"If these lovely little waterfalls," asserted the Bride, as she gazed
upon the graceful Tower Falls, "could only have a fair chance, they
would win fame--but they are overshadowed here--and they don't seem to
care."
Undine Falls, the Virginia Cascade, Mystic Falls, Kepler Cascade and
Crystal Falls were in the mind of the Bride; but she might have
mentioned many more, which in their incursion into the Park they had not
seen.
"This," said the Artist, "is no place to look at, and leave--it is a
region for the artist to live in, to study, to make a part of his life,
and finally, to understand."
"I reckon," said the Hired Man, "that he'd git homesick f'r the corn
country after a winter or so."
Some competent judges think Tower Falls the most beautiful cascade on
earth. Perhaps it is. Certainly no fault has ever been found with it as
a picture. The Seven Wonderers spent a day near their pretty camp,
resting, exploring, and renewing their acquaintance with the gorge of
the Yellowstone, and forming that of the Needle, slender as a campanile,
and three hundred feet high, marking the end of the Grand Cañon.
Junction Butte, which they crossed the New Bridge to see, standing where
many roads and rivers meet, seemed to the Bride another monument placed
there by the gods with manifest intention. Why otherwise, she queried,
could not the Needle be anywhere else, just as well as at the lower end
of the Grand Cañon, or Junction Butte, in any other place as easily as
in this cross-roads of highways and waters?
"Why, indeed?" assented the Groom. "When you find a stone stuck on end
at the corner of a parcel of land, you know that the stone was placed
there to mark the corner, don't you?"
"Reminds me of the providential way that rivers always run past cities,
just where they are needed," carped the Colonel.
"It isn't the same thing," said the Bride hotly. "You're getting mean,
Colonel!"
"Honing for the wrangle of the courts, Bride," said he. "I apologize."
"Well," said Aconite, "there's a lot of bigger mysteries than them in
these regions. Here's the Petrified Trees, over here in a ravine just
off the road. If we don't see the petrified forest up Amethyst Crick
way, maybe you'd like to look at these an' tell me how trees ever turned
to stone that-a-way."
There they stood, splintered by the elements, indubitably the stubs of
trees, and unquestionably stone. The Professor began an explanation of
the phenomenon of petrifaction, but nobody paid him any attention.
"Old Jim Bridger," said Aconite, "discovered the Petrified Forest, up in
the Lamar Valley; an' back in the mountains som'eres he found a place
where the grass, birds an' everything else was petrified. Even a
waterfall was petrified, an' stan's thar luk glass."
"And the roar of it is petrified, and the songs of the birds, and the
sunlight, and the birds singing their petrified songs in the petrified
air, in which they are suspended for ever, by reason of the petrifaction
of the force of gravity, which otherwise would bring them down!"
Thus the Poet. Aconite looked at him in surprise.
"Either you've been here before," said he, "or you've knowed some one
that has been!"
Time refused to serve for an exploration of the regions northeast of the
New Bridge, though the road invited, and the Artist strongly argued for
the trip. He wanted to see the Fossil Forest, and Amethyst Falls,
Amethyst Creek, Amethyst Mountain and Specimen Ridge. But they turned
their backs on these, on Soda Butte and its wonderful cañon, and that of
the Lamar, on the piscatorial delights of Trout Lake, the mystery of
Death Gulch, and the weirdnesses of the Hoodoo Region. The Bride and
Groom were due to take train from Gardiner, and on to San Francisco. At
Yancey's the Bride invited them to a parting dinner when they should
reach Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, and when Aconite and the Hired Man
failed to recognize themselves as included, the Bride assured them that
the occasion would be ruined if they did not attend--and they promised.
They reached Yancey's early in the afternoon, but the Bride was so
enraptured by its beauties as a camping place that they made camp for
the night, and drawing from the hat the name of Aconite as the
entertainer for the evening, and the Poet for the dinner at the Hotel,
each found himself feeling like one who has sent his luggage to the
station, and awaits the carriage to bear him from home; or like sailors
who have their dunnage ready for the dock at the end of the voyage.
