"I find myself," said the Driver, at the next session of the
Scheherazade Society, as Colonel Baggs called their camp-fires, "in a
whale of a dilemmer. I have never had nothin' happen to me worth
tellin'. I have punched cows till this dry farmin' made it necessary to
take to some more humble callin', and there's nothin' to cow-punchin'
that is interestin'.
"I have showed you here in the Upper Geyser Basin fifteen geysers of the
first magnitude, an' a hundred smaller ones; I have showed you Old
Faithful, the Giant, the Giantess, the Fan and the Riverside. I have
showed you the Grotto Geyser, which is a cross between a geyser and a
cave. I have showed you the quiescent spring at its best--the Morning
Glory pool with more colors than any rainbow ever had. I've showed you
jewels and giants and ogres and sprites, and--"
"Here!" shouted the Groom. "Saw off on that professional patter! You're
not the driver now, but Aconite Driscoll, the Cow-boy, and telling us
the story of your life. We have seen more things here than Münchhausen,
Gulliver, Mandeville, Old Jim Bridger and the whole brood of romancers
ever could imagine. Give us some North American facts, now."
"Well, if I must, I must," said poor Aconite. "But there's nothin' to
it. I reckon I'd better narrate to you some of the humble doin's of the
J-Up-And-Down Ranch over on Wolf Nose Crick, in the foot-hills of the
Black Hills--in the dear, dead past beyond recall--thanks to the
Campbell method of dry farmin'."
THE TALE OF TEN THOUSAND DOGIES
THE TALE TOLD BY THE DRIVER
The way I gets into this story is a shame an' disgrace, an' is
incompetent, irreverent, an' immaterial, an' not of record in this case.
Eh? Adds color to the--which? Narrative! Well, I d'n' know about that. I
reely couldn't say as it does.
But mentionin' color, the thought of that little affair do make my face
as red as a cow-town on pay-day. When I turn that tale loose we'll make
a one-night stand of it by the grub-wagon. It comprises a shipper's pass
to Sioux City, a sure-thing game in that moral town, which I win out by
backin' my judgment with my Colt, an' a police court wherein the bank
roll and my pile was rake-off for the court. Charge, gamblin'. All hands
plead guilty. All correct says you, an' quite accordin' to the statues
made an' pervided; an' so says I, ontil I casually picks up a paper in
Belle Fourche, an' sees that it was a phoney police court, not only
owned and controlled by the shell men, which wouldn't be surprisin', but
privately installed as a sort of accident insurance on their other game.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Mr. Elkins remarks to me one
day, but all that is goin' to be changed when I ketch up with that
police judge.
Ridin' the range makes a man talkative with the scenery, an' when I sees
that Sioux City paper, I turns loose some remarks in the presence of a
gentleman who subsequently turns out to be Mr. Elkins.
"Thanks," says he.
"When did you acquire any chips in this little solitaire blasphemy
game?" says I, mad, as a man allus is if he's ketched solloloquisin' to
himself.
"A man," says he, "with all the sidetracks filled with cars o' cattle
an' more comin', an' no gang, is in, _ex proprio vigore_," says he,
whatever that means, "anywhere where cuss-words is trumps."
He never smiled except back in his eyes, an' I, likin' his style, hires
out to him, an' was third man on the J-Up-And-Down Ranch from the day
the dogies begun to be unloaded, till James R. Elkins went to New York,
with a roll that would choke a blood-sweatin' hippopotamus.
Third man, says I, an' if you think the first was the Old Man, J. R. E.,
you know, you've got another conjecture comin'. Number One was Mrs.
Elkins, an' I reckon some of her New York friends'll enter into
conniptions to know that, in lessn' a year, half the boys called her
Josie--in their dreams, at least--an' some on 'em to her face; but none
to her back, by a damsite! The Old Man--a lot of us called him Jim
habitual--was a one-lunger when this dogie enterprise started, all
mashed in body in the collapse of the boom at Lattimore; an' them as
thinks I refer to any loggin' accident is informed that I mean the
town-lot boom in the city of Lattimore, as is more fully set forth
elsewhere, the same bein' made by reference a part hereof, marked
"Exhibit A," which explains the broken bones aforesaid--
"If there's no objection," said Colonel Baggs, in a high court-room
singsong, "'Exhibit A' will be received in evidence. G'long, Aconite!"
