yet they was astonished that I should shoot a cook-stove across the stream.

“While they was standing there astonished, the old nozzle bucked ’way back, and plowed a well in a bank ten feet away. I bet you that stream could shoot a hole right up Niagara Falls, and when she mixed it with the mess of dirt and rock in that bank, kicking it backwards at me, old Napoleon at Waterloo was a dum poor effigy for Hy Smith. I couldn’t see how it was ever going to be possible for me to breathe again, and the awful roar and swatting and smashing makes it queer how I ever got to hear or think again.

“But she passed through that bank of dirt in no time, and all the fellows that was asking, ‘Where’s he gone?’ found out. They got the last of the bank. Men could show you dents where pebbles no bigger’n buckshot had been blown into them.

“The old monitor got real gay, and thought she was a Fourth of July pin-wheel, and after that there was nothing but water-works on the whole cussed creek. She took from one side to the other in quick swings. Billy, the cook, said he saw a block of boards take wings and sail right over Hooker’s Mountain.

“I was dumbfuzzled and geewhizzled, till my head was full of curled hair and insect powder. I hung on with all hands and feet by instinct, like an insect, until finally we steadied down and played in the same place for half a minute, and I brushed some of the water out of my eyes.

“Beside me was Hank, looking reproachful, as much as to say, ‘I _thought_ you knew your limit, Hy--but you must have stayed in town _too_ long last time.’

“Then the next thing that appeared was that darned little black-and-tan dog that had caused the whole trouble, followed by our friend, the rancher. I pined to wash his whiskers. But it was not to be. The monitor had jacked all her levers and cogs by knocking around.

“‘Come on,’ I yelped to the crowd--‘Come on, you flapjack faces! Help me hold this critter down.’

“They got a move on. We tied the monitor and sent word to shut off the water. Whilst we was all stepping on each other’s feet, I thought I heard a mixture of sounds like small roars and large ‘Ki-yi’s,’ but the farmer, he was very busy, thinking we might catch on to who did all this, and come down to his cabin some night and take his whiskers as a momentum.

“I had been pounded enough, so one of the lads took my place. I stepped out. There was a battle going on. That cussed little black-and-tan terrier was snapping and flying around poor old Hohankton, that had never received anything but kind treatment in his life, and scarcely knew what to make of this. I hate a black-and-tan dog, anyway. I like to see a dog with legs big enough and long enough to support his body, and with a body hefty enough to give the legs something to do. This yapping little devil didn’t have none of my sympathies. When I looked at the miserable beast I felt something _had_ to happen to him.

“Just then he made a quick jump and nailed old Hank by the nose, and at the very same minute somebody hollered for me to come and fix something.

“After I pounded my thumb and wrenched my wrist getting the lever back in some shape again, they stopped the water off, and the country was saved!

“Then I grabbed that farmer and began to recite facts about his career, while the boys spit on their hands and took hold of shovels. It looked like uncle farmer would lead an upright life for some time, but he begged and hollered and pled, so the fellows loosed him from the position where we could best apply shovels, and he explained that he didn’t go for to do all this when he started, and we let him up.

“He rose to his feet and apologized to us, singly and collectively, and then he says, ‘Now I’ll just get little Pettie and ride right along home,’ and he began to holler, ‘Pettie! Pettie! Pettie!’ and all that come was old Hank, who looked him straight in the face.

“‘Well, what has become of the durn little coyote?’ says everybody, and then it just occurred to me that I knew, so I went back to where I had seen little Pettie grab old Hank by the nose, and, sure enough, there was a lovely little black tail!

“I brought it down to the rancher and I said, ‘Little Pettie has departed, but he, she or it leaves this for you as a souvenir.’

“The rancher says, ‘Gosh almighty!’ as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. I held up the tail, and I asked Hank:

“‘Here, little Hanky-Panky, did it eat the rest of little Pettie?’ and Hank looked at the tail and slouched off, with a kind of long and non-complaining squeal.

“‘Well,’ says the Boss, brisk, ‘if we find any more of little Pettie we’ll send it down to you, but I guess that’s all you can collect of him now.’

