[Illustration: "'LOOK! LOOK! THERE BY THOSE LITTLE BUSHES!'"]
Santa Fé's Partner
Being Some Memorials of Events in a
New-Mexican Track-end Town
By
Thomas A. Janvier
Author of
"The Passing of Thomas" "The Uncle of an Angel"
"The Aztec Treasure-House" "In the Sargasso Sea" Etc. Etc.
New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1907
Copyright, 1907, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
All rights reserved.
Published September, 1907.
TO
C. A. J.
CONTENTS
I. PALOMITAS 1
II. THE SAGE-BRUSH HEN 15
III. HART'S NEPHEW'S HOLD-UP 44
IV. SANTA FÉ CHARLEY'S KINDERGARTEN 77
V. BOSTON'S LION-HUNT 127
VI. SHORTY SMITH'S HANGING 163
VII. THE PURIFICATION OF PALOMITAS 208
Illustrations
"'LOOK! LOOK! THERE BY THOSE LITTLE BUSHES!'" _Frontispiece_
"HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP, AND THE OLD
GENT GOT A-HOLD OF IT" 22
"WROTE OUT A NOTICE THAT WAS TACKED UP ON THE DEEPO
DOOR" 84
"'ONE OF THE NEW GERMAN KINDERGARTEN APPLIANCES'" 120
"STARING 'ROUND THE PLACE SAME AS IF HE'D STRUCK A
MENAGERIE" 132
"'IT'S HOTTER THAN SAHARA!' SAID THE ENGLISHMAN" 166
"AND DOWN HART WENT IN A HEAP ON THE FLOOR" 196
"'DON'T HANG HIM, SIR!' SHE GROANED OUT" 224
SANTA FÉ'S PARTNER
SANTA FÉ'S PARTNER
I
PALOMITAS
I've been around considerable in the Western Country--mostly some
years back--and I've seen quite a little, one way and another, of the
folks living there: but I can't really and truly say I've often come
up with them nature's noblemen--all the time at it doing stunts in
natural nobility--the story-books make out is the chief population of
them parts. Like enough the young fellers from the East who write such
sorts of books--having plenty of spare time for writing, while they're
giving their feet a rest to get the ache out--do come across 'em,
same as they say they do; but I reckon the herd's a small one--and,
for a fact, if you could cross the book brand with the kind you mostly
meet on the ranges the breed would be improved.
Cow-punchers and prospectors and such don't look like and don't act
like what tenderfoots is accustomed to, and so they size 'em up to be
different all the way through. They ain't. They're just plain human
nature, same as the rest of us--only more so, through not being herded
close in. About the size of it is, most folks needs barbed wire to
keep 'em from straying. In a rough country--where laws and constables
ain't met with frequent--a good-sized slice of the population 's apt
to run wild. With them that's white, it don't much matter. The worst
you can say against 'em is, they sometimes do a little more shooting
than seems really needed; but such doings is apt to have a show of
reason at the bottom of 'em, and don't happen often anyhow--most being
satisfied to work off their high spirits some other way. With them
that's not white, things is different. When the Apache streak gets on
top it sends 'em along quick into clear deviltry--the kind that makes
you cussed just for the sake of cussedness and not caring a damn; and
it's them that has give some parts of the Western Country--like it did
New Mexico in the time I'm talking about, when they was bunched thick
there--its bad name.
In the long run, of course, the toughs is got rid of--being shoved out
or hung out, at first by committees and later on in regular shape by
sheriffs and marshals--and things is quieted down. It's the
everlasting truth, though, that them kind of mavericks mostly is a
blame sight commoner in parts just opened than the story-book
kind--that's always so calm-eyed and gentle-natured and generous and
brave. What's more, I reckon they'll keep on being commoner, human
nature not being a thing that changes much, till we get along to the
Day of Judgment round-up--and the goats is cut out and corralled for
keeps.
For certain, it was goats was right up at the head of the procession
in the Territory in my time--which was the time when the railroads was
a-coming in--and in them days things was rough. The Greasers living
there to start with wasn't what you might call sand-papered; and the
kind of folks found in parts railroads has just got to, same as I've
mentioned, don't set out to be extry smooth. Back East they talked
about the higher civilization that was overflowing New Mexico; but,
for a cold fact, the higher civilization that did its overflowing on
that section mostly had a sheriff on its tracks right along up to the
Missouri--and the rest of the way done what it blame felt like, and
used a gun.