Financially, he was millions worse than nothing, if you can understand
that. Personally, I caint. Zero is the bottom of the spondulix scale fer
me, although the thummometer seems to prove it ain't necessarily thus.
Anyhow, the Old Man had Josie, an' any man from Sturgis to Dog Den
Buttes would have shouldered all Mr. Elkins' shrinkages, especially the
below-zero part, to've had her jest once smooth the hair off his beaded
brow, let alone take charge of him like a Her'ford heifer does her fust
calf. Which is sure the manner Josie took a-holt and managed the Old
Man. But this hain't no love story. Quite the reverse. It's the "Tale of
Ten Thousand Dogies."
I found out that when Mr. E. went into the bulb in a business way, this
Wolf Nose Crick Ranch went around bankruptcy, instid of through it,
becuz, mostly, nobody thought it wuth a--a thought. An' to them as
think strange of ten thousand steers, even dogies, bein' bought by a
busted boomer, I'll state that any man with the same range, an' not
absolutely a convicted hoss-thief, could've got 'em by givin' the same
cutthroat chattel mawgitch. Old Aleck Macdonald did sure sell 'em to Mr.
Elkins reasonable, though, because James R. had made him a good deal of
money in this boom, an' they was only dogies anyhow.
Now, this bein' my evenin' fer tellin' the truth, I'll state that ten
thousand dogies is sure a complicated problem on the range. The
distinction between them an' reg'lar native range cows lays in the lap
o' luxury in which the dogies is dangled in the farmin' regions where
they originate. The first little blizzard, they'll hump up an' blat fer
home an' mother. They'll gaze fondly at a butte ten mile off, expectin'
doors in it to slide open, an' racks full of clover an' timothy to pull
out an' be forked out to 'em. They look grieved an' wring their jaws
becuz water with the chill took off ain't piped to their stalls, an'
they moan 'cause they ain't no stalls. I'd as soon run a Women's an'
Babies' Home. You cain't get it into their heads where the water-holes
is, an' it's allus an even break whuther they'll stan' an' freeze in
their tracks, or chase after some bunch of 2:10 natives ontil their
hooves drop off. That's why Macdonald talked as he did about 'em, as I'm
informed.
"Take 'em," says he, "an' don't flatter yourself I'm donatin' anything.
They's no feed fer 'em in their native Iowa at any livin' price, an' on
the other hand, fifty per cent. of 'em'll die gettin' over their
homesickness on the range. You'll have it in fer me fer stickin' you,
when you know more about the cattle business. Fer the Lord's sake take
'em before they eat me out of every dollar I've got left!"
Some of this was straight goods, an' some stall; but that first winter
was a special providence if they ever was one. So mild and barmy from
September to March that the prairie-dogs forgot to hole up, an' Mrs.
Elkins served Thanksgivin' dinner in the open air on the pizziazzy at
the Ranch. An' she rode the range with Jim consecutively, an' said she'd
found her 'finity in this cattle biz. As for him, the main thing the
matter was that failure o' his a-millin' through his mental facilities.
But this was their honeymoon, we found, an' that, an' no losses on the
range, helped his case, an' by spring he begun to shoot the persiflage
into the gang, an' set up an' reach for things to beat fours. As for
the dogies, none of 'em had the faintest show fer a beller. The grass
was like new-mown hay; every little snow was follered by a chinook; the
water-holes was brimmin'; an' all went merry as a marriage bell.
"The fact is, Aconite," says Mr. Elkins, addressin' me, "I knew when I
heard that burst of phonetic lava from your lips at Belle Fourche, that
there'd be no fear of low temperatures if you could be induced to stay
by the cows, and blow off once in a while."
