"Sweet is the vale where the Mohawk gently glides
On its fair, windin' way to the sea;
And dearer by f-a-a-ar----"
"Now, look a-here, Alec Lloyd," broke in Hairoil Johnson, throwin'
up one hand like as if to defend hisself, and givin' me a kinda scairt
look, "you shut you' bazoo right this minute--and git! Whenever you
begin singin' that song, I know you're a-figgerin' on how to marry
somebody off to somebody else. And I just won't have you _around!_"
We was a-settin' t'gether on the track side of the deepot platform at
Briggs City, him a-holdin' down one end of a truck, and me the other.
The mesquite lay in front of us, and it was all a sorta greenish brown
account of the pretty fair rain we'd been havin'. They's miles of it,
y' savvy, runnin' so far out towards the west line of Oklahomaw that
it plumb slices the sky. Through it, north and south, the telegraph
poles go straddlin'--in the _di_rection of Kansas City on the right
hand, and off past Rogers's Butte to Albuquerque on the left. Behind
us was little ole Briggs, with its one street of square-front buildin's
facin' the railroad, and a scatterin' of shacks and dugouts and
corrals and tin-can piles in behind.
Little ole Briggs! Sometimes, you bet you' life, I been pretty down on
my luck in Briggs, and sometimes I been turrible happy; also, I been just
so-so. But, no matter how things pan out, darned if I cain't allus say
truthful that she just about suits me--that ornery, little, jerkwater
town!
The par_ti_cular day I'm a-speakin' of was a jo-dandy--just cool enough
to make you want t' keep you' back aimed right up at the sun, and
without no more breeze than 'd help along a butterfly. Then, the air
was all nice and perfumey, like them advertisin' picture cards you git
at a drugstore. So, bein' as I was enjoyin' myself, and a-studyin'
out somethin' as I hummed that was _mighty_ important, why, I didn't
want t' mosey, no, ma'am.
But Hairoil was mad. I knowed it fer the reason that he'd called me
Alec 'stead of Cupid. Y' see, all the boys call me Cupid. And I ain't
ashamed of it, neither. _Some_body's got t' help out when it's a case
of two lovin' souls that's bein' kept apart.
"Now, pardner," I answers him, as coaxin' as I could, "don't you go
holler 'fore you're hit. It happens that I ain't a-figgerin' on no
hitch-up plans fer _you._"
Hairoil, he stood up--quick, so that I come nigh fallin' offen my end of
the truck. "But you are fer some _other_ pore cuss," he says. "You
as good as owned up."
"Yas," I answers, "I are. But the gent in question wouldn't want you
should worry about _him_. All that's a-keepin' _him_ anxious is that
mebbe he won't git his gal."
"Alec," Hairoil goes on,--turrible solemn, he was--"I have _de_cided
that this town has had just about it's fill of this Cupid business of
yourn--and I'm a-goin' t' stop it."