There ain’t no news to write, but as I ain’t got nothing else to do I
will drop you a few lines so you will know I am alive. Have you got
cramps in your fingers or are you too lazy to write? I thought that
Windy and Hondo was the stingiest folks I ever knowed but maybe I’m
wrong at that. Things are pretty fair with me, but I ain’t bought out no
railroads nor nothing yet.
When I was laid up, Hank, I soaked that six-shooter to Sam Fletcher for
some more night’s rest. He didn’t want to take it on acc’t of him having
too many guns now, but so long as I ain’t got nothing else he accepts
same. That doctor orates that I owe him twenty-five dollars for treating
me. Hank, you know me, and you know that I never have nor never will try
to sneak out of a debt. My word is as good as gold, and folks what know
me good don’t ask nothing better than my promise, but when a strange
doctor hounds you for a measly little am’t like that it makes you mad.
He comes up to my room, and he says to me like this, Hank—
“You owe me twenty-five dollars, and I want it.”
Says I to him:
“There ain’t nothing unreasonable about that. You wait down-stairs until
I dress and I’ll come down and pay you.”
Hank, I couldn’t buy a grave for a microbe, so I lets myself down out of
the window, and tries to drop on to the roof of a shed. I hit the roof
O. K. but it was one of them slanting roofs, and I skidded off and hit
terry ferma.
When I opened my eyes, Hank, who do you think I seen? I was looking at
Sleepy and Blazer. Honest, Hank, I was. They’re setting there on a box,
looking at me, and I says to myself—
“Dobie, you thought you lived on the second floor, but you must have
been mistaken, ’cause just falling two stories wouldn’t make you see
things like these.”
“You’re a fine pal, you are,” says Blazer, sad-like. “Where’s our
share?”
“Your share of what?” I asks.
“Of the money you got from the bank that night,” says Sleepy. “You must
have got in a hurry to get rich. You can’t double-cross us, old-timer.
Come across.”
“Ain’t it a sad state of affairs, Sleepy?” says Blazer. “Loan a man a
gun to help you with a job, and never even get the gun back. You got to
give him credit for being clever, though.”
He was right, Hank. You sure got to hand it to me for that. Maybe I
don’t show a lot of brains in my face, but I sure got a lot of them
under my hair. Them two fellers ain’t common ordinary bluffers like
Windy and Hondo, so I got to think fast.
“I suppose you think I got the money here in my pocket, and all I got to
do is spit on my thumb and count out your share,” says I,
sarcastic-like.
“Now you’ve commenced to say something, Dobie,” says Sleepy. “Where do
you wish us to go, and how long will it take you to hand us one
thousand, three hundred and thirty-three dollars and thirty-three and a
third cents per each?”
“You wouldn’t go where I’d tell you to,” says I, “and at forty a month
you can figure how long it will be before you collect.”
Hank, them fellers ain’t got no sense of humor, and their sense of fair
play is nothing to look at. I can say this much though: what Windy and
Hondo forgot to do them fellers done to the queen’s taste. I hate to go
back to that doctor again, so I suffers in silence and alone.
Maybe you don’t know how it is, Hank, never having been married, but
when a married man is sorely wounded he hankers for the light touch of a
woman’s gentle hand and so forth. I gets out of the hen-house, wherein I
had been cast, and picks my way up to Uncle Gabriel’s.
Emmeline and Aunt Phoebe and Uncle Gabriel are out on the porch when I
show up, and they all stand up when I get there.
“Well!” says Uncle Gabriel, “you must have handed an oncore to Windy and
Hondo. We thought you was all heeled up again.”
“I was,” says I. “This was done by two other strong men.”
“That explains it then,” says he, setting down again. “’cause I wondered
how in thunder one man could do all that. Nothing small about you,
Dobie—picking them two at a time.”
“No,” says I, “I ain’t no piker, and I never picks on a man what is
smaller than I am.”
I said this for his benefit, Hank. You know I can always think of
something funny to say at the right time, but at that, Hank, there ain’t
no fun in springing a good joke on a shepherd, ’cause all he said was:
“I had a dog like that once. He spent all his short life hunting for two
dogs that he could whip at the same time. He never got a reputation as a
fighter at that—everybody considered him loco.”
“I didn’t come up here to talk about dogs,” says I. “I came up here to
plead for succor.”
“I’m glad you called yourself that, Dobie,” says he, “’cause it shows
you’ve commenced to get a glimmering of sense. When you going to take
that job herding sheep and support your wife?”
“You really ought to do something now, Dobie,” says Aunt Phoebe.
“I’m handicapped,” says I, “I ain’t got no gun and my stummick is so
sore I can’t stoop over and pick up a rock. Wait until I gets normal and
I’ll sure openly resent that offer, Mister Galesburg. If that is all the
consolation you folks got to offer to a man in my condition I bids you
all good-by.”
Hank, I turns around, feeble-like, and limps away. I ain’t quite to the
gate when I hears Emmeline yell—
“Dobie, please for my sake, don’t get into no more fights.”
Emmeline ain’t no bad scout, Hank, and she still has some consideration
for her husband’s feelings. I sneaks into the back door of the hotel,
and goes up to my room but finds the door is locked.
Hank, that makes me mad. I ain’t no roughneck, and my motter is a place
for everything and everything in its place, and it seems to me that it’s
sort of out of place for them to lock my room up. I goes right
down-stairs to give Sam Fletcher a piece of my mind, and in the office I
runs into that blamed doctor. He’s been drinking, and when he sees me he
waltzes right up and says—
“Mister Dalton, it took you a long time to—my——!”
He shoves his hat back on his head, and goes out of the door, talking to
himself.
I sets down there on a chair and in a minute Sam Fletcher comes in and
sets down at his desk behind the counter. He don’t pay no attention to
me, and it makes me sore, Hank, ’cause I believe in service. So I walks
right over and leans on the counter and says—
“Mister Fletcher, I’ll take my key.”
He turns and looks at me, Hank. I reckon he can see that I’m in earnest,
’cause he reaches right over, takes the key off the nail, and hands it
to me without taking his eyes off my face.
“My ——!” says he, with his mouth open, like a trout out of water, “Doc
Wylie must have practised on you with the reverse English!”
I went up to my room and takes a look at my face in the glass. I sure am
something to look at in the face, and when I tell you that a Hamburger
steak is a pleasant-looking mess beside my features I ain’t telling all
I can see.
But there’s something to look forward to, Hank. I ain’t been down to the
post-office for several days and I’m betting there’s a letter from you
with some money in it. I’ll close now so I can post this when I go down.
If Windy or Hondo tell you anything about me, you tell them that you
heard they hopped me together and never gave me a chance. Them two can
never be friends with me. Thanking you in advance for what I think I’m
going to get, I beg to remain,
Very truly yours as ever,
Dobie Dalton, gen. del.
* * * * *