Some of them native Mexicans wasn't bad fighters. When they went to
hacking at one another with knives--the way they was used to--they
often done right well. But when they got up against the higher
civilization--which wasn't usually less 'n half drunk, and went heeled
with two Colt's and a Winchester--they found out they'd bit off more'n
they could chew. Being sandy, they kept at it--but the civilizers was
apt to have the call. And in between times, when the two of 'em--the
Greasers and the civilizers--wasn't taking the change out of each
other, they both of 'em took it out of anybody who happened to come
along.
Yes, sirree!--in them days things was a good deal at loose ends in the
Territory. When you went anywheres, if you was going alone, you always
felt you'd better leave word what trail you took: that is, if you was
fussy in such matters, and wanted what the coyotes left of you brought
in by your friends and planted stylish--with your name, and when it
happened, painted on a board.
This place where the track got stuck--sticking partly because there
was trouble with the Atchison, and partly because the Company couldn't
foreclose onto a year jag any more out of the English stockholders to
build on with--was up on a bluff right over the Rio Grande and was
called Palomitas. Being only mostly Greasers and Indians living in
the Territory--leaving out the white folks at Santa Fé and the army
posts, and the few Germans there was scattered about--them kind of
queer-sounding names was what was mainly used.
It wasn't never meant to be no sort of an American town nohow,
Palomitas wasn't--being made to start with of 'dobes (which is
Mexican for houses built of mud, and mud they was in the rainy season)
spilled around on the bluff anywheres; and when the track come along
through the middle of it the chinks was filled in with tents and
shingle-shacks and dugouts--all being so mixed up and scattery you'd
a-thought somebody'd been packing a town through them parts in a wagon
and the load had jolted out, sort of casual over the tail-board, and
stuck where it happened to come down. The only things you could
call houses was the deepo, and the Forest Queen Hotel right across
the track from it, and Bill Hart's store. Them three buildings was
framed up respectable; with real windows that opened, and doors such
as you could move without kicking at 'em till you was tired. The
deepo was right down stylish--having a brick chimney and being
painted brown. Aside the deepo was the tank and the windmill that
pumped into it. Seems to me at nights, sometimes, I can hear that
old windmill going around creaking and clumpetty-clumpetting now!
Palomitas means "little doves"--but I reckon the number of them birds
about the place was few. For about a thousand years, more or less, it
had been run on a basis of two or three hundred Mexicans and a
sprinkling of pigs and Pueblo Indians--the pigs was the most
respectable--and it was allowed to be, after the track got there, the
toughest town the Territory had to show. Santa Cruz de la Cañada,
which was close to it, was said to have took the cake for toughness
before railroad times. It was a holy terror, Santa Cruz was! The only
decent folks in it was the French padre--who outclassed most saints,
and hadn't a fly on him--and a German named Becker. He had the
Government forage-station, Becker had; and he used to say he'd had a
fresh surprise every one of the mornings of the five years he'd been
forage-agent--when he woke up and found nobody'd knifed him in the
night and he was keeping on being alive!
But when the track come in, and the higher civilization come in
a-yelling with it and spread itself, Palomitas could give points to
the Cañada in cussedness all down the line. Most of it right away was
saloons and dance-halls; and the pressure for faro accommodation was
such the padre thought he could make money by closing down his own
monte-bank and renting. Denver Jones took his place at fifty dollars a
week, payable every Saturday night--and rounded on the padre by
getting back his rent-money over the table every Sunday afternoon.
He'd a-got it back Sunday mornings if the padre hadn't been tied up
mornings to his work. (He was a native, that padre was--and went on so
extra outrageous his own folks couldn't stand him and Bishop Lamy
bounced him from his job.) Pretty much all the time there was
rumpusses; and the way they was managed made the Mexicans--being used,
same as I've said, to knives mostly--open their eyes wide. It seemed
really to jolt 'em when they begun to find out what a live man with
his back up could do with a gun! Occurrences was so frequent--before
construction started up again, and for a while after--the new cemetery
out in the sage-brush on the mesa come close to having as big a
population as the town.
