“We’ll speak of her later, and I will demand an explanation of your
associations with her, Mr. Wardner.”
“Wardner?” says I. “My name’s Brown!”
“The name on the license is Jack Wardner. I don’t like the name of
Brown, and I told you I’d marry you under an assumed name.”
“Oh!” says I. “Nice name; where did you find it?”
“I read it in a Sunday paper once. It was an article about a Jack
Wardner, who was a famous rustler in Montana. It must have been a
typographical error, or the word rustler is a derivation of our word
hustler. Don’t you think so, Jack?”
“Yes, I don’t. You might as well have said Harry Tracy or Jesse James.
Suppose I get slammed into jail, and languish in durance vile.”
“Jail?” says she, and then she climbed my morals and language, rode me
wild and free and slapped me with her hat.
She raked me from headstall to flank, and when she quit I’m gentled
aplenty. Also we’re pulling into Hillsdale.
That platform is one mass of colored clothes, and I can feel that
Yallerstone Brown is getting sex-shy. The train jars to a stop, and a
committee of females sure invades that car. They don’t see nobody but
my wife. I hears the word “telegram” and I know they’ve been notified.
While the turmoil is in progress I opines to myself that I know I’m
going to get embarrassed, so I shoves one leg out of the open window
and hit the gravel on the other side.
I figure to go around that train and meet my wife on the other side,
but there don’t seem to be no other side. I walked about a mile with
that bag and cane but there ain’t no end to the cars. Then I takes my
gun out of my bag, shoves it inside the band of my pants, and ditches
both bag and cane.
Then all to once I finds an opening in the trains and I pilgrims right
down a street. I sees a familiar sign over a door, so in I goes.
There at the bar stands a figure, dressed in a checkerboard suit, with
his back turned toward me, talking to the bartender. On top of his
head sets a green hard hat, with red hair sticking up around the edge
like grass around a fence post. One freckled bunch of fingers holds a
half-unwrapped cigar with which he gestures widely, as he says:
“Yessir, he was a hy-iu pard but he fell for a female charmer. I’m all
to blame, ’cause I was the one what got him to travel, and I shall have
it on my conscience for many a day and night. Well, Bartender, fill ’em
up and we’ll drink to the best old ----”
“Old what?” I asks, and Taos turns so quick that his hat falls off, and
he sets down hard on the rail.
I looks him over, picks up that miscolored hat and blows the dust off
the top.
“You married yet, Taos?” I asks.
He looks up at the bartender and motions toward me:
“Bartender, do you see the same thing that I do? Tell me your
impression.”
“Seven feet high, horse face and----”
“That’s aplenty,” says Taos, getting up. “Yallerstone Brown, have a
drink. Are you married?”