"Aw, Pat fer his shirt, he begged hard and plead,
But, 'No tickee, no washee', the Chinaman said.
Now Paddy's in jail, and the Chinaman's dead!
How's that?"
"_That's tough!_"
It brung him. He looked in, kinda edged through the door, took a bench,
and _sur_veyed them shaps, and them guns till his eyes plumb _pro_truded.
"Rippin'!" I heerd him say.
"'That's tough,'" repeats Monkey Mike, winkin' to the boys. "Wal,
I should _re_mark it was!--to go t' jail just fer pluggin' a Chink.
Irish must 'a' felt like two-bits."
Boston lent over towards me. "What's two bits?" he ast.
"What's two bits," says Rawson. "Don't you know? Wal, _one_ bit is
what you can take outen the other feller's hide at one mouthful. _Two_
bits, a-course, is two of 'em."
"And," says that college feller from the Lazy X, "go fer the cheek
allus--the best eatin'." (He was smart, all right.)
"Not a Chinaman's cheek--too tough," says the sheriff.
Boston begun to kinda talk to hisself. "Horrible!" he says. "Shy
Locks, by Heaven!" Then to me again, speakin' low and pointin' at the
sheriff, "Mister Lloyd, what kind of a fambly did that man come from?"
"Don't know a hull lot about him," I answers, "but his mother was
a squaw, and his father was found on a doorstep."
"A _squaw,_" he says. "That accounts fer it." And he begun to watch
the sheriff clost.
"Gents, what you want fer you' supper?" ast the Arnaz boy, comin'
our _di_rection.
"I feel awful caved in," answers Buckshot. "I'll take a dozen aigs."
"How'll you have 'em?"
"Boil 'em hard, so's I can hole 'em in my fingers. And say, cool 'em
off 'fore you dish 'em up. I got blistered _bad_ the last time I et
aigs."
"Rawson, what'll _you_ have?"
Rawson, he kinda cocked one ear. "Wal," he says, easy like, "give me
rattlesnake on toast."
Nobody cheeped fer a minute, 'cause the boys was stumped fer somethin'
to go on with. But just as I was gittin' nervous that the conversation
was peterin' out, Boston speaks up.
"Rattlesnake?" he says; "did he say _rattlesnake?_"
Like a shot, Rawson turned towards him, wrinklin' his forrid and
wigglin' his moustache awful fierce. "_That's_ what I said," he
answers, voice plumb down to his number 'levens.
It give me my show. I drug Boston away. "Gee!" I says, "on _this_ side
of the Mississippi, you got to be _keerful_ how you go shoot off you'
mouth! And when you _re_mark on folks's eatin', you don't want t'
look tickled."
Wal, that was all the colour he got till night, when I had somethin'
more _pre_pared. We took up a collection fer winda-glass, and Chub
Flannagan, who can roll a gun the _prettiest_ you ever seen, walked up
and down nigh Boston's stoppin'-place, invitin' the fellers t' come
out and "git et up," makin' one 'r two of us dance the heel-and-toe
when we showed ourselves, and shootin' up the town gen'ally.
Then, fer a week, nothin' happened.
It was just about then that Rose got another letter from Macie. And it
seemed t' me that the little gal 'd changed her tune some. She said
Noo York took a _turrible_ lot of money--clothes, and grub, and so forth
and so on. Said they was so blamed little oxygen in the town that a lamp
wouldn't burn, and they'd got to use 'lectricity. And--that was all
fer _this_ time, 'cause she had t' write her paw.
"I s'pose," I says to Rose, "that it'd be wastin' my breath t'
ast----"
"Yas, Cupid," she answers, "but it'll be O. K. when she sees you."
"_I_ reckon," I says hopeful. And I hunted up my new boss.
He didn't give me such a lot t' do them days--except t' show up at the
feed-shop three times reg'lar. That struck me as kinda funny--'cause
he was as flush as a' Osage chief.
"Why don't you grub over to the eatin'-house oncet in a while?" I
ast him. "They got all _kinds_ of tony things--tomatoes and cucumbers
and as-paragrass, and them little toadstool things."
"And out here in the desert!" says Boston. "I s'pose they bring 'em
from other places."
"Not on you' life!" I answers. "They grow 'em right here--in flower
pots."
Out come a pencil. "How pictureskew!" Boston says,--and put it down.
End of that first week, when I stopped in at the Arnaz place fer supper,
I says to him, "Wal," I says, "book about done?"
He was layin' back lazy in a chair,--_as_ usual--watchin' Carlota trot
the crock'ry in. He batted his eyes. "Done!" he repeats. "_No_.
Why, I ain't got only a few notes."
"Notes?" I says; "notes?" I was _turrible_ disappointed. (I reckon I
was worryin' over the book worse'n _he_ was.) "Why, say, couldn't
you make nothin' outen that bad man who was a-paintin' the town the
other night?"
