NEWS FROM BUFFALO JIM
Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub,
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker;
They all jumped out of a holler pertater.
Rub-a-dub-dub.
"Do you call them your prayers?" asked Lafe sternly. "I done told you to
get to bed more'n a hour ago, son. I swan I can't figure what your ma's
thinking of. Now, drag it."
The boy turned a confident grin on his sire and continued his march
through the house, rub-a-dub-dubbing to the best that was in him. He was
attired lightly in a chemise, and was accordingly able to give an
unhampered illustration of how the candlestick maker and the other
tradesmen emerged from the spud. Hetty had gone to prepare his bed;
returning, she made a dive for the fugitive and bore him, struggling, to
his unwelcome nest. There she was obliged to growl over him in imitation
of a big old bear, before Lafe, Jr., became reconciled.
Johnson listened with scant patience to their further discourse inside
the bedroom.
"That ain't the way to learn the boy his prayers," he interrupted.
"Bless _Mister_ Shortredge. Mister! That's a fine way for a li'l feller
to pray, ain't it? Call him Jim or Buf'lo, Hetty. Call him Jim or
Buf'lo. I reckon the Almighty don't know Jim as Mister."
"I guess the Almighty ain't such a close friend of his, anyhow, seeing
as he's a friend of yours," retorted Mrs. Johnson.
Lafe revolved this in his mind. By the time he had hit upon an apt
rejoinder, opportunity for its use had fled; but he made a mental note
thereof, resolved to steer the talk around some day to the same theme.
Early next morning Jeff Hardin came up the trail, with a letter for
Johnson. Letters are rare arrivals in that region and a certain
formality attaches to their receipt. This one Lafe accepted with seeming
unconcern, and having looked long at the handwriting and turned it over
and over, he called his wife. To her Lafe opined that Buffalo must have
written to him. Meanwhile Jeff loitered near, flicking the reins on his
horse's back, intent on catching anything of interest that might crop
up.
"He wouldn't never take a prize, Buf'lo wouldn't," said Lafe critically,
"but this looks a bit shaky, even for him."
"Well, let's open it," Hetty suggested.
It took her husband at least ten minutes to scan the brief page,
although famous for the ease with which he read and spelled; but this
was due to the fact that Shortredge despised punctuation and had broad
theories of capitals, into which the sense of the subject-matter did not
enter at all. So there existed always a confusion as to where his
sentences began and where they left off. But Johnson finished at last,
and then he turned to Hetty with a hopeless air.
"Well, if that wouldn't knock you deader'n a rat. Here he owes me
fifty-seven dollars already, and he's been owing it for nigh on a
million years," he said, "yet he wants--"
He broke off, perceiving that Jeff lingered. "Won't you get down and
visit, Jeff?" he asked.
"No-oo, I wouldn't choose to, thanks, Lafe," said Jeff; "I got to drift.
Did you say he owed you fifty-seven, Lafe? Well, adios, you two. Take
care of yourself, Mrs. Johnson. Come on, boy, and I'll give you a ride
as far as the spring."
Hardin continued his journey toward Badger, and told them there how Jim
Shortredge had applied to Lafe Johnson for a loan of two hundred
dollars, although he had been owing him close to a thousand for seven
years.
"Well, what're you going to do about it?" said Hetty, when the courier
had departed.
"Do about it? Forget it--that's what I'm going to do."
"We couldn't have him here with little Lafe round," Hetty went on
reflectively. "It wouldn't be safe. No, we couldn't. Could we?"
"Well, I should reckon not. I should rather reckon not. Where'd we put
him?"
Lafe was highly indignant for the remainder of the forenoon. What sort
of an idiot did Buffalo take him to be, anyhow? It was all very well for
a man to use his friend's money and time as his own so long as both were
single, but when a man married, his family had first claim. If Jim could
not get that through his head without having it pounded in, Lafe was
sorry, but he would have to make it clear, notwithstanding. Send him
fifty dollars--had Hetty ever in her life heard anything to equal that?
Here was a feller who could easily earn seventy-five dollars a month--a
thick, stout man--and just because he was a trifle sick, he had to send
off to borrow and to ask if he could visit. It was weak-kneed, Lafe
called it. He had really never suspected this propensity in Shortredge.
"Many's the time I've helped him out," he said, reverting to the subject
after dinner, "and what do I get? A man owes it to a friend before he
gets married, Hetty. Afterwards, he--"
"He what?"
"Well, he ain't got any friends," said her husband.
His irritation continued throughout the afternoon and he brusquely
refused to take his son up in front when he rode away to Horne's
headquarters. It was growing dark when he returned and the cattle were
drifting up the Canon to water. Johnson noticed each cow and calf with a
shrewd eye, and determined to spread more salt in the morning. His son
came galloping to meet him, and Lafe swung the boy to the fork of the
saddle. He was still moody, however, and his wife observed that he did
not eat with his customary appetite. Finally he pushed the plate from
him.