What happened--shootings, and doings of all sorts--mostly centred
on the Forest Queen. That was the only place that called itself a
hotel in Palomitas--folks being able to get some sort of victuals
there, and it having bunks in a room off the bar-room where
passers-through was give a chance to think (by morning they was
apt to think different) they was going to have a night's sleep.
Kicking against what you got--and against the throwed-in extras you'd
a-been better without--didn't do no good. Old Tenderfoot Sal, who kept
the place, only stuck her fat elbows out and told the kickers she
done the best she knowed how to, and she reckoned it was as good as
you could expect in them parts, and most was suited. If they didn't
like the Forest Queen Hotel, she said, they was free to get out of it
and go to one that suited 'em better--and as there wasn't none to go
to, Sal held the cards.
She was a corker, Sal was! By her own account of herself, she'd
learned hotel-keeping through being a sutler's wife in the war. What
sutling had had to do with it was left to guess at, and there was
opinions as to how much her training in hoteling had done for her; but
it was allowed she'd learned a heap of other things--of one sort and
another--and her name of Tenderfoot was give her because them fat feet
of hers, in the course of her travels, had got that hard I reckon she
wouldn't a-noticed it walking on red-hot point-upwards ten-penny
nails!
In the Forest Queen bar-room was the biggest bank there was in town.
Blister Mike--he was Irish, Blister was, and Sal's bar-keep--had some
sort of a share in it; but it was run by a feller who'd got the name
of Santa Fé Charley, he having had a bank over in Santa Fé afore Sal
give him the offer to come across to Palomitas and take charge. He
was one of the blue-eyed quiet kind, Charley was, that's not wholesome
to monkey with; the sort that's extra particular about being polite
and nice-spoken--and never makes no mistakes, when shooting-time
comes, about shooting to kill. When he was sober, though--and he had
to keep sober, mostly, or his business would a-suffered--he wasn't
hunting after rumpusses: all he did was to keep ready for 'em, and
hold his end up when they come along. He had the habit--same as some
other of the best card sharps I've met with--of dressing himself in
black, real stylish: wearing a long-tail coat and a boiled shirt and
white tie, and having a toney wide-brimmed black felt hat that touched
him off fine. With them regular fire-escape clothes on, folks was apt
to take him for one; and, when they did, he always met 'em half-way by
letting on preaching was his business--till he got 'em on the other
side of the table and begun to shake down what cards he needed from up
inside them black coat-sleeves. Mostly they ended by thinking that
maybe preaching wasn't just what you might call his strongest hold.
It helped him in his work more'n a little, sometimes, dressing up that
way and talking to suit, like he knowed how to, real high-toned talk;
but I do believe for a fact he enjoyed the dollars he got out of it
less 'n he did the fun it give him making fools of folks by setting up
rigs on 'em--he truly being the greatest hand at rigging I ever seen.
Somehow--not having the comfort of being able to get drunk half as
often as he wanted to--it seemed like he give himself the let-out he
needed in them queer antics; and, for certain, he managed 'em always
so they went with a hum. When him and the Sage-Brush Hen played
partners in rigging anybody--as they was apt to, the Hen being much
such another and so special friends with Charley she'd come on after
him from Santa Fé--there mostly was a real down spirited game!
She was what you might call the leading lady in the Forest Queen
dance-hall, the Sage-Brush Hen was; and if you wanted fun, and had to
choose between her and a basket of monkeys, all I've got to say
is--nobody'd ever a-took the monkeys who knowed the Hen! That girl was
up to more queer tricks than anybody of her size and shape--she had a
powerful fine shape, the Hen had--I've ever laid eyes on; and she'd
run 'em in you so slick and quiet--keeping as demure as a cat after
birds while she was doing it--you'd never suspicion anything was
happening till you found the whole town laughing its head off at you
for being so many kinds of a fool!