"Just a bad man don't make a book," says Boston; "leastways, only
a yalla-back. But take a bad man, and a _gal,_ and you git a story of
_ad_-venture."
A gal. Yas, you need a gal fer a book. And you need _the_ gal if you want
t' be right happy. I knowed that. Pretty soon, I ast, "Have you picked
on a gal?"
"Here's Carlota," he says. "_She'd_ make a figger fer a book."
Carlota!--the little skeezicks! Y' see, she's _aw-ful_ pretty. Hair
blacker'n a stack of black cats. Black eyes, too,--big and friendly
lookin'. (That's where you git fooled--Carlota's a blend of tiger-cat
and bronc; she can purr 'r pitch--take you' choice.) Her face is just
snow white, with a little bit of pink--now y' see it, now y' don't
see it--on her cheeks, and a little spot of blazin' red fer a mouth.
"But what I'm after most now," he goes on, "is a plot."
A plot, y' savvy, is a story, and I got him the best I could find. This
was Buckshot's:
"Boston, this is a _blamed_ enterprisin' country,--almost _any_ ole
thing can happen out here. Did you ever hear tell how Nick Erickson
got his stone fence? No? You could put _that_ in a book. Wal, you
know, Erickson lives east of here. Nice hunderd and sixty acres he's
got--level, no stones. Wanted t' fence it. Couldn't buy lumber 'r
wire. Figgered on haulin' stone, only stone was so blamed far t'
haul. Then,--Nature was accommodatin'. Come a' earthquake that shook
and shook the ranch. Shook all the stones to the top. Erickson picked
'em up--and built the fence."
But Boston was hard t' satisfy. So I tried to tell him about Rose and
Billy.
"No," he says; "if they's _one_ thing them printin' fellers won't
stand fer it's a hero_ine_ that's hitched."
So, then, I branched off on to pore Bud Hickok.
"No," says Boston, again; "_that_ won't do. It's got to end up
happy."
Wal, it looked as if that book was goin' fluey. To make things worse,
the boys begun kickin' about havin' t' pack so many guns. And I had
to git up a notice, signed by the sheriff, which said that more'n two
shootin'-irons on any one man wouldn't be 'lowed no more, and that
cityzens was t' "shed forthwith."
I seen somethin' had got t' be done pronto. "Cupid," I says to
myself, "you _must con_sider that there book of Boston's some more.
'Pears that Boston ain't gittin' all he come after. Nothin' ain't
happenin' that he can put into a book. Wal, it's _got_ t' happen.
Just chaw on _that._"
Next, I hunted up the boys. "Gents," I says to 'em, "help me find a
bad man that'll fit into a story with a gal."
"Gal?" they repeats.
"Yas; every book has got t' have a gal."
"I s'pose," says Rawson. "Just like ev'ry herd had got t' have a
case of staggers. But--who's the gal?"
The boys all lent towards me, fly-traps wide open.
"Carlota Arnaz," I answers.
Some looked plumb eased in they minds--and some didn't. Carlota, she's
ace-high with quite a bunch--all ready t' snub her up and marry her.
"The Senorita'll do," says Rawson. "She gen'ally makes out t' keep
_some_ man mis'rable."
And fer the bad man, we picked out Pedro Garcia, the cholo that was mixed
up in that mete'rite business. Drunk 'r sober, fer a hard-looker Pedro
shore fills the bill.
Next, we hunted ev'ry which way fer a plot. "I'll tell y'," says
Californy Jim, that ole prospector that hangs 'round here; "if the
lit'rary lead has pinched out, why don't you _salt_--_and pretend to
make a strike?_"
Hairoil pricked up his ears. "Wouldn't that be somethin' like a--a
scheme?" he ast; "somethin' like that we planned out fer Cupid here?"
"Yas."
The hull bunch got plumb pale. Then they made fer the door.,
"Wait, boys!" I hollered. "_Hole_ on! Remember this is a scheme
that's been _ast_ fer."
They stopped.
"And," I says, "it looks pretty good t' _me._"
They turned back--shakin' they haids, though. "Just as you say,
Cupid," says Rawson. And, "Long's it's fer _you,_" adds the sheriff.
"But schemes is some dangerous."
"I'll tell y'!" begins Sam Barnes. "We'll hole up the dust wagon
from the Little Rattlesnake Mine, all of us got up like Jesse James!"
Bill Rawson jumped nigh four feet. "You go soak you' haid!" he
begun, mad's a hornet. "Hole up the dust wagon! And whichever of us
mule-skinners happens t' be bringin' it in'll git the G. B. from
that high-falutin' gent in the States that owns the shootin'-match.
No, _ma'am!_ And if _that's_ the kind of plot you-all 're hankerin'
after, you can just count me _outen_ this hawg-tyin'!"
