I ain’t much of a hand to express myself on paper, but I promised to
drop you a line, so when you receive this you will know that I am still
keeping my word.
Me and Emmeline are O. K. and I hope these few lines will find you the
same also. Hank, I want to ask you a question if you know who it was
that threw that boot at me and Emmeline when we was getting on the train
that night?
I ain’t so mad now as I was then, ’cause I’m mostly all heeled up but
I’d like to know who throwed that boot, ’cause there was a spur on it. I
got spurred along the ear and bled like a stuck hog. I know it’s the
custom to throw old shoes, etc., at a wedding but no man is a gentleman
and a skolar what won’t take his spurs off first. Suppose it had hit Em
instead of me?
I think it was “Windy” Wilson, and I think it so hard that I don’t mind
telling you confidential that he’s a horse-stealing coyote. He ain’t got
no principle, Hank, and if he ever washed his feet his own dog couldn’t
trail him.
I know you won’t tell him I said so, Hank, but if it happens to leak out
I’ll back you up for every word. Me and Emmeline get along fine so far.
But I don’t mind telling you that no man ought to marry any girl before
he knows more about her. Me and Em didn’t know each other only a few
months, and I’m sorry we didn’t find out some things, Hank. I ain’t
knocking Emmeline, you understand. She’s a good girl with no bad habits,
but me and her relatives ain’t exactly sleeping under the same blanket.
You know, Hank, that I had a good job there on the Lazy Y, but Em didn’t
want to live around there and she told me that if I would leave there
she’d see that I got a good job from her uncle. I ain’t no jibber, Hank,
as you know, and my motter is to live and let live and right don’t wrong
no man, but when I finds out that her uncle owns a lot of sheep I talks
right out loud in church.
I didn’t say nothing against a sheep, ’cause a sheep ain’t no more to
blame for being a sheep than Windy is to blame for not having any
brains, but it makes me mad to think that he offers me forty a month to
herd same.
Her uncle’s name is Gabriel Galesburg, and he’s built like a hay-rack.
Honest his whiskers are almost a pink color, Hank, and he seems to think
more of them than he does of his wife. I asked him if he didn’t get them
from sleeping out in the rain with a red blanket wrapped around his
face, and he changed the subject by saying—
“It often strikes me that the world is full of chances to be funny
without being personal.”
He never did tell me if I was right, Hank. There is folks you can’t
never pin right down to a answer. Me and Em are living with them but I
don’t know for how long. Uncle asked me the other day if we expected to
make our home with them or just be boarders and roomers at their house,
but I ain’t answered him yet. We only been here three weeks, and I ain’t
done much since I got married.
I met Bob Pelkey here the other day. You remember Bob, don’t you? He
used to rustle cows up around the border, and afterward he sort of got
religion and quit his erring ways. He’s dealing a stud poker game here
in Mesquite and wearing diamonds. Me and him proceeds to talk over old
times. We drapes over the Palace bar long enough to toast both sides of
the country to a nice brown color.
I tells him about Emmeline and he wants to meet her so bad that I takes
him up to supper with me. Emmeline got sore like a fool and gets me out
alone on the porch.
“Ain’t you got no sense?” she says to me. “This ain’t your house and
what right you got bringing drunk tin-horns up here to supper to insult
me and Aunt Phoebe? That critter is asleep in there on the sofy.”
“I’m going in and congratulate him,” says I. “Anybody what can get drunk
enough to sleep on that infernal sofy has my utmost respect. It ain’t
nothing but a lot of busted springs and hay, and anybody what can ride
it without a bucking-strap ought to have a job with Buffalo Bill’s
circus. And what is more if he’s drunk enough to try and sleep there
he’s too drunk to insult anybody.”
You know how I can talk back to anybody, Hank.
“You go right in there and throw him out,” says she.
Now ain’t that just like a woman, Hank? Drink up a man’s money, take him
home to supper and then have your wife want him throwed out ’cause he
goes to sleep on the sofy. Why, I wouldn’t do that to Windy, and what I
wouldn’t do to Windy would be awful to think about. I promised to obey
Emmeline when the preacher asked me to, Hank, but there wasn’t nothing
said about me acting as household bouncer. She keeps on getting so mad
that I feels sorry for her, Hank.
“You wimmen folks keep away,” says I, “and I’ll do the throwing.”
Her and her aunt shuts themselves up in the kitchen, and I went in where
Bob is snoring on the sofy, and sets down beside him. He’s got a bottle
in his coat pocket, and I was afraid it would get busted when I throwed
him out, so I drank part of it and cached the rest behind the clock.
I don’t think yet that I throwed him out, but I can’t seem to remember
much about it. I remember hearing somebody say something about hogs, and
then somebody throwed me outdoors and I skinned my face on a rock. It
made me so darned mad that I crawled out from under Bob and went
down-town. That was the first time I ever got throwed out of my own
house and it makes me awful sore, Hank. Of course some will argue that
it wasn’t my house, but I considered it as such.
A little later I meets uncle down-town and he stops me.
“Young feller,” says he, “you better keep away from that house until you
can act decent. You can’t sponge on me and disgrace my fambly any more.
I don’t mind feeding the appetite of a horse, but when said horse brings
that ass of a Pelkey along to be fed, too, I won’t stand for it. Also if
you get drunk again Emmeline is through with you.”
Then I says to him, Hank, and I was sore:
“Mister Galesburg, there’s two sides to the argument. I suppose my wife
told you about it, and a woman always exaggerates things. I suppose she
told you that me and Bob was drunk, didn’t she? I think so. Just because
Bob was all tired out and went to sleep on the sofy she took it for
granted that he was drunk as a boiled owl. He wasn’t no more drunk than
I was. Sabe?”
“Well,” says he, “maybe you’re right, but I don’t think so, ’cause he
laid there for twenty minutes after you left for down-town. I throwed
you both out, so I ought to know.”
That’s the kind of a uncle she’s got, Hank. Can you blame me when I say
that a feller ought to know more about a girl’s folks before he takes
her for keeps? You know me, Hank, and you know I’m a pretty decent sort
of a person. There ain’t nothing vishous about me and I’m full of the
milk of human kindness but there are some things that I can’t stand for.
I had thirty-two dollars left but Emmeline has got that, and I owe Sam
Fletcher two dollars for bed right now. I don’t know what I’ll decide to
do for a living, Hank. Bob says he can get me a shift on the Faro layout
here if I can put up a cash bond of a thousand dollars, but if I had a
thousand dollars I’d hire a good lawyer and then take a shot at Uncle
Gabriel for offering me forty a month to herd sheep, and I might have
enough to plead not guilty if I happens to meet Windy face to face.
I ain’t asking for no loan, Hank, but if you can put yourself in my
place you’ll see how I’m hooked up. I’m so mad at Emmeline and her
fambly that I won’t ask them for a thing. Hoping these few lines will
find you flush and good-hearted I beg to remane, very truly y’rs,
Dobie Dalton, care of Palace Hotel.
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