Pa and the Bad Boy Stop Off at a Lively Western Town--Pa Buys Mining
Stock and Takes Part in a Rabbit Drive.
Well, we are on the way back home, after having engaged Indians,
cowboys, rough riders and highway robbers to join our show for next
season. Pa felt real young and kitteny when we cam to the railroad,
after leaving our robber friends at the Hole-in-the-Wall, far into the
mountain country. We came to a lively town on the railroad, where every
other house is a gambling house, and every other one a plain saloon, and
there was great excitement in the town over our arrival, 'cause there
don't very many rich and prosperous people stop there.
Pa had looked over the money the robbers had given him, to throw it
away, because it was old-fashioned confederate money, when he found that
there was only one bundle of confederate money, and the rest was all
good greenbacks, the bundle of confederate money probably having been
shipped west to some museum, and the robbers having got hold of it in
the dark, brought it along. Pa burned up the bad money at the hotel, and
then he got stuck on the town, and said he would stay there a few days
and rest up, and incidentally break a few faro banks, by a system, the
way the smart alecks break the bank at Monte Carlo.
I teased Pa to take the first train for home, so we could join the
circus before it closed the season, and he could report to the managers
the result of his business trip to the west, but Pa said he had heard of
a man who had a herd of buffalo on a ranch not far from that town, and
before he returned to the show he was going to buy a herd of buffalo for
the cowboys and Indians to chase around the wild west show.
I couldn't do anything with pa, so we stayed at that town until pa
got good and ready to go home. He bucked the faro bank some, but the
gamblers soon found he had so much money that he could break any bank,
so they closed up their lay-outs and began to sell pa mining stock in
mines which were fabulously rich if they only had money to develop them.
They salted some mines near town for Pa to examine, and when he found
that they contained gold enough in every shovelful of dirt to make a man
crazy, he bought a whole lot of stock, and then the gamblers entertained
Pa for all that was out.
They got up dances and fandangos, and Pa was it, sure, and I was proud
of him, cause he did not lose his head. He just acted dignified, and
they thought they were entertaining a distinguished man. Everything
would have gone all right, and we would have got out with honor, if
it hadn't been for the annual rabbit drive that came off while we were
there. Part of the country is irrigated, and good crops are grown,
but the jackrabbits are so numerous that they come in off the plains
adjoining the green spots, at night, and eat everything in sight, so
once a year the people get up a rabbit drive and go out in the night by
the hundred, on horseback, and surround the country for ten miles or so,
and at daylight ride along towards a corral, where thousands of rabbits
are driven in and slaughtered with clubs. The men ride close together,
with dogs, and no guilty rabbit can escape.
Pa thought it would be a picnic, and so we went along, but pa wishes
that he had let well enough alone and kept out of the rabbit game. Those
natives are full of fun, and on these rabbit drives they always pick out
some man to have fun with, and they picked out Pa as the victim. We rode
along for a couple of hours, flushing rabbits by the dozen, and they
would run along ahead of us, and multiply, so that when the corral was
in sight ahead the prairie was alive with long eared animals, so the
earth seemed to be moving, and it almost made a man dizzy to look at
them.
The hundreds of men on horseback had come in close together from all
sides, and when we were within half a mile of the corral the crowd
stopped at a signal, and the leader told Pa that now was the time to
make a cavalry charge on the rabbits, and he asked Pa if he was afraid
and wanted to go back, and Pa said he had been a soldier and charged the
enemy; had been a politician and had fought in hot campaigns; had hunted
tigers and lions in the jungle, and rode barebacked in the circus, and
gone into lions' dens, and been married, and he guessed he was not going
to show the white feather chasing jackrabbits. They could sound the
bugle charge as soon as they got ready, and they would find him in the
game till the curtain was rung down.
That was what they wanted Pa to say, so, as pa's horse was tired, they
suggested that he get on to a fresh horse, and Pa said all right, they
couldn't get a horse too fresh for him, and he got on to a spunky pony,
and I noticed that there was no bit in the pony's mouth, but only a rope
around the pony's nose, and I was afraid something would happen to pa.
I told him he and I better dismount, and climb a mesquite tree and watch
the fun from a safe place.
Pa said: “Not on your life; your Pa is going right amongst the big
game, and is going to make those rabbits think the day of judgment has
arrived. Give me a club.”