Their relationship had grown to something very like intimacy in
something more than half a month. And they were about to go their
several ways, like ships that pass in the night. It was their great
good fortune to have so met and acted that every member of the party
felt the companionship a tolerable thing to contemplate as a
permanency--that should they be in any mysterious--though scarcely
improbable--interposition of glass barrier, or fiery lake, or gulf
filled with deadly vapor, shut into this marvelous region, they could be
good friends and good fellows. And they listened respectfully as
Aconite, under the trees at Yancey's, spun the yarn of his love affair
with an Oberlin College girl, his connection with a Rosebud beef issue
fraud, and the tragedy that resulted from the mixture thereof.
THE JILTING OF MR. DRISCOLL
ACONITE'S SECOND TALE
This here doctrine of Mr. Witherspoon's about lettin' cattle range wide,
has some arguments of a humane nature back of it. But his openin' of it
up in the instructions f'r runnin' the ten thousand dogies, was the same
kind of a miscue the Pawnees made when they laid fer an' roped the U.P.
flyer--which Mr. Elkins described as a misapplication of sound theory to
new an' unwonted conditions; as the rattler said when he swallered the
lawn hose. Principles has their local habitats the same as live things;
an' nothin' is worse f'r 'em than to turn 'em loose where they don't
know the water-holes an' wind-breaks. Principles that'll lay on fat an'
top the market in Boston, 'll queer the hull game in a country where
playin' it is tangled up with Injuns, gold mines, 'r range-stuff. In the
short-grass country, dogy principles are sure a source of loss, until
they get hardened up so's to git out and rustle with the push. Now, this
Humane-Society-Injun-Relief-Corps form of doin' good--harmless, you'd
say, as we set here by the grub-wagon; but I swear to Godfrey's Gulch,
the worst throw-down I ever got in a social way growed out of a
combination of them two highly proper idees with a Oberlin College gal I
met up to Chamberlain.
This was the way of it: The "O. M." Mr. Elkins, I mean, of the
J-Up-An'-Down Ranch, was called to Sioux Falls as a witness in a case of
selling conversation-water to the Injuns, an' casually landed a juicy
contract with Uncle Sam f'r supplyin' beef-issue cattle over on the
Rosebud. The Pierre firm of politicians he outbid, havin' things framed
up pretty good, as they thought, on the delivery, at once hops to him
with a proposition to pay him I d'know how much money an' take it off
his hands. Havin' a pongshong f'r doin' business on velvet, the O. M.
snaps 'em up instantaneous, an' comes home to Wolf Nose Crick smilin'
like he'd swallered the canary, an' sends me to Chamberlain to see that
the contract is carried out as fer as proper.
"Go up, Aconite," he says, "an' remember that while the J-Up-An'-Down
outfit don't feel bound to demand any reforms, its interests must be
protected. Any sort of cattle the Pierre crowd can make look like prime
steers to the inspector, goes with us. But," he goes on, "our names and
not theirs are on the contract. These inspectors," says he, "bein'
picked out on their merits at Washington, to look after the interests of
the gover'ment an' the noble red, it would be unpatriotic if not _Lee's
Majesty_ to cavil at their judgment on steers, especially if it
coincides with that of Senator Whaley's men at Pierre. Therefore, far be
it from us to knock. But be leery that we don't get stuck for
non-performance: which we can't afford. See?"
It was purty plain to a man who'd matrickelated as night-wrangler, an'
graduated as _it_ on the J-Up-An'-Down, an' I went heart-free an'
conscience clear, seein' my duty perfectly plain.
Now at Chamberlain was this Oberlin College lady, who had some kind of
an inflamed conscience on the Injun question, an' was dead stuck on dumb
animals an' their rights. She was one of the kind you don't see out
here--blue eyes, you know, yellow hair, the kind of complexion that
don't outlive many hot winds; an' she had lots of pitchers around her,
of young folks in her classes, an' people with mortar-board hats an'
black nighties, 'r striped sweaters. She was irrupting into the Injun
question _via_ Chamberlain. Her thought was that the Injuns was really
livin' correct's fur as they had a chance, an' that we orto copy their
ways, instid of makin' them tag along after our'n.
"Maybe that's so," says I, "but I've took the Keeley cure twice now, an'
please excuse me!"
