Uncle Gabe looks at me and walks out. I got his goat, Hank. I asked
Emmeline how she likes Hank; and she says, “Hank who?” and I says, “I
thought I’d name my kid after my old friend Hank,” and she says, “Do you
mean Hank Peck?” and I says I did, and she says: “You got a lot of
nerve, Dobie. Hank ain’t no friend of yours, and besides he’s nothing
but a dish-faced puncher, and nothing to name a baby after.”
I told her I knowed you wasn’t nothing but a dish-faced puncher, but my
friendship don’t take no account of homely faces or occupation.
She says, “I’ve promised to let Uncle Gabe name the baby.”
“All right,” says I. “Hang a jinx on the kid and see if I care. Let him
run a Circle G on the kid’s left flank, cut a dewlap on his neck and
call him Oscar, and she’s O. K. with me, but I’ll be —— if he’s going to
name him So-and-So Galesburg Dalton. I sure don’t want no initial G in
front of his family name.”
“Dobie,” says she, “we are going to call him Gabriel, after uncle.”
Hank, I growed mad all to once. The idea of calling a poor little,
raw-looking hunk of yelps, which ain’t got no opinion, after a big boob
like my uncle by marriage!
Hank, I hate to say anything against my relation. Uncle Gabe is all
right as far as he goes, but to me he’s paralyzed in both hind legs, and
you can’t blame me for it.
I says to Emmeline, “Will he always be knowed as such?” and she says,
“Why, of course,” and I says to her: “Listen, honey. Man is of few days
and full of trouble, which is natural for them and happens without no
outside assistance; so why hang something like that on to the poor kid?
Ain’t he going to have no square deal? You folks stack the cards against
the little stranger, and he ain’t got _sabe_ enough to play close to his
stummick. You’re a unnatural mother and are queering the kid.”
Hank, as far as I’m concerned I don’t care how long Uncle Gabe has been
standing there in the door listening to me, ’cause there ain’t nothing
ever comes from my lips that I wouldn’t say in your face. He walks over
to my kid and pokes him in the stummick with his finger, and then he
says: “How is little Gabie? Ootsie, ootsie.”
Hank, you know how a animal acts when you tease its young? Even a fool
hen will fight in a case like that; so I hopped right up, grabbed him by
the back of the belt, and yanked him away.
“You heavy-handed wolf!” says I. “Don’t you poke my kid. Keep your big
paws off the son of Dobie Dalton, or I’ll ride you ragged.”
Hank, it’s the simple little things in life that counts mostly. I’m
quite a studier of human nature and I know things that nobody else ever
thought about. Emmeline didn’t want to hurt her uncle’s feelings; so she
blamed me for the whole thing. I’ve got a strong back and I can stand a
lot without turning like a worm; so she opens up on me like this:
“Dobie, you never did have and never will have any sense. Uncle Gabe was
just showing affection for little Gabie.”
“Is that so?” I asks. “I suppose I spur a bad horse for the same reason,
eh? I suppose I thumb a bronc because I’m affectionate to it. This here
Galesburg family are a delusion and a snare, and I’m going to take the
shadder of my face away from their door, and go where I’ll be
appreciated in full.”
“You mostly always are, Dobie,” says she, and I says, “Well, I’ve yet to
see any appreciation,” and then she says, “You’re going to have seven
years of hard luck, Dobie.”
Hank, you likely don’t know why, because you likely ain’t never heard
that you get seven years’ hard luck when you bust a looking-glass. It
wasn’t exactly me what done it, Hank, which takes off a lot of the curse
for good behavior. Anyway, it wasn’t my looking-glass, and my uncle by
marriage can blame himself, because he threw me through it himself. I
didn’t go all the way through, because the bureau was against the wall,
but I sure left my trademark.
When I went out I says to my uncle by marriage, “Did you know I was
going away, Mister Man?” and he says, “I likely knew it before you did.”
He was just guessing, Hank, because I didn’t know myself; so I says to
him, “Tell me where I’m going,” and he says, “I’ll leave that to you,
Dobie, but the longer you stay the more you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Hank, I hate to have anybody tell me what I ought to do, so I says to
him, “All I ask is what I’ve got coming, and then I’ll leave peaceful.”
“Dobie,” says he, “you never know when you’ve got all that is coming to
you. I’ve got warts on my hands now from beating you up.”
Hank, I got mad. No man or body of men can ever brag about licking me
without making me mad. I comes from a good-looking lot of ancestors, and
my blood tells in the end; so I flares up and says:
“Gabe Galesburg, you’re a big fat-head! You’re a descendant of Geronimo
and Dirty Dora, and your family tree was planted by Captain Kidd. You’re
a cross between a pickpocket and a pole-cat, and as far as I’m concerned
you’re like something that never was nor never will be.