He had the hot air under wonderful control, hisself, an' felt good at
the way the stock was comin' on--March, April, May, an' fresh feed,
ponds full o' ducks, cute little young wolves about the dens, an' every
one o' the ten thousand dogies stretchin' to see hisself grow. But the
fall--the fall was sure a bad one fer both feed an' water. The dogies,
however, couldn't fairly be called such any longer, havin' recovered
from what Jim called their acute nostalgia, an' bein' pret' near's good
rustlers as natives. An' well it was fer 'em, fer grass was sca'ce, an'
a son-of-a-gun of a while between drinks. After you got away from the
crick--an' you jist _had_ to git away f'r grass--it was a good day's
ride to water, east, west, north, south, up'r down. On the hay-slews we
had to prime the rake with old hay 'fore we could make a windrow. Laff
if you want to, but they was whole outfits with less hay than some folks
has gover'ment bonds. We had about enough to wad a shotgun, an' was
merchant princes in the fodder line. The steers, lookin' like
semi-animated hat-racks, as the Old Man said, come through the cold
weather in a shrinkin' an' sylph-like way, so thin that you could throw
a bull by the tail a dum sight furder'n I'd trust some folks, an' that's
no dream!
By this time Mr. Elkins was a sure-enough cow-man, president of the
Association and the biggest man from Spearfish to Jackson's Hole. He
knew some confounded joke on every man in the cow-country, an' not only
called 'em all by their fust name, but had one of his own f'r most of
'em. Mrs. Elkins, havin' pulled him through his own dogy stage, dropped
out of the cow business, an' devoted herself to kids. I knew that this
dogy proposition was a sort of a straw that Jim Elkins grabbed at as he
went under, an' it done me an' all the fellers good to see the
percentage of loss so small, even if the brutes wasn't puttin' on weight
as they orto, an' the price was away down, an' we knew we shouldn't be
ready to sell when the mawgitch got ripe. Old Macdonald was Jim's
friend, though, an' would sure extend the note when it come of age; an'
fur's we could see, these dry seasons was only delayin' the clean-up.
So I thought, an' so thought the Elkins family, as peaceful as a Injun
summer morn, an' as happy as skunks. But along in June of the third
year, just in the last of the round-up, out comes what Elkins called our
Nemmysis in the form of a jackleg lawyer with news of Macdonald's death,
and papers to prove it, an' him appointed executioner of the estate of
A. Macdonald, diseased. He wanted to see the cattle the estate had a
mawgitch on. I was app'inted as his chaperon to show him the stock, an'
it bein' a hurryin' time o' year, I exhibited to him ten 'r 'leven
thousand head of mixed pickles, and called it square. He didn't know a
cow-brand from one plucked from the burnin', an' credited us with a
township or two of O-Bar-X cow stuff I run him into the first day out. I
didn't feel that he was wuth payin' much notice to, if he hadn't had the
say about the Old Man's mawgitch.
I gathered from him that he was goin' to rearlize on the outfit in the
fall. I went so fur as to p'int out what a grave-robbin' scheme this
was, an' how this dogy stuff had been kep' in the livin' skelliton
department f'r two years by drouth an' a hell-slew of other troubles,
an' couldn't possibly do more than pay off the mawgitch, an' leave us
holdin' the bag in the wust country f'r snipe outside of the Mojave
desert.
"They'll pay out," says he, "an' that's all I'm required to look out
fer."
I swear, I was prospectin' f'r a good hole to plant him in all the rest
o' the trip. I goes right to the ranch when we pulled in. The Old Man
an' Josie was a-sittin' in the firelight, an' she had the baby, a
yearlin' on her lap, and the boy, a long two-year-old, in the crib.
Outside of a nest o' young wild ducks, I never seen anything softer and
cuter. I reports an' asks instructions as to the best way of disposin'
of Mr. Jackleg's remains.