She looked kinder dazed f'r a minute, an' then laffed, an' said
somethin' about the sardonic humor of the frontier.
I had been asked to give a exhibition of broncho bustin' at the ranch
where she was stayin' an' she was agitatin' herself about the bronks'
feelin's. I told her that it was just friendly rivalry between the
puncher an' the bronk, an' how, out on the ranch, the gentle critters 'd
come up an' hang around by the hour, a-nickerin' f'r some o' the gang to
go out an' bust 'em.
"It reminds me," she says, "of my brother's pointers begging to go
hunting."
"Same principle," says I.
It seemed to ease her mind, an' feelin' as I did toward her, I wouldn't
have her worry f'r anything. Then she found out that I was a graduate of
the high school of Higgsville, Kansas, an' used to know what quadratics
was, an' that my way of emitting the English language was just an
acquired mannerism, like the hock-action of a string-halted hoss, an'
she warmed up to me right smart, both then an' after, never askin' to
see my diploma, an' begun interrogatin' me about the beef-issue, an'
discussin' the Injun question like a lifelong friend. Whereat, I jumped
the game.
But, for all that, about this time I become subject to attacts of blue
eyes an' yellow hair, accompanied by vertigo, blind-staggers, bots,
ringin' in the ears--like low, confabulatin' talk, kinder interspersed
with little bubbles of lafture--an' a sense o' guilt whenever I done
anything under the canopy of heaven that I was used to doin'. Can yeh
explain that, now? Why this Oberlin proposition should make me feel like
a criminal jest because the pony grunted at the cinchin' o' the saddle,
'r because I lammed him f'r bitin' a piece out o' my thigh at the same
time, goes too deep into mind science f'r Aconite Driscoll. O' course, a
man under them succumstances is supposed to let up on cussin' an' not to
listen to all kinds o' stories; but you understand, here I was,
conscience-struck in a general an' hazy sort of way, mournin' over a
dark an' bloody past, an' thinkin' joyfully of death. It was the
condemnedest case I ever contracted, an' nothin' saved me to be a
comfort to my friends but the distraction of the queer actions of that
inspector.
I never had given him a thought. Senator Whaley an' his grafters was
supposed to arrange matters with him--an' I'm no corruptionist, anyway.
Of course, the cattle wasn't quite up to export shippin' quality. The
senator's gang had got together a collection of skips an' culls an'
canners that was sure a fraud on the Injuns, who mostly uses the cattle
issued to 'em the way some high-up civilized folks does hand-raised
foxes--as a means of revortin' to predatory savagery, as Miss Ainsley
says. Ainsley was her name--Gladys Ainsley--an' she lived som'eres
around Toledo. The p'int is, that they chase 'em, with wild whoops an'
yips over the undulatin' reservation until they can shoot 'em, an' I
s'pose, sort of imagine, if Injuns have imaginations, that time has
turned back'ard in her flight, an' the buffalo season is on ag'in.
Whereas, these scandalous runts of steers an' old cow stuff was mostly
too weak or too old to put up any sort of a bluff at speed.
But, under my instructions, if they looked good to the inspector, they
looked good to me; an' bein' sort of absent-minded with gal-stroke, I
rested easy, as the feller said when the cyclone left him on top o' the
church tower.
The inspector was a new man, an' his queer actions consisted mostly of
his showin' up ten days too soon, an' then drivin' 'r ridin' around the
country lookin' at the stock before delivery. This looked suspicious;
fer we s'posed it was all off but runnin' 'em through the gap once,
twice 'r three times to be counted. Whaley's man comes to me one day,
an' ast me what I thought of it.
"I'm paid a princely salary," says I, "fer keepin' my thoughts to
myself. This here's no case," I continued, "callin' f'r cerebration on
my part. If thinkin's the game, it's your move. What's Senator Whaley in
politics fer," says I, "if a obscure forty-a-month-an'-found puncher is
to be called on to think on the doin's of a U.S. inspector? What's he in
this fer at all, if we've got to think at this end of the lariat?"
"He was talkin' about cavvs," said the feller, whose name was Reddy--a
most ungrammatical cuss. "He was a-pokin' round with the contrack,
a-speakin' about cavvs. Wun't you go an' talk to him?"