“‘Well, darnation!’ said the farmer, and he brushed off the dust and dirt of his hands on his trousers’ leg. ‘Well, say,’ says he, ‘I don’t know whether to weep or to yell Hosanna! As for me, personally,’ he said, ‘that cussed little dog has nigh chewed my fingers off,’ and he showed us all kinds of bites on his fingers; ‘but,’ he says, ‘on the other hand, it’s my wife’s pet, and every time one of the children lets itself get bit by it, why, their mother raises sin with them for tormentin’ it. If I had a good lie ready I wouldn’t weep one bit. But the circumstances and hullabaloos and waterfalls and geysers I have seen in the last twenty minutes have left my mind running in streaks.’

“We all looked at one another. We couldn’t think of anything, so we shook our heads.

“‘Well,’ said he, ‘perhaps by the time I get home I will be able to explain how little Pettie separated himself from this,’ and he twirled the last remains. ‘Perhaps I can,’ he said. ‘I don’t bear you boys the slightest grudge no more. I can’t. I set this dog on your pig a-purpose, and I can’t pretend to be at all sorry that your pig et him up.’ He shook his head again, and fixed his hat on.

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘matrimony is the mother of invention. I reckon I’ll get out of it somehow. Good-by, boys!’ And he took one more look at Pettie’s tail and put it in his pocket. ‘If anything happens to me you will know who it is by that,’ said he.

“As for the rest of us, we enjoyed ourselves figuring on just _what_ that rancher could explain. You can bring home a dog and say its tail has been cut off someway, but to bring home a tail and say the dog has been cut off someway is a hard proposition to work on the female mind that has lived on a ranch twenty years or so.”

X

THE FATAL GUM

A SERIO-COMEDY OF LIGHT FINGERS AND HEAVY BOOTS

Zeke Scraggs had been working out on the dry patch, where it was a long ways between drinks, and lukewarm water from a canteen no particular comfort. He complained, and I produced a discovery in the shape of a tin-foil-wrapped package of chewing-gum marked “Lily Sweet.”

“If you chew a piece of that when you’re dry, Scraggy,” I said, “it will stave off thirst for some time.”

Mr. Scraggs received the offering in his large palm, and poked it with the forefinger of his other hand.

“Yaas,” he said; “y-a-a-s. But it’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“Horrible. You don’t ketch me minglin’ myself with no ‘Lily Sweets.’ _I_ consider the lily of the field how she grows. You wouldn’t believe that anything that sounds so innercent could be the tee-total ruin of a large, dark-complected tin-horn, with a pair of musstaches like Injun-polished buffler horns, would you?”

Like almost anybody else would have done, I said I wouldn’t.

“Well, it was,” said Zeke. “If you could see that gam, and compare him to this here package of choon’-gum, you wouldn’t ever guess that either one could do much of anything to t’other; yet I can a tale relate of that combination that would make each particler hair stand up-ended, like the squills of the frightful porkypine.”

“Rats!” said I, being but a youth.

“You got any hairs that’s particler by nature? No? Well, then, I’ll spread this terrific osculation of the connimgulated forces of Nature befo’ you, as Charley says. My kind of narrative is the plain, unvarnished tale. Folks that tell a varnished tale is apt to sit on the varnish before it’s dry, and they’ll stick to it, come cold fact or red-hot argyment; whilst I’m always willin’ to prune, cross-harrer, revise or alter accordin’ to my victim’s feelin’s. That is, of course, if they go to corner me, which, between gentlemen, is a low-cut outrage. But this business about the gam is dead straight. I had relinquished all amusements and was livin’ quiet in order to save money, before I got acquainted with the facts.

“First place, comes a female missionary out to the ranch, and she was a corkin’ fine-lookin’ nice young woman, too, who tackled me on the subject of chewin’ terbackker. She had me all tangled up in my own rope and double left-sided front and back before the clock struck one.

“I tried to arger that nobody wouldn’t care whether I chewed terbackker or grass, so long’s I was happy and doin’ no harm. But that turned out not to be true. She said so.

“Then I tried to reach her womanly compassion by tearfully expoundin’ how I’d miss my cut of plug a day; I never touched her. Hers was a new religion. It had a different figger on the back from any I’d had dealt to me before. Seems it weren’t a sin to chew, but it was the control I’d lost over myself that put me in the hole. I had just to git command of my mind and everything would come at me, like a North Ca’lina town’s nigger’s dogs chasin’ a three-legged cat up an alley.