"Quicklime," says he ruminatin'ly, "is a good and well-recognized
scheme; but we haven't any, Aconite, have we? Or we might incorporate
him into that burnin' lignite bed over in the butte. Boxin' him up an'
shippin' him to fictitious consignees involves a trip to the railroad,
an' creatin', as it does, a bad odor, an' stickin' a strugglin' railroad
company for the freight, it never seemed to me quite the Christian
thing. Don't you agree with me, Aconite?"
"Now, the God's truth is, I was speakin' parabolically about this
projected homicide, but no man can bluff _me_, an' when the Old Man
seemed to fall in with it in that heart-to-heart way, I made a lightnin'
cat-hop, an' told him as sober as a Keeley alumnus that the lignite bed
seemed most judicious to me, an' when should we load up the catafalque?
Then Mrs. E. breaks in with a sort o' gugglin' laugh.
"Jim," says she, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Mr. Driscoll,"
addressin' me by my name, which never was Aconite, reely, "Mr. Driscoll,
Mr. Elkins is not serious in his remarks."
"Neither'm I," says I.
"Of course not," says she. "We fully understand that."
"Sure," says the Old Man. "Let the lawyer take its course. Which will be
assumin' possession of the ten thousand dogies; and I feel sure he'll
want to leave you in charge of 'em. He's stuck on you, Aconite."
"See him in Helena fust," says I.
"But wait a minute," says Mr. Elkins. "Somebody's got to take charge of
this stuff for the mortgagee, if he keeps on thinkin' as he does now.
You're our friend. It'll be more agreeable in every way to have you
than, say, Bill Skeels, of the O-Bar-X."
Of course I gets roped, throwed an' branded at last, an' Mr. Jackleg
goes away takin' my receipt f'r ten thousand head, more or less, of
steers branded "J" known in the cattle business as "J-Up-And-Down," the
same bein' on the ranges at the head-waters of the Cheyenne, Moreau,
Little Missouri, an' other streams, an' God knows where else, more
definitely described in a certain indenture of mawgitch, and so forth
and so on, till death comes to your relief. An' James R. Elkins was
reduced to a few hundred white faces he'd put in as a side-line, an' I
feelin' like a sheepman unmasked!
Mr. Jackleg--his real name turned out to be Witherspoon--give me his
instructions from the buckboard as he prepares to pull out, in the
presence of the Old Man an' Mrs. E.
"I was fetched up on a farm," says he, an' he looked the part, "an' I
know a good deal about cattle. Every animal should hev water at least
twice a day."
"I'll personally see to it," says I, winkin' at the Old Man, "that
every steer has a crack at the growler at least semi-daily."
"Another thing," says he; "I knew a herd-boy that run a bunch of fifty
cows practically dry by holdin' 'em in too close a bunch on the prairie.
Let 'em spread out so's to give 'em room to graze."
"Well, fer Gawd's sake!" says I, thinkin' of the feller's sanity; an'
before I could finish my yawp, off he pelts, leavin' me gaspin'.
"Wake up," says Elkins, shakin' me by the shoulder. "If you git 'em all
watered by bed-time, you'll have to git busy."
He sure is a good loser, thinks I, ontil I figgered that with Josie an'
the kids counted in, he hadn't been pried loose from any great
percentage of his holdin's after all.
Now, the idee was to round up an' ship about the first of December, so
the estate could be wound up at the January term o' court. Pretty soon
things seemed about as they was before. I went to the Old Man for
orders, an' Mr. Jackleg's visit seemed, as Mrs. E. once said, like a
badly-drawn dream. Every time I went to J. R. E. he says to me that I'm
boss, an' to remember my instructions.
"Obey orders," says he, "if it busts owners."
Grass an' water was plenty ag'in, and the dogies was fattin' up.
Round-up was drawin' on just as prospects f'r profit begins to brighten.