"Not me!" says I, f'r the hull business disgusted me, an' my guilt come
back over me shameful, with the eyes an' hair an' things plenteous.
Whaley's man rode off, shakin' his head.
Next day the inspector hunted me up.
"Mr. Driscoll?" says he, f'r I'd been keepin' out of his way.
"Correct," says I.
"You represent the Elkins' interests in the matter of supplying for the
issue, do you not?" says he.
"In a kind of a sort of a way," says I, f'r I didn't care to admit too
much till I see what he was up to. "In a kind of a sort of a way, mebbe
I do. Why?"
"Did you have anything to do," says he, unfoldin' a stiff piece of
paper, "with procuring the cattle now in readiness for delivery?"
"Hell, no!" I yells, an' then seein' my mistake, I jumped an' added:
"You see, the top stuff f'r the Injun market is perduced up around
Pierre. So we sub-contracted with this Pierre outfit to supply it. It's
their funeral, not ours. It's good stock, ain't it?"
"I am assured by Senator Whaley's private secretary," says he, "who is a
classmate of mine, that there would be great dissatisfaction among the
Indians, owing to certain tribal traditions and racial peculiarities--"
"You bet!" says I, f'r he seemed to be gettin' wound up an' cast in it,
"that's the exact situation!"
"Would be dissatisfaction," he went on, "if cattle of the type which in
the great markets is considered best, were furnished here. And I have
great confidence in his judgment."
"So've I," I says. "He's one of the judgmentiousest fellers you ever
see."
"So let that phase of the question pass," says he, "for the present. But
there's a clause in this contract--"
"Don't let that worry you," says I. "There's claws in all of 'em if you
look close."
He never cracked a smile, but unfolded it, and went on.
"Here's a clause," says he, "calling for a hundred and fifty cows with
calves at foot, for the dairy herd, I presume."
"Cavvs at what?" says I.
"At foot," says he, p'intin' at a spot along toward the bottom. "Right
there!"
"It's impossible!" says I. "They don't wear 'em that way."
He studied over it quite a while, at that, an' I begun to think I'd won
out, but at last he says: "That's the way it reads, an' while I shall
not insist upon any particular relation of juxtaposition in offspring
and dam-"
"Whope!" says I, "back up an' come ag'in pardner."
"It seems to be my duty to insist upon the one hundred and fifty cows
and calves. Now the point is, I don't find any such description of
creatures among the--the bunches in seeming readiness for delivery."
"O!" says I, "that's what's eating yeh, is it? W'l don't worry any more.
The cow kindergarten's furder up the river. We didn't want to put the
tender little devils where they'd be tramped on by them monstrous big
oxen you noticed around the corrals. This caff business is all right,
trust us!"
Whaley's man was waitin' fer me down at the saloon, an' when I told him
about the cavvs, he shrunk into himself like a collapsed foot-ball, an'
wilted.
"Hain't yeh got 'em?" says I.
"Huh!" says he, comin' out of it. "Don't be a dum fool, Aconite. This is
the first I understood of it, an' whoever heared of an inspector readin'
a contrack? And there ain't them many cavvs to be got by that time in
all Dakoty. Le's hit the wires f'r instructions!"
The telegrams runs something like this:
To Senator Patrick Whaley, Washington, D. C.:
Contract calls for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot.
What shall I do?
REDDY.
* * * * *
To Reddy Withers, Chamberlain, S. D.:
Wire received. Calves at what? Explain, collect.
WHALEY.
* * * * *
Hundred and fifty cows and calves. What do you advise?
REDDY.
* * * * *
See inspector.
WHALEY.
* * * * *
Won't do. Inspector wrong.
REDDY.
* * * * *
Fix inspector or get calves.
WHALEY.
I'd got about the same kind of a telegram to Mr. Elkins, addin' that the
Whaley crowd was up in the air. I sent it by Western Union to Sturgis,
and then up Wolf Nose Crick by the Belle Fourche and Elsewhere Telephone
Line. The O. M., as usual, cuts the melon with a word. His wire was as
follows.