"I declare that stew's no fit food for a man, Hetty. Can't we never have
nothing else?"
"You've had stew twice in three weeks. That's what you've had," Hetty
returned, bridling. "What's got into you, anyhow? You're worse than a
big ol' bear."
"Ugh-ugh-ugh-ugh!" her son growled, making a persistent effort to worry
his father's leg with his teeth. Lafe pried his offspring loose and set
him on his knee. The boy wrestled and thumped him, and gradually Lafe
softened under the play.
"I mind once, me and Buf'lo went for eleven days on jerky and tobacco;
more tobacco than jerky," he said, considering his son with a smile.
"Nothing ever seemed to hurt us in them days, me and Buf'lo. Down in the
Baccanochi, it was, where we went for some cattle. And of all the sorry
steers, you never seen the like, Hetty. Honest, they couldn't throw a
shadow. But we got some beef there. I ain't never tasted beef like it
since--no, ma'am."
"Ho, haven't you?" Hetty sniffed.
His usual even spirits seemed to return during the after-supper smoke.
He sat on the porch and listened to the cows lowing contentedly around
the tanks. Some animal went light-footed through the underbrush of the
slope opposite, and Lafe, Jr., was morally certain it was a wildcat;
but, then, he never failed to detect bears and wolves and mountain lions
in the least stirring of a twig. The dark deepened and a coyote yelped
against the Canon's walls. The baby announced his intention of catching
the prowler on the morrow with a pinch of salt, and by the exercise of
cunning and stealth.
Hetty came out on the porch to fill the canteen and to warn little Lafe
that bedtime was close upon him. The boy denied it vehemently.
"I mind once, when me and Buf'lo were sleeping at the ol' Palomino," her
husband told her; "just a night like to this it was, and a couple of
line riders come along with a deck of cards--"
"That's all you need to say," Hetty said. "You never did understand the
game."
Shortly afterward she took the child from his father and put him to bed,
Lafe, Jr., howling that he was wide awake and nothing under heaven would
make him go. Yet he was asleep in a twinkling. His mother tiptoed out of
the room. When she reached the porch, she gave vent to the long sigh a
tired woman will give when the day's work is done and she can relax, and
she began to rock in the wicker-chair. Her husband was walking
meditatively near a tall cottonwood. He appeared to be pacing off the
ground.
"What're you doing?" she called.
"Nothing. Nothing much." But when she joined him, he coughed and looked
foolish.
"Now," said Hetty, locking both arms about one of his and leaning
against him, "tell me."
"Why," Lafe said, "I was just sort of studying how a tent would fit here
right snug. It's a slick place for a tent."
Hetty squeezed his arm and looked at him with eyes of perfect
understanding.
"Do you want to see what I wrote to him?" she whispered.
"Who? Buf'lo? You wrote to Buf'lo? When did you write to Buf'lo? Well, I
swan."
It is best at this juncture to stare for signs of the marauding coyote,
or to gaze fixedly at the evening star blazing in line with the chimney,
because those two often chose to forget that they had been married five
years.
This is what Hetty showed Lafe, bending over his shoulder as he read it
by the light of a lamp.
DEAR FRIEND:
My husband showed me your letter and I write to say we will be
glad to have you come any time and stay with us as long as you
like.
He has talked a whole lot about you and little Lafe always
remembers you in his prayers. He don't like to say his prayers
he's like his father. We have a nice home in the cannon and it
will do you good it is so high up here.
Yours respectfully,
MRS. JOHNSON.
P.S. My husband is writing to you, too.
Lafe took this letter and enclosed one of his own composition, together
with several very worn bills which he extracted from a can behind the
kitchen clock. And just after daybreak he started for Badger to the end
that the letter might be carried to a railway town by the stage driver.
While he was making some purchases of flour and groceries that Hetty had
itemized on a piece of wrapping paper as an aid to memory, one of the
loungers remarked to Johnson that he heard Buffalo Jim had had the nerve
to try to borrow some money. It puzzled him how some people would beat
their way through the world.
"It does, does it?" Lafe answered, in a nutmeg-grater voice. "Well, it
oughtn't to. Any time ol' Buf'lo wants anything, he knows where he can
get it quick. Understand? Who done told you that? The man who told you
that was a liar. And if there's anybody here got something to get off
his mind about Buf'lo, now's the time. I'm a-listening."
Nobody had anything to get off his mind, it would seem. Having given
ample opportunity, Johnson gathered up his parcels, tied them carefully
to various parts of the saddle, and departed for home. He did not regard
the incident in Badger of sufficient importance to communicate to his
wife.