It seemed a sort of a hash of midnight assassination, poisonin'
water-holes, givin' away a podner, an' keepin' sheep, to ship them ten
thousand then. An' all the time the Old Man was a-bearin' down about
obeyin' orders, and beggin' me to remember Mr. Jackleg's partin' words,
an' repeatin' that sayin' about obeyin' orders if it busted owners. The
thing kep' millin' an' millin' in my brain till I got into the habit of
settin' around an' sweatin' heinyous, ontil I'd come to with a start, in
the middle of a pool of self-evolved moisture filled with wavin' rushes,
an' embosomin' acres of floatin' water-lilies! That's the sort of
sweater I am when a little worried. Fin'ly I turned on the Old Man like
a worm--a reg'lar spiral still-worm.
"How in everlastin' fire," says I, not just like that, "am I to see that
every dogy gits two swigs a day on these prairies, an' wherein am I to
take any notice of that shyster's fool talk about rangin' wide?"
"Well," says he, "you know there's pools an' water-holes scattered from
here to the Canada line, an' from the Missouri to the Continental
Divide. A few head, dropped here an' there, handy to water, would be
apt to live more accordin' to the hydropathic ideas of the executor of
the will of A. Macdonald, diseased. At the same time you would be
conformin' to his remarkable correct hyjeenic notions as to
segregation."
"Hyjeenic y'r grandmother!" says I, f'r the sitiwation called f'r strong
language. "They couldn't be rounded up in a year; an' it's damn
nonsense, anyhow, to foller the so-called idees of a--"
"Oh, I see," says he, in a sort of significant way. "I see: it would be
a slow round-up. Maybe my intrusts blinds me to those of the people you
represent. A slow round-up wouldn't hurt me any! But, of course, you
stan' f'r the mawgitchee's intrusts, an' are nat'rally hostyle--"
I set sort o' numbed f'r a minute. A new thing was a-happenin' to me, to
wit, an idee was workin' itself into my self-sealin', air-tight,
shot-proof, Harveyized skull. Talk about your floods o' light! I got
what Doc calls a Noachian deluge of it right then.
"Sir," says I, "'an' Madam, truly'"--quotin' from a pome Mrs. E. had
been readin'--"I _think_ I see my duty clear at last! If I fin'ly _hev_
grasped it, my labors requires my absence," says I, "an' I'll see you
later."
Mr. Elkins laughed a sort of a Van Triloquist's chuckle. Josie Elkins
comes up, an' stannin' close to me in that maddenin' way o' hern, sort
o's if she's climbin' into your vest pocket, she squose my hand, an'
says she, "Mr. Driscoll, we know that you'll be true to any trust
reposed in you! An' to your friends!" An' at the word "friends" she sort
of made sunbeams from her eyes to mine, an' pressed my hand before
breakin' away, as much as to say that, speakin' o' friends, the ones
that had reely drunk from the same canteen an' robbed watermelon patches
together from earliest infancy was her an' me. Holy Mackinaw! I went out
into the wilderness givin' thanks an' singin' an' cussin' myself, at
peace with all the world.
I flatter myself that the work done upon, or emanatin' from the
J-Up-And-Down Ranch from that time, f'r a spell, stands in a class by
itself in cow-country annuals. It begins with a sort o' quarterly
conference of the punchers. I gives 'em a sermon something as follers:
"Fellers," says I, "it's been borne in upon me that these dogies need
drivin' where they's fewer cows to the cubic inch o' water. Moreover,
they're in too much of a huddle. Here's the hull ten thousand cooped up
within twenty to thirty mile of the spot whereon we stand. You cain't
swing a bob-cat by the tail," says I, "without scratchin' their eyes
out. It vi'lates the crowded tenement laws. It corrupts the poor little
innercent calves. It's a Mulberry Street shame. You are therefore
ordered an' directed to disseminate these beeves over a wider expanse of
the moral heritage. You, Doc, take Ole an' the Greaser, an' goin' south
an' west with as many as you can round up, drop off a carload 'r so at
every waterin' place an' summer resort up the Belle Fourche an' the
North Fork, over onto the Powder, an' as fur as Sheridan. When yeh git
short o' cows, come back f'r more. There ain't no real limits to yer
efforts short o' the Yellowstone. We must obey Mr. Jackleg's orders
about huddlin'. I'll give Absalom an' Pike the Little Missouri, the
Cannon Ball and the Grand valleys. Git what help you need; I grant power
to each of yeh to send f'r persons an' papers an' administer oaths, if
necessary. I'll take my crew an' try to gladden the waste places along
the Moreau an' Cheyenne an' White Rivers with dogies. Get your gangs,
an' scatter seeds o' kindness an' long four-year-olds from hell to
breakfast. For as yeh sow even shall yeh reap. If a critter smothers
from crowdin' sev'ral to a township these hot nights, somebody's goin'
to be held personally responsible to me. You hear, I s'pose?"