Take first train Chicago. Call for letter Smith & Jones Commission
merchants Union Stock Yards.
ELKINS.
This was sure an affliction on me, f'r I had fixed up a deal to go with
Miss Ainsley an' her friends on a campin' trip, lastin' up to the day of
the issue. She'd been readin' one of Hamlin Garland's books about a
puncher who'd scooted through the British aristocracy, hittin' only the
high places in a social way, on the strength of a gold prospect an' the
diamond hitch to a mule-pack. She wanted to see the diamond hitch of all
things. There orto be a law ag'inst novel-writin'. I got Reddy to learn
me the diamond hitch so I could make good with Gladys, an' here was this
mysterious caff expedition to the last place in the world, Chicago,
a-yankin' me off by the night train.
I went over to tell her about it. First, I thought I'd put on the clo'es
I expected to wear to Chicago, a dandy fifteen dollar suit I got in
town. An' then I saw how foolish this would be, an' brushed up my range
clo'es, tied a new silk scarf in my soft roll collar, an' went. Here's
my diagram of the hook-up: Any o' them mortar-board-hat, black-nightie
fellers she had pitchers of, could probably afford fifteen dollar
clay-worsteds; but it was a good gamblin' proposition that none of 'em
could come in at the gate like a personally-conducted cyclone, bring up
a-stannin' from a dead run to a dead stop's if they'd struck a stone
wall, go clear from the bronk as he fetched up an' light like a centaur
before her, with their sombrero in their hand. Don't light, you say?
Wal, I mean as a centaur would light if he took a notion. You'd better
take a hike down to see how the steed's gettin' along, Bill, 'r else
subside about this Greek myth biz. It helps on with this story--not!
The p'int is, that gals and fellers both like variety. To me, the "y" in
her name, the floss in her hair, the kind of quivery lowness in her
voice, the rustle of her dresses as she walked, the way she looked like
the pitchers in the magazines an' talked like the stories in 'em, all
corroborated to throw the hooks into me. An' I s'pose the
nater's-nobleman gag went likewise with her. Subsekent happenin's--but I
must hold that back.
We sot in the hammock that night--the only time Aconite Driscoll ever
was right up against the real thing in ladies' goods--an' she read me a
piece about a Count Gibson a-shooting his lady-love's slanderers so full
o' holes at a turnament that they wouldn't hold hazel-brush. They was
one verse she hesitated over, an' skipped.
I ast her if she thought she--as a supposed case--could live out in this
dried-up-an'-blowed-away country; an' she said the matter had really
never been placed before her in any such a way as to call for a decision
on her part. Purty smooth, that! Then she read another piece that wound
up with "Love is best!" from the same book, an' forgot to take her hand
away when I sneaked up on it, an'--Gosh! talk about happiness: we never
git anything o' quite that kind out here! I never knowed how I got to
the train, 'r anything else ontil we was a-crossin' the Mississippi at
North McGregor. Here the caff question ag'in unveiled its heejus front,
to be mulled over till I reached the cowman's harbor in Chicago, the
Exchange Building at the Yards, an' found Jim Elkins' instructions
awaitin' me. They read:
"DEAR ACONITE:
"The Chicago stockyards are the nation's doorstep for bovine
foundlings. New-born calves are a drug on the market there, owing
to abuses in the shipping business which we won't just now take
time to discuss, to say nothing about curing 'em. What is done with
'em is a mystery which may be solved some day; but that they perish
in some miserable way is certain. Two carloads of them must perish
on the Rosebud instead of in Packingtown--in the Sioux soup
kettles, instead of the rendering tanks, if you can keep them alive
to reach Chamberlain--and I have great confidence in your ability
to perform this task imposed upon you by the carelessness of
Senator Whaley's men either at Washington or at the range. I have
heard that one or two raw eggs per day per calf will preserve them,
and it looks reasonable. Smith and Jones will have them ready
loaded for you for the next fast freight west. I hope you'll enjoy
your trip!"