Things wasn't any time what you might call too extra quiet in
Palomitas; but when them two--the Hen and Santa Fé--started in
together to run any racket you may bet your life there was a
first-class circus from the word go! Grass didn't grow much under
their feet, either. The very minute the Hen struck the town--coming on
after Santa Fé, same as I've said, and him waiting for her when she
got there--they went at their monkey-shining, finishing two-handed
what the Hen had started as a lone-hand game. Right along from then on
they kept things moving spirited, one way and another, without much
of a let-up. And they ended off--the day the two of 'em, owing to
circumstances, lit out together--by setting up on all of us what I
reckon was the best rig ever set up on anybody anywheres since rigs
was begun!
Palomitas was a purer town, Cherry said--it was him led off in the
purifying--after we was shut of 'em, and of some others that was fired
for company; and I won't say he wasn't right in making out it was a
better town, maybe, when we'd got it so blame pure. But they had their
good points, the Hen and Santa Fé had--and after they was purified out
of it some of us didn't never quite feel as if the place was just the
same.
II
THE SAGE-BRUSH HEN
The Hen blew in one day on Hill's coach, coming from Santa Fé, setting
up on the box with him--Hill run his coach all the time the track was
stuck at Palomitas, it being quicker for Santa Fé folks going up that
way to Pueblo and Denver and Leadville than taking the Atchison out to
El Moro and changing to the Narrow Gauge--and she was so all over dust
that Wood sung out to him: "Where'd you get your Sage-Brush Hen from?"
And the name stuck.
More folks in Palomitas had names that had tumbled to 'em like that
than the kind that had come regular. And even when they sounded
regular they likely wasn't. Regular names pretty often got lost
coming across the Plains in them days--more'n a few finding it better,
about as they got to the Missouri, to leave behind what they'd been
called by back East and draw something new from the pack. Making some
sort of a change was apt to be wholesomer and often saved talk.
Hill said the Hen was more fun coming across from Santa Fé than
anything he'd ever got up against; and she was all the funnier, he
said, because when he picked her up at the Fonda she looked like as
if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and started in with her
monkey-shines so sort of quiet and demure. Along with her, waiting
at the Fonda, was an old gent with spectacles who turned out to be
a mine sharp--one of them fellows the Government sends out to the
Territory to write up serious in books all the fool stories
prospectors and such unload on 'em: the kind that needs to be led,
and 'll eat out of your hand. The Hen and the old gent and Hill had
the box-seat, the Hen in between; and she was that particular about
her skirts climbing up, and about making room after she got
there, that Hill said he sized her up himself for an officer's wife
going East.
Except to say thank you, and talk polite that way, she didn't open her
head till they'd got clear of the town and begun to go slow in that
first bit of bad road among the sandhills; and it was the old gent
speaking to her--telling her it was a fine day, and he hoped she liked
it--that set her stamps to working a little then. She allowed the
weather was about what it ought to be, and said she was much obliged
and it suited her; and then she got her tongue in behind her teeth
again as if she meant to keep it there--till the old gent took a fresh
start by asking her if she'd been in the Territory long. She said
polite she hadn't, and was quiet for a minute. Then she got out her
pocket-handkerchief and put it up to her eyes and said she'd been in
it longer'n she wanted, and was glad she was going away. Hill said her
talking that way made him feel kind of curious himself; but he didn't
have no need to ask questions--the old gent saving him that trouble
by going for her sort of fatherly and pumping away at her till he got
the whole thing.
It come out scrappy, like as might be expected, Hill said; and so
natural-sounding he thought he must be asleep and dreaming--he knowing
pretty well what was going on in the Territory, and she telling about
doings that was news to him and the kind he'd a-been sure to hear a
lot of if they'd ever really come off. Hill said he wished he could
tell it all as she did--speaking low, and ketching her breath in the
worst parts, and mopping at her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief--but
he couldn't; and all he could say about it was it was better'n any
theatre show he'd ever seen. The nubs of it was, he said, that she
said her husband had taken out a troop from Fort Wingate against the
Apaches (Hill knew blame well up there in the Navajo country was no
place to look for Apaches) and the troop had been ambushed in a cañon
in the Zuñi Mountains (which made the story still tougher) and every
man of 'em, along with her "dear Captain" as she called him, had lost
his hair. "His loved remains are where those fierce creatures left
them," she said. "I have not even the sad solace of properly burying
his precious bones!" And she cried.