“I’m through with you. _Sabe?_ From this time on, don’t cross my path or
nod. Cherish my wife and baby until I can hew a place in the world for
them to come to, but to you I am as dead.”
Well, Hank, I just landed here in Helena, and you ought to feel proud
that I wrote to you right away. Write soon, and believe me, it’s got to
be bad writing if I can’t stand for it in a letter.
Truly and sincerely yours,
DOBIE DALTON, Gen. Del.
Helena, Aug. 1.
P. S. Remember what I said above about talking back “to my uncle by
marriage”? I said to him, “To you I am as dead.” Well, Hank, that sucker
ain’t got no imagination. He can’t imagine anything being dead—you know
what I mean?
I got to the picket fence ahead of him, and I sure jumped high, but I
reckon I left the ground too soon, because I came down on top of the
fence and ran a picket right up one leg of my chaps. I remembers hearing
uncle by marriage say, “Not only to me, but to every one else,” and then
I don’t know anything until I woke up in the Palace Saloon, with the
boys trying to find out why my leg won’t bend. I look pretty good out of
my eyes and expect to be O. K. very soon.
I went to a lawyer and told him all about it. I told him what I said
about me being as dead to uncle, and he says: “That was just a figure of
speech, of course, but maybe your uncle was afraid you wouldn’t keep
your word. What do you want me to do anyhow?”
I says, “You can’t hang him, can you?” and he says, “No,” and I says,
“No chance for a life sentence?” and he says, “No,” and I says, “Well,
let him to go to —— as far as I’m concerned.”
Well, Hank, of all the nerve you ever seen, that lawyer had it. He
wanted me to pay him five dollars for advice. I says to him: “If you
think I’m going to pay you two-fifty for each time you said, ‘No,’
you’re loco. I’m the only one what suggested anything, and you ought to
pay me.”
Hank, take my advice and keep away from lawyers. They ain’t what they’re
cracked up to be, and if they don’t get paid they get sore, and this one
ought to be fighting for a living instead of lawying, believe me.
Yours,
DOBIE.
* * * * *
DEAR HANK: Well, Hank, I got your letter this morning, and I want to
tell you right now that I ain’t Mister Dalton. Have you forgot my first
name? My gosh, the Circle C must be hard up for paper if that’s all they
had. I didn’t ask for no telegram, Hank.
You say to me: “Go to ——! Can you read that plain?”
Sure I can read it, Hank, but that ain’t nothing to say to a friend. I
ain’t scared of no hereafter, and after I’m dead she all looks alike to
me. I ain’t even hinted about your ignorance, Hank, and you read that
wrong. There are things I know which I wouldn’t say to nobody’s face,
even if I knew them like I do you.
I also want to tell you that you never seen the day in which you could
bust me in the nose, unless you sneaked up on me in the dark. As far as
Emmeline is concerned, Hank, I know my own business better than you do.
Maybe you’re stuck on my wife, eh? You seem to be interested a lot, but
you ain’t never been married and don’t know any better.
I agree with you when you say I must be some father for any child. It’s
fine, believe me, but it’s like I heard a feller say once, “There’s a
Divinity which shapes our ends,” and I could tell him about a family
which sure has spoiled the shape of anything this here Divinity ever
done for me, and their name is Galesburg.
Honest, I never said you was ignorant, but if you keep on writing like
the last one, Hank, I’m going to form a opinion of my own. Any time you
want to call me something what you can’t spell—get a dictionary, and
don’t make a lot of fool marks that nobody knows what they are.
Well, Hank old friend, I’ve got a surprise for you. Now, I don’t want
you to tell everybody about this, and brag that you knew me when I was a
common, ordinary puncher like you are, but just keep still about it. You
remember Pete Huddleston, who used to punch cows for the Lazy Y? Well, I
meets Pete, and we has a regular wau-wau. I showed him your letter and
he says:
“Hank never will amount to nothing like me and you. He ain’t educated
and not naturally bright.”
I guess you must know him well, because he sure knows you all over. Nice
feller. I asked him what he was doing for a living, and he says, “Why,
I’m a cow detective.”
What do you know about that, Hank? Some jump in the world, eh? Well, I
told him I had figured on something like that, and he says, “Why don’t
you use your talents in protecting the cows, on account of there being a
awful wave of crime sweeping over us?” He said I ought to quit paying
the saloon rents, and be a man among menkind.
Well, he took me up to a office and introduces me to a feller, who looks
me over and says, “What have we here?”
“He wants to be a detective,” says Pete.
“Oh!” says the feller. “Why are you sore at the cows?”