Well, you may have listened to the plaintive beller of a single caff at
weanin' time, 'r perhaps to the symferny that emanates from the pen of
three 'r four. Furder'n this the experience of most don't go. Hence, I
don't hope to give yeh any idee of the sound that eckered over northern
Illinois from them two cars o' motherless waifs. The cry of the orphan
smote the air in a kind of endless chain o' noise that at two blocks off
sounded like a chorus of steam calliopes practicin' holts at about
middle C. Nothin' like it had ever been heared of or done in Chicago,
an' stockmen, an' reporters, an' sight-seers swarmed around wantin' to
know what I was a-goin' to do with the foundlin's--an' I wa'nt in any
position to be interviewed, with the Chicago papers due in Chamberlain
before I was. I'd 'ave had a dozen scraps if it hadn't been f'r the
fear of bein' arrested. But with the beef issue comin' on a-pacin', I
had to pass up luxuries involvin' delay. I sot in the caboose, an object
of the prurient curiosity of the train-crew ontil we got to Elgin 'r
som'eres out there, where I contracted eight cases of eggs an' one of
nervous prostration.
Here it was I begun ministering to the wants of my travelin' orphan
asylum. They was from four hours to as many days old when the accident
of birth put 'em under my fosterin' care. I knowed that it was all
poppy-cock givin' dairy 'r breedin' herds to them Injuns, an' that these
would do as well f'r their uses, 'sif they had real mothers instid o'
one as false as I felt. But to look upon 'em as they appeared in the
cars, would 'ave give that consciencious but onsophisticated inspector
the jimjams. Part of 'em was layin' down, an' the rest trampin' over
'em, an' every one swellin' the chorus o' blats that told o' hunger an'
unhappiness. I took a basket of eggs an' went in among 'em, feelin' like
a animal trainer in a circus parade as the Reubens gethered around the
train, an' business houses closed f'r the show. I waited till the train
pulled out, an' begun my career as nurse-maid-in-gineral.
"How cruel!" said the Bride.
"Thanks," said Aconite. "It shore was!"
Ever try to feed a young caff? Ever notice how they faint with hunger
before you begin, an' all at once develop the strength of a hoss when
you stand over 'em an' try to hold their fool noses in the pail? Ever
see a caff that couldn't stand alone, run gaily off with a
two-hundred-an'-fifty-pound farmer, poisin' a drippin' pail on his nose,
an' his countenance a geyser of milk? Well, then you can form some faint
idee of the practical difficulty of inducin' a caff, all innercent o'
the world an' its way o' takin' sustenance, to suck a raw egg. But
nothin' but actual experience can impart any remote approach to a notion
o' what it means to incorporate the fruit o' the nest with the bossy
while bumpin' over the track of a northern Iowa railroad in a freight
car, movin' at twenty-five miles an hour. I used up two cases of eggs
before I was sure of havin' alleviated one pang of hunger, such was the
scorn my kindly offers was rejected with. The result was astoundin'.
Them cars swept through the country, their decks slippery with yaller
gore, an' their lee scuppers runnin' bank-full, as the sailors say, with
Tom-an'-Jerry an' egg shampoo. An' all the time went on that symferny
of blats, risin' an' fallin' on the prairie breeze as we rolled from
town to town, a thing to be gazed at an' listened to an' never forgot;
to be side-tracked outside city limits f'r fear of the Board of Health
and the S. P. C. A., an' me ostrichized by the very brakey in the
caboose as bein' unfit f'r publication, an' forced to buy a mackintosh
to wrap myself in before they'd let me lay down on their old seats to
sleep. An' when my visions revorted back to the Oberlin people, I
couldn't dream o' that yaller hair even, without its seemin' to float
out, an' out, an' out into a sea of soft-boiled, in which her an' me was
strugglin', to the howlin' of a tearin' tempest of blats.
"And next when Aconite he rides," remarked the Poet, "may I be there to
see!"
* * * * *
At last we arrived at Chamberlain. An' here's where the head-end
collision of principles comes in, that I mentioned a while ago. Here's
where Aconite Driscoll, who for days had been givin' a mother's care to
two hundred cavvs, was condemned f'r cruelty; an' when he'd been
strainin' every nerve an' disturbin' the egg market to keep from bustin'
a set of concealed claws in a gover'ment contract, he was banished as
an eggcessory to the crime of bilkin' poor Lo. This tradegy happens out
west o' the river at the Issue House.