"Is this straight goods, Aconite?" says Doc.
"Am I a perfessional humorist," says I, "or am I the combined Fresh Air
Fund, S. P. C. A., and Jacob A. Riis of these yere hills? Am I the main
squeeze of this outfit, an' the head of a responsible gover'ment, or am
I not? Hit the grit," says I, "an' begin irradiatin' steers."
Obedience is a lovely thing, fellers, an' a man poised in an air-ship a
few thousan' feet above a given pi'nt som'eres in the neighborhood o'
the Hay Stack Buttes, armed with a good long-range peekeriscope, might
have observed a beautiful outbust of it, all that golding autumn, on the
part of a class of men presumably onsubordinate--the ungrammatical but
warm-hearted cow-boys. They preached a mixed assortment o'
fair-to-middlin' steers unto all men. The Ten Thousand was absorbed into
the landscape of four great states, like a ship-load o' Swedes into the
Republican party. The brethren of the ranches heared gladly the gospel
of obeyin' orders, an' wherever a wisp of cows amountin' to more than a
double handful congregated together in one place, there was some
obejient son of a gun in the midst of 'em, movin' 'em along towards the
bubblin' springs, green fields an' pastors new of Mr. Jackleg's orders.
It was touchin'. I never felt so good, so sort o' glory-hallelujahish in
my life, as I did a-ridin' back to Wolf Nose Crick in the brown October
weather, with the dogies off my mind an' the map, thinkin' of how Mrs.
E. had squoze my hand, sort o' weepful on moonlight nights, but
stronger'n onions in a sense o' juty well performed.
You can sort o' dimly ketch onto the shock it was to me, a-drillin' into
camp at Wolf Nose Crick in this yere peaceful frame of mind, to find Mr.
Jackleg there, madder'n a massasauga, an' perfec'ly shameful in his
feelin's towards _me_.
"Where's these ten thousand head o'cattle, Driscoll?" he hollers on
seein' me. "Here's your receipt for 'em; where's the stock?"
"Calm yourself," says I, droppin' my hand to my gun; "the dogies is all
right. The dogies is out yan in the most unhuddled state of any outfit
on the range, fur from the slums of Wolf Nose Crick an' their corruptin'
influences, drinkin' at the pure springs o' four great American
commonwealths, layin' on fat like aldermen, an' in a advanced state of
segregation. Your orders," says I, tickled to think how I'd remembered
langwidge so fur above my station in life, "your orders was to put 'em
next to the damp spots, an' keep 'em fur apart, an' has been obeyed
regardless."
Up to that time I had looked upon him with contempt; but the way he
turned in an' damned me showed how sorely I'd misjudged him. As my
respect fer him riz, it grew important not to let him go on so, f'r I
couldn't let any reel man talk to me that-a-way, an' in less time than
it takes to mention it, I had the boys a-holdin' me, and Mr. Jackleg
stannin' without hitchin'.
"I may hev been hasty in my remarks," says he; "but I've been out with
all the men I could git f'r two weeks, an' how many of our herd do you
s'pose I have been enabled to collect?"
"Not knowin', cain't say," says I.
"Just a hundred an' fifty-seven!" says he.
"Good!" says I. "You've got no kick comin'. I couldn't have done better
myself. But you won't git as many in the next two weeks! Cheer up; the
wust is yet to come!"