“‘But ma’am,’ say I, ‘I’ve knocked off before; an’, as for control over my mind, durin’ the hull spell me an’ Star Plug was separated, friends had to hold me to prevent me goin’ in an’ robbin’ my own grip. Control of my mind,’ says I, fightin’ noble, ‘why, you could ’a’ sicked a burglar on me, an’ he couldn’t have found no such thing on my person. I didn’t have no mind. I walked up an’ down, day and night, in that man’s town, like a ravin’ maniac stupefied by his halloocinashuns. All that passed beneath my shinin’ dome was: “Oh for a chew! Oh for a chew! Oh for a choo-choo-choo-choo! Whoeep! Brakes!” And when the cars went over the switch or a cayuse cantered up, they said: “Terbackker, terbackker, terbackker,” to my famished ears. All I wished was that the houses was built of plug, and all I thought of was that I could get earnest with an ax. That’s _all_ I _could_ think--all!’

“‘But you must use the control!’ says she, eager.

“‘You mean, ma’am,’ I says, ‘that I must seek out a quiet place, clench my fists, grind my teeth to a feather-edge and strain my suspenders to the bustin’ point in one calamitous effort to think I’m not thinking?’

“‘Precisely!’ says she, victorious. ‘You Western men have such a ready grip on essentials that it is a delight to be your guide.’

“‘Well, Uncle Tom and the dogs a-bitin’ him!’ says I to myself. ‘Lead on!’ I took off my hat aloud and bowed to within two of my noses to the ground. ‘To be able to foller so gentle and able a guide straight to perdition is a joy,’ says I. ‘I quit the class of roominants for two weeks. I will not use terbackker. No!’ says little Zekey Scraggs. ‘There’s my hand on it, ma’am.’

“And she just turned pink with joy. She was an awful nice little gal. Only she was so jam-full of knowledge that it was hard for her to understand things.

“Having put up this job on myself, I went to our storekeep’ and called for my time. I knew I’d need bright lights and excitement for a while. I begun to feel already that a chew wouldn’t go bad.

“There was the storekeep’ gazin’ fixedly at a book; his lips was movin’, but he seemed in a kind of rapture. When I hollered to him, he jumped all over and barked at me like a dog. At the same time he grabbed up a cigareet, stuck it in his mouth, took it out, looked at it and fired it down again.

“A light broke on me. ‘So she got you, too?’ says I.

“‘Hooppitty Hoppitty Hippitty Yer-hoop!’ says he. ‘That’s just what she’s done! I’m three days out. Not a smell of smoke in three days! My soul has gone away and won’t have any more truck with me. I don’t know who I am, nor why. I’ve been trying for an hour to find out how much three and two make. Take your money and leave me to my fate.’

“With this picture in my mind I broke for town. Half-way there I was chawin’ a latigo-strap like a wolf. When I hit the street, I jumped through the drug-store door.

“‘What you got for a man that’s quit chewin’?’ I gasps to the boss.

“‘Franky Frenchman’s Fool-Killer,’ says he--and with that he turns his head and expectorates satisfactorily into the spittoon.

“Seeing him, I near died of a broken heart.

“‘The next crack will be at your expense,’ I told him. ‘You hike out somethin’ for my case,’ I says. He shoved me out a package, just like that.”

Mr. Scraggs poked my gift.

“Just like that. I put the whole bizzee in my trap and chomped on it like a lion. I walked around the town, chompin’ on it. I waved my jaws till my face ached. Seemed to me like I’d never done anythin’ in all my life but bite Injy-rubber. And then I pushed madly for the first stud-poker game.

“When I got there, nothin’ was movin’. This here tin-horn I mention was polishing his muss-tache with both hands, whilst he talked to a few hangers-on.

“I became ashamed of that choon’-gum and I stuck it under the table, very sly and surreptishus. I felt like a man again.

“‘Fire the engine up!’ says I. ‘Gimme five stacks to practise on.’

“The gam hopped gleeful toward the table and give the drawer a yank. She stuck. He cussed and pulled harder. She came open with a jerk and a kind of a long, sticky s-m-aaa-ack, followed the strings of gray.

“The gam arose from where he’d sot on his backbone and looked at the drawer.

“‘We’re not doin’ any business to-day,’ says he, showing me my little eagle-bird.

“‘What’s happened to the trade?’ says I.

“He simply p’inted to the hunk of gum (which I had most unforchinit jammed ag’in’ the drawer).