Reddy had a string of wagons with hog-racks onto 'em waitin' in the
switch-yards when we whistled in, an' the way we yanked them infants off
the cars and trundled 'em over the pontoon bridge, an' hit the trail f'r
the Issue House, was a high-class piece o' teamin'. We powdered across
the country like the first batch of sooners at a reservation openin'.
Out on the prairie was Reddy an' his punchers, slowly dribblin' the last
of his steers into the delivery, too anxious f'r me an' the cavvs to be
ashamed of their emaciation. Out behind a butte, he had concealed a
bunch of cow-stuff he'd deppytized as mothers _pro tem_ to my waifs. The
right way t've done, o' course, would've been to incorporated the two
bunches in a unassumin' way at a remoter place, an' drove 'em gently in
as much like cattle o' the same family circles as yeh could make 'em
look. But they wan't time. The end-gates was jerked out, an' the wagons
ongently emptied like upsettin' a sleigh comin' home from spellin'
school. Most all the orphans could an' did walk, an' I was so tickled at
this testimonial to the egg-cure f'r youthful weakness, that we had 'em
half way to the place where the knives o' their owners-elect was a
waitin' 'em when I looked around an' seen Miss Ainsley, an' the
Chamberlain lady she was a-stayin' with, standin' where they must 'a'
seen the way we mussed the cavvs hair up in gettin' of 'em on the
ground.
Gladys' eyes was a-blazin', an' they was a red spot in each cheek. She
seemed sort o' pressin' forwards, like she wanted to mix it up, an' her
lady friend was tryin' to head her off. I saw she didn't recognize me,
an' I didn't thirst f'r recognition. I knew that love ain't so blind as
she's been advertised, an' that I wouldn't never, no, never, be a
nater's nobleman no more if she ever tumbled to the fact that the human
omelette runnin' this caff business was A. Driscoll. It was only a case
of sweet-gal-graduate palpitation o' the heart anyhow, an' needed the
bronzed cheek, the droopin' mustache, the range clo'es, the deadly gun,
the diamond hitch, and the centaur biz to keep it up to its wonted palp.
An' what was it that was offered to the gaze o' this romantic piece o'
calicker? Try to rearlize the truth in all its heejusness. Here was the
aforementioned Driscoll arrayed in what was once an A1 fifteen-dollar
suit of clay-worsteds, a good biled shirt, an' a new celluloid collar.
But how changed from what had been but three short days ago the
cinnersure of the eye of every sure-thing or conman on South Halsted
Street? Seventy-five per cent. of eight cases of eggs had went billerin'
over him. The shells of the same clung like barnacles to his apparel.
His curlin' locks was matted an' mucilaged like he'd made a premature
getaway from some liberal-minded shampooer; an' from under his beetlin'
brows that looked like birds' nests from which broods had just hatched,
glared eyes with vi'lence an' crime in every glance. Verily, Aconite was
a beaut! An' here, a-comin' down upon him like the angel o' the Lord on
the Assyrian host, come a starchy, lacey, filmy, ribbiny gal, that had
onst let him hold her hand, by gum! her eyes burnin' with vengeance, an'
that kinder corn-shucky rustlin' that emanated mysterious from her dress
as she walked, a drawin' nearder an' nearder every breath.
"Gladys! Gladys!" says her lady friend. An' as Gladys slowed up, she
says, lower: "I wouldn't interfere in this if I were you, dear!"
"I must!" says Gladys. "It's my duty! I can't permit dumb animals to be
treated so without a protest. It is civic cowardice not to do
disagreeable things for principle. I wish to speak to the man in
charge, please!"
I kep' minglin' with the herd, not carin' to have disagreeable things
done to me for principle, but she cuts me out, an' says, says she, "Do
you know that there's a law against cruelty to dumb animals?"
"They ain't dumb," says I, trying to change my voice, an' officin' up to
Reddy to shove 'em along to their fate while I held the foe in play.