An' at that he flies off the handle ag'in, an' lights out f'r the East,
with the estate all unwound, I s'pose.
Now, everybody knows the rest of this story. Everybody knows how grass
an' water an' winters favored the range-stuff f'r the next two years.
Them dogies was as well off 's if they'd been in upholstered sheds
eatin' gilded hay. When ol' Dakoty starts out to kill stock, she reg'lar
Mountain-Medders-Massacres 'em; but when she turns in to make a
feed-yard of herself, she's a cow paradise without snakes. The hist'ry
of these dogies illustrates this p'int, an' shows our beautiful system
of enforcin' honesty in marketin' range cattle whereby the active
robbery is confined to the stockyards folks and the packers, where it
won't do no moral harm. As was perfec'ly square an' right, the brand
inspectors at Omaha, Sioux City, Chicago an' Kansas City was on the
lookout f'r J-Up-And-Down steers in the intrusts of Mr. Jackleg's
mawgitch; an' after every round-up, some on 'em would dribble in with
the shipments, an' be sold an' proceeds gobbled accordin' to Hoyle. An'
when things got good--dogies about the size of Norman hosses, an' as fat
as Suffolk pigs--the word goes out from Wolf Nose Crick to every ranch
on the range, that the anti-slum crusade was off, an' J-Up-And-Down
stuff was to be shipped as rounded up. F'r weeks an' months, I'm told,
pret' near every car had some of 'em. Top grassers, they was at last, in
weight an' price, an' when the half of 'em was in, the estate of A.
Macdonald, diseased, was wound up, tight as a drum, intrust an'
principal, an' Jim Elkins had left a little trifle o' five thousand
beeves, wuth around a hundred apiece, free an' clear, an' the record of
Aconite Driscoll, as a philanthropist, a humannytarian, an' a
practical-cow-puncher, was once more as clear as a Christian's eye.
An' this is how Jim Elkins got his ante in this New York game he's
a-buckin' so successful. An' so it was that my little meet-up with a
Sioux City shell-man, which I'm lookin' fer yit, results in a reg'lar
Pullman sleeper trip to Chicago, where I'm the guest of honor at a
feedin' contest instituted by Mr. James R. Elkins, whereat Mr.
Jackleg--Witherspoon, I mean, and dead game after all, if any one should
inquire--makes a talk about the pleasure it affords all of us to see our
old friend Elkins restored to those financial circulars where he was so
well known, an' so much at home; an' alludin' to me as restorer-in-chief
by virtoo of my great feet, an' losin' ten thousand dogies so that
Pinkerton himself couldn't find 'em ontil the wilderness saw fit to
disgorge 'em in its own wild an' woolly way. An' fin'ly I'm called on
an' made to git up, locoed at the strange grazin' ground, but game to do
my best, an' after millin' awhile, "I'm here," says I, "owin' to my
eckstrordinary talent f'r obeyin' orders. I'm told to come hither, an' I
at once set out to prove my effectiveness as a come-hitherer. As f'r
losin' ten thousand dogies, I cain't see what that has to do with my
great feet. An' right here," I says, "I wish to state that I onst lost
something else, to wit, my val'able temper at something done 'r said by
a gentleman now present, for all of which I begs pardon of Mr.
Jackleg--Mr. Witherspoon, I means," says I, an' everybody hollers an'
pounds, him most of all, but redder'n a turkey, "an' I wish to state
that it does me good to feel that harmony and peace between him an' me
is restored. Here in Chicago," says I, "him an' me can git together on
the platform of feedin' in bunches, without dehornin'; with the
paramount issue to go before the people on, however, that old plank o'
his'n declarin' f'r frekent drinks!"
After that, I don't remember what eventuated--not quite so clear.
* * * * *
"I told you," said the Bride, as the party broke up for the night, "that
we'd get some local color."
"Alas!" replied the Artist. "This is like the local color of Babylon and
the Shepherd Kings--a tradition and a whisper borne on the night breeze,
of things that were. O, Remington! Remington!"