“‘My wildest fancies have got exceeded,’ says he. ‘Do you want to hear a weird and wilful tale of woe?’

“‘Of course not,’ I says.

“‘All right,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you.’

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘here’s the way she come up. I’m a lost one in the wilderness out at a telegraph station. I see where I get my talents buried in a napkin made of sole-leather, hence I get handy with a deck of cards in front of the lookin’-glass. My work is so good after a while that I lose my whole salary to myself, and yet watchin’ careful all the time in the lookin’-glass. I’m fit to handle the steamboat trade, but I aims higher: I buy me a ticket to Noo York and hunt up a place where they hew to the line, let the chips fall where they will.

“‘“What’s your noo box o’ tricks?” says the Murphy that run the joint.

“‘“Well,” says I, “nothin’ new, but the good old reliable line. The world is my oyster, as Hamlet says, and I’ve got openers.”

“‘“H’m,” says he, makin’ a fat man’s shift in his chair and pushin’ his seegar into the other corner of his face. “I want you to understand this is a dead-straight game run here, my bucko--yet you look good--s’pose I’ve come in an’ laid thirty cents or so on the king, coppered. Lift the joker out of that deck an’ le’s see what happens.”

“‘He threw me a pack and I riffled and boxed ’em.

“‘“Why, you lose,” says I, much surprised as the king came out open on the turn.

“‘“And not so worse,” says he. “Play on!”

“‘I slid ’em out of the box to the last card. “You only lost your footin’ once,” says he. “The way you beat my corner play was a little obvious. Exercise your little finger till it’s soopler. You can handle a roll to-night. But mind this,” says he as he grunted himself on his feet, “this is a dead-straight house. If anybuddy _ketches_ you bein’ technical, we jump you, from me to the cop on watch. You get five per cent.”

“‘Well, sir, that was the loveliest little bower of rosebuds you ever smelt! Checks was joolry. We didn’t have change for nothin’ below a fifty-dollar bill. Our line of customers was these tur’ble knowin’ young men of the world, who’d stood the terrific experience of a college careerin’. They was a darin’ outfit. They was so fast they couldn’t help talk about the pace they was hittin’, and what they didn’t know about the game of faro was my business. It was like bein’ knocked down in the street by a strong man and have money pushed into your clothes. I did things at that table that never happened before in a civilized community. I was so youthful, you know, and it was a constant problem to me whether they’d stand for biting off the corner of a card to make things come my way.

“‘I run in rhinecaboos that ’ud make a heathen Scandahonian farmer fall off his hay-wagon, but them men of the world simply contributed yallerbacks--oh, good old yallerbacks!--beautiful to the eye; soft to the touch; _so_ encouragin’ to the feelin’s! I reckoned I’d buy the durned old Western Union an’ get even with the cuss who used to pound it to me from up the line--Ouch! vanished dream! Sweet vision stuck to earth by that con-cussed, snappy, stringy, bouncy, mud-colored foolish food fer flighty females you see before you!’

“At this p’int,” said Mr. Scraggs, “he shot his finger at my gum, breathin’ hard an’ glitterin’ his eyes.

“‘Yes, sir!’ says he. ‘There lies the cause of my roon! And such a fiddlin’, triflin’ stuff to wreck a man!’ He got some of his breath back. ‘You orter ask “How?”’ says he, ‘and I reply, “By contractin’ the habit”’--‘Not of gnawin’ it’--he adds hasty, ‘but steppin’ on it. Here was I sittin’ on sunset clouds and floatin’ over beautiful scenery, till there comes a cold blast of the winds of chance, and from that moment my path in life was strewed with the discard from rosy lips. For two solid weeks I did nothin’ but scuff my feet or flag a shine-stand to get rid of the day’s gatherin’ of gum. Them Eye-talians used to grin in a way that made me want an open season on furriners, as I cantered up to ’em, smicky-smacky, smicky-smacky, trailin’ soft gray hairs behind me like a retired minister’s whiskers.

“‘They’d look up at the sky and make dago remarks, whilst they curried my feet with a brick, till the cold sweat of mortification melted my b’iled collar. And once a flap-doodle actor goat, with a red, white and blue hatband, got gay and told me not to use such naughty words about these tributes from the mouth of beauty. I swatted the air where he’d been when I started to hit him an’ he took me by most of my trousers and turned me ten somersaults. How was I to know he was Honest Mike, the Deck Hand, who chucked the villain over Brooklyn Bridge every night and Saturday matinée?