"When you've associated with these cute little cusses as long an'
intermately as I have, ma'am, you'll know that they have a language an'
an ellerquence all their own, that takes 'em out of the pervisions o'
that law you speak of, an'--"
Here's where I overplays my hand, an' lets her get onto the genuyne
tones of my voice. I ortn't to done this, f'r she'd heared it at close
range. An' to make a dead cinch out of a good gamblin' proposition, I
looked her in the eyes. It was all off in a breath. She give a sort of
gasp as if somethin' cold had hit her, an' went petrified, sort o' slow
like.
"Oh!" says she, turnin' her head to her friend. "I understand now what
it was your husband was laughing about, and his odious jokes about
fooling the inspector; and the bearing of the article he showed us in
the Chicago paper! O, Mr. Driscoll, you to be so cruel; and to impose
these poor motherless creatures upon those ignorant Indians, who are
depending upon their living and becoming the nucleus of their pastoral
industry; and the first step to a higher civilization! I don't wonder
that you look guilty, or try--"
"I don't!" says I, f'r I didn't, as fer as the stock was concerned.
"It's these here eight cases of eggs that make me look so. It's a matter
o' clo's. An' the reds'll never raise cattle," says I, "or anything but
trouble, in God's world. An' if these cavvs had as many mothers as a
Mormon kid," I went on, "they'd be no better f'r stew!"
"Mr. Driscoll," says she, "don't ever speak to me again. I shall expose
this matter to the inspector!"
I tried to lift my hat, but it was stuck to my hair; an' the sight of me
pullin' desperately at my own head had some effect on her, f'r she flees
to her friend, actin' queer, but whuther laffin' 'r cryin' I couldn't
say, an' I don't s'pose she could. It's immaterial anyway, the main
p'int bein' that her friend's husband, a friend of the senator's,
persuaded her from havin' us all pinched, when she found that Reddy'd
beat her to it with the cavvs, the last one of which was expirin' under
the squaws' hatchets as she hove in sight of the issue, an' the
soup-kittles was all a-steamin. It reely was too late to do anything, I
guess.
That night I slep' in Oacoma jail. You naturally gravitate that way when
fate has ground you about so fine, an' you begin to drift with the
blizzard. I could 'a' stood the throw-down, but to be throwed down in a
heap with eggs an' dirty clo'es, was too much. I took that suit an' made
a bundle of it, an' out on the pontoon bridge I poked it into the
Missouri with a pole. They're usin' the water to settle coffee with, I'm
told, as fur down as Saint Joe, to this day--'s good as the whites of
eggs, the cooks say. Then, havin' wired my resignation to Elkins,
feelin' that the world held no vocation f'r me but the whoop-er-up
business, I returned to the west side of the river as the only place
suited to my talons, an' went forth to expel the eggs an' tender
memories from my system with wetness. I broke jail in the mornin' but in
a week I come to myself ag'in on the same ol' cot in the same
prehistoric calaboose, an' Mr. Elkins was keepin' the flies off me with
one o' them brushes made of a fringed newspaper tacked to a stick.
"I've come," says he, "to take you home, Aconite."
"All right," says I, "but can you fix it up with the authorities?"
"I'm just going over to get your discharge," replies he. "They seem
quite willing to part with you, now that they discover that none of your
victims have anything deeper than flesh wounds. I've give bonds not to
let you have your guns this side of the Stanley County line. I'll be
back in half-an-hour with the horses."
An' here's where I had a narrow escape. I wouldn't have faced her, the
girl, you know, f'r no money; but as Jim went away, right at the door I
seen through a little winder a shimmerin' of white and blue. It was her,
herself! She must have met Jim before, f'r I heared her speak his name
an' mine. He seemed to be perlitely arguin' with her; an' then she went
away with him. I breathed easier to see her go; an' then set down an'
cried like a baby. A feller'll do that easy, when he's been on a tear,
you know.
Jim an' I rode all that day sayin' never a word. But when we'd turned
in that night I mentioned the matter.
"Mr. Elkins," says I, "she sure has got it in f'r me pretty strong, to
foller me to jail to jump on me!"
"Aconite," says he, "I'll not deceive you. She has. Forget it!"
* * * * *
"Good night, Aconite," said the Bride. "I forgive you--and I think I
know just how that girl felt toward you!"