The leader handed Pa an ax handle, and when we looked ahead towards the
corral where the rabbits had been driven, it seemed as though there were
a million of them, and they were jumping over each other so it looked as
though there was a snow bank of rabbits four feet thick. When Pa said
he was ready a fellow sounded a bugle, and pa's pony started off on the
jump for the corral, and all the other horses started, and everybody
yelled, but they held back their horses so Pa could have the whole field
to himself.
Gee, but I was sorry for pa. His horse rushed right into the corral
amongst the rabbits, and when it got right where the rabbits were the
thickest, the darn horse began to buck, and tossed Pa in the air just
as though he had been thrown up in a blanket, and he came down on a soft
bed of struggling and scared rabbits, and the other horsemen stopped
at the edge of the corral and watched pa, and I got off my horse and
climbed up on a post of the corral and tried to pick out pa. Then all
the hundred or more dogs were let loose in amongst Pa and the rabbits,
and it was a sight worth going miles to see if it had been somebody
else than Pa that was holding the center of the stage, and all the crowd
laughing at pa, and yelling to him to stand his ground.
[Illustration: The Pony Tossed Pa In the Air.]
Well, Pa swung his ax handle and killed an occasional rabbit, but there
were thousands all around, and Pa seemed to be wading up to his middle
in rabbits, and they would jump all over him, and bunt him with their
heads, and scratch him with their toe-nails, and the dogs would grab
rabbits and shake them, and Pa would fall down and rabbits would run
over him till you couldn't see Pa at all. Then he would raise up again
and maul the animals with his club, and his clothes were so covered with
rabbit hair that he looked like a big rabbit himself. He lost his hat
and looked as though he was getting exhausted, and then he stopped and
spit on his hands and yelled to the rest of the men, who had dismounted
and were lined up at the edge of the corral, and said: “You condemned
loafers, why don't you come in here and help us dogs kill off these
vermin, cause I don't want to have all the fun. Come on in, the water is
fine,” and Pa laughed as though he was in swimming and wanted the rest
of the gang to come in.
[Illustration: Pa Swinging His Ax Handle.]
The crowd thought they had given the distinguished stranger his inning,
and so they all rushed in with clubs and began to kill rabbits and drive
them away from pa. In an hour or so the most of them were killed, and Pa
was so tired he went and sat down on the ground to rest, and I got down
off my perch and went to Pa and asked him what he thought of this latest
experience, and I began to pick rabbit hairs off pa's clothes.
“I'll tell you what it is, Hennery,” said pa, as he breathed hard, as
though he had been running a foot race, “this rabbit drive reminds me of
the way the rich corporations look upon the poor people, just as we look
upon the jackrabbits. We pity a single jackrabbit, and he runs when he
sees us, and seems to say: 'Please, mister, let me alone, and let me
nibble around and eat the stuff you do not want, and we drive them into
a bunch, the way the rich and mean iron-handed trusts drive the people,
and then we turn in and club them with the ax handle of graft and greed,
and we keep our power over them, if enough are killed off so we are
in the majority, but the jackrabbits that escape the drive keep on
breeding, like the poor people that the trusts try to exterminate. Some
day the jackrabbit and the poor people will get nerve enough to fight
back, and then the jackrabbit and the poor people will outnumber the men
who fight them and kill them, and they will turn on the cowboys with the
clubs, and the trusts with the big head, and drive those who now pursue
them into corrals on the prairies and into penitentiaries in the states,
and those who are pig-headed and cruel will get theirs, see?”
I told Pa I thought I could see, though there were rabbit hairs in my
eyes, and then I got Pa to get up and mount his horse, and we rode back
to town with the gang, while the 5,000 rabbit carcasses were hauled to
town in wagons and loaded on the cars.
“Where do you send those jackrabbits?” asked Pa of the leader of the
slayers, as he watched them loading the rabbits.
“To the Chicago packing houses,” said the man. “They make the finest
canned chicken you ever et.”
“The devil, you say,” said pa. “Then we have been working all day to
make packing houses rich. Wouldn't that skin you?”
Then we went to the hotel and I put court-plaster on Pa where the
rabbits had scratched the skin off, and Pa arranged to go out next day
to the ranch where the herd of buffaloes live, to look for bigger game
for the show, though he would like to have a rabbit drive in the circus
ring next year if he could train the rabbits.