“‘Well, I’ll cut it short. No matter where I fled, the fiend pursued me. I went to the opery one night, to get my frazzled nerves soothed by the champion yelpers of the pack. For two solid hours I lived untroubled, not even worried by the show, as I couldn’t understand a word of it and nobuddy on the stage had complaints too deep to sing about; but comin’ out, me enemy waited on the edge of a step for me and I landed astride of a stout lady’s neck, beggin’ her pardon and fightin’ a half-dozen men for five minutes. When I explained, even the stout lady laughed.

“‘The boss at my joint cussed himself into asthma, wondering what the sticky stuff, tracked all over his new seven-dollar-a-yard carpet, was.

“‘But I ain’t goin’ to weary you with trifles. One day the boss tipped me off that there was a bunch of alum-eyes due that evenin’; he said they was fellers that had took the college course, but recovered, and that the bowlegged elephant song and dance that extracted money from our regulars would be looked upon with reproach by the new-comers. I got nervous. Playin’ ag’in’ them little first-crow roosters had been bad practice. I soaked my hands in warm water and prepared as best I could, but when I saw that gang before me I knew why they was called alum-eyes. They puckered my soul up, my hands got too wet with sweat for business--you know your fingers has got to be not too dry, to slip, and not too wet, to stick, if you’re turnin’ out high-grade work.

“‘Well, I was excited, yet it was a reel pleasure to be up against reel men.

“‘I had a habit of running my fingers over the rung of my chair, to keep ’em in right shape. ’Twas a thing nobuddy could complain of, and the game just held on to its hat and flew. How much money you had was the limit, and to put my little bank on the other side of the river, quick, was the idea of the alum-eyes.

“‘I forgot everythin’. I was fair hollerin’ inside for joy. My buckers had a good square chance to catch me at it, if they could, and I was haulin’ money when--well, Fortune had patted me on the back with one hand, while she got ready with a black-jack in the other. In my state of feelin’ I put a heel, a chewin’-gum-covered-heel, on the rung of that chair and took it off again, without noticin’. As the play stood, the outfit had me whipsawed. I drug my fingers over the rung of that chair, that chewin’-gum-covered-rung, without noticing; then I wiggled my fingers in a Chinee ketch-as-ketch-can over the box and raised ’em with a playin’-card firmly stuck to each finger. _Then_ I noticed, yes; and everybody noticed. Silence fell six foot deep. One of them alum-eyes says:

“‘“That may be magnifercent, but it ain’t Hoyle.”

“‘And I excused myself by ducking under the table and jumping over the banisters.

“‘Once on the street, I hoopled her for the corner. My play was to wait till the crowd went out, and then see the old man, who had a rubber-band on my roll.

“‘I thought I’d peek around the corner until all was clear, then rush the boss with my hard-luck game of talk, extract a little of the juice of the root of evil from him, then fold up my legs like a jack-rabbit and silently lift myself through the breeze, back to the sagebush--back to where the prairie-dog and the owl and the rattlesnake live in harmony together--never excepting the rattlesnake, so long’s there’s plenty of young dogs and owls.

“‘The game must have busted when I took the fence, for here come the bunch of alum-eyes right up the street. I had the curiosity to wait and hear what they was talkin’ about, as I had a corner to duck behind when they come close. Well, I waited, and didn’t hear nothin’ I’d care to write home to mother. They made me so cussed mad, I overstayed my time. Just when they got within range, I started to hop swiftly backwards. But I didn’t. No. My feet had grew fast to that sidewalk. Seems the city had been mending the block pavement, as usual, and some horney-souled son of toil had spilt a square yard of coal-tar on the sidewalk. Me to the middle of the coal-tar district, of course--you can chew coal-tar, you know; I’ve done it.

“‘So, as I remarked, I didn’t gracefully side-step. Exactly not. I gave one yank and landed with my knees up in the air. Them feet was riveted fast, you bet, and my joints just had to yield accordin’.

“‘“What is this we have?” said one alum-eye.

“‘There was a gas lamp on the corner. They knew me by my face.

“‘“Are you going to deal flagstones with your feet?” asks one of them.

“‘Let’s pull down the blinds. It was their whirl at the bat. They brought all the folks, includin’ the old man and Tommy the cop.