"That's right--sic 'em, Towser; git t' fightin'," I says. "Now,
Bill, _work_ you' hole-back straps. I cain't say as Sam's plan hit
the right spot with me, neither. 'Cause how could _Carlota_ figger in
that pow-wow? Won't do."
Wal, after some more pullin' and haulin', we fixed it up this way:
Pedro'd grab Carlota and take her away on a hoss whilst Boston and the
passel of us was in the Arnaz place. He was t' hike north, and drop
her at the Johnson shack on the edge of town--then go on, takin' a dummy
in her place, and totin' a brace of guns filled with blanks. We'd
foller with plenty of blanks, too--and Boston. How's that fer high!
If you want to ast me, I think the hull idear was just _O. K.,_ and
no mistake. Beautiful gal kidnapped--bra-a-ave posse of punchers--hard
ride--hot fight--rescue of a pilla stuffed with the best alfalfa on
the market. _Pro_cession files back, all sand and smiles.
"Why," I says to Bergin, "them Eastern printin' fellers'll set 'em
up fer Boston so fast that he'll plumb float."
And the sheriff agreed.
But it couldn't happen straight off. Pedro had t' be tole about it, and
give his orders. Carlota, the same. I managed this part of the shindig,
the boys gittin' the blanks, the hosses and the hay lady.
Wal, I rode down to the section-house and ast fer Pedro. He come out,
about ten pounds of railroad ballast--more 'r less--spread on to them
features of hisn. (_That_'d 'a' been colour fer Boston, all right.) I
tole him what we was goin' t' do, _why_ we was a-doin' it, and laid
out _his_ share of the job. Then I tacked on that the gal he'd steal
was Carlota.
Now, as I think about it, I _re_call that he looked _mighty_ tickled.
Grinned all over and said, "Me gusta mucho" more'n a dozen times.
But _then_ I didn't pay no 'tention to how he acted. I was so glad
he'd fall in with me. (The Ole Nick take the greasers! A' out-and-out,
low-down lot of sneakin' coyotes, anyhow! And I might 'a' _knowed_----)
"Pedro," I says, "they's no rush about this. We'll kinda work it up
slow. T' make the hull thing seem dead real, you come to town ev'ry
evenin' fer a while, and hang 'round the rest'rant. Spend a little
spondulix with the ole woman so's she won't kick you out, and shine
up t' Carlota when Boston's on the premises. Ketch on?"
Pedro said he did, and I loped back to town t' meet up with Carlota and
have it out with her--and that was a job fer a caution!
Carlota was all bronc that day--stubborn, pawin', and takin' the bit.
And if I kept up with her, and come out in the lead, it was 'cause
I'd had some _ex_perience with Macie, and I'd learned when t' leave a
rambunctious young lady have her haid.
"Carlota," I says, "us fellers has fixed up a mighty nice scheme t'
help out Boston with that book he's goin' to write."
"So?" She was all awake--quicker'n scat.
"Yas," I goes on. "Y' know, he's been wantin' somethin'
_ex_citin' t' put in it. We figger t' give it to him."
"Como?" she ast.
"With a case of kidnappin'. Man steals gal--we foller with Boston--lots
of shootin'--save the gal----"
"What gal?"
"It's a big honour--and we choosed you."
"So-o-o!"
Say! that hit her right, _I_ tell y'! But I had to go put my foot in it,
a-course. "Yas, _you,_" I goes on. "Mebbe you noticed Boston's here
pretty frequent?"
"Si! si! si! senor!"
"That's 'cause he's been studyin' you--so's he could use you fer
a book char_ac_ter."
"So!" she said. "_That_ is it! _that_ is why!" Mad? Golly! Them black
eyes of hern just snapped, and she grabbed a hunk of bread and begun
knifin' it.
"Wal," I says, "you don't seem t' ketch on to the fact that you
been handed out a blamed big compliment. A person in a _book_ is _some
potatoes._"
"No! _no!_ senor!"
Pride hurt, I says to myself. "Now, Carlota," I begun, "don't cut
off you' nose t' spite you' face. Pedro Garcia is turrible tickled
that we ast _him._"
"Pedro--puf!"
"In the book," I goes on, "he's the bad man that loves you so much
he cain't help stealin' you."
"I _hate_ Pedro," she says. "He is like that--bad."
"But we ain't astin' you t' _like_ him, and he don't _git_ you. He
drops you off at Johnson's and takes a dummy the rest of the way. We
want t' make Boston _think_ they's danger."
"So?" All of a suddent, she didn't seem nigh as mad--and she looked
like she'd just thought of somethin'.
I seen my chanst. "That was the way we fixed it up," I goes on.
"A-course, now you don't want t' be the hero_ine,_ I'll ast one
of the eatin'-house gals. I reckon _they_ won't turn me down." And I
moseyed towards the door.
"Cupid," she calls, "come back. You say, he will think another man
loves me so much that he carries me away?"
"You got it," I answers.