The old gent was quite broke up, Hill said, and took a-hold of her
hand fatherly--she was a powerful fine-looking woman--and said she had
his sympathy; and when she eased up on her crying so she could talk
she said she was much obliged--and felt it all the more, she said,
because he looked like a young uncle of hers who'd brought her up, her
father being dead, till she was married East to her dear Captain and
had come out to the Territory with him to his dreadful doom.
Hill said it all went so smooth he took it down himself at first--but
he got his wind while she was crying, and he asked her what her
Captain's name was, and what was his regiment; telling her he hadn't
heard of any trouble up around Wingate, and it was news to him
Apaches was in them parts. She give him a dig in the ribs with her
elbow--as much as to tell him he wasn't to ask no such questions--and
said back to him her dear husband was Captain Chiswick of the Twelfth
Cavalry; and it had been a big come down for him, she said, when
he got his commission in the Regulars, after he'd been a Volunteer
brigadier-general in the war.
Hill knowed right enough there wasn't no Twelfth Cavalry nowhere, and
that the boys at Wingate was A and F troops of the Fourth; but he
ketched on to the way she was giving it to the old gent--and so _he_
give _her_ a dig in the ribs, and said he'd knowed Captain Chiswick
intimate, and he was as good a fellow as ever was, and it was a blame
pity he was killed. She give him a dig back again, at that--and was
less particular about making room on his side.
The old gent took it all in, just as it come along; and after she'd
finished up about the Apaches killing her dear Captain he wanted to
know where she was heading for--because if she was going home East, he
said, he was going East himself and could give her a father's care.
She said back to him, pleasant like, that a young man like him
couldn't well be fathering an old lady like her, though it was
obliging of him to offer; but, anyway, she wasn't going straight back
East, because she had to wait awhile at Palomitas for a remittance she
was expecting to pay her way through--and she wasn't any too sure
about it, she said, whether she'd get her remittance; or, if she did
get it, when it would come. Everything bad always got down on you at
once, she said; and just as the cruel savages had slain her dear
Captain along come the news the bank East he'd put his money in had
broke the worst kind. Her financial difficulties wasn't a patch on the
trouble her sorrowing heart was giving her, she said; but she allowed
they added what she called pangs of bitterness to her deeper pain.
The old gent--he wasn't a fool clean through--asked her what was the
matter with her Government transportation; she having a right to
transportation, being an officer's widow going home. Hill said he give
her a nudge at that, as much as to say the old gent had her. She
didn't faze a bit, though. It was her Government transportation she
was waiting for, she cracked back to him smooth and natural; but such
things had to go all the way to Washington to be settled, she said,
and then come West again--Hill said he 'most snickered out at
that--and she'd known cases when red-tape had got in the way and
transportation hadn't been allowed at all. Then she sighed terrible,
and said it might be a long, long while before she could get home
again to her little boy--who was all there was left her in the world.
Her little Willy was being took care of by his grandmother, she said,
and he was just his father's own handsome self over again--and she got
out her pocket-handkerchief and jammed it up to her eyes.
[Illustration: "HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP, AND THE OLD GENT GOT
A-HOLD OF IT"]
Her left hand was laying in her lap, sort of casual, and the old gent
got a-hold of it and said he didn't know how to tell her how sorry he
was for her. Talking from behind her pocket-handkerchief, she said
such sympathy was precious; and then she went on, kind of pitiful,
saying she s'posed her little Willy'd have forgot all about her before
she'd get back to him--and she cried some more. Hill said she done it
so well he was half took in himself for a minute, and felt so bad he
went to licking and swearing at his mules.
After a while she took a brace--getting down her pocket-handkerchief,
and calling in the hand the old gent was a-holding--and said she must
be brave, like her dear Captain'd always been, so he'd see when he was
a-looking at her from heaven she was doing the square thing. And as to
having to wait around before she went East, she said, in one way it
didn't make any matter--seeing she'd be well cared for and comfortable
at Palomitas staying in the house of the Baptist minister, who'd
married her aunt.
Hill said when she went to talking about Baptist ministers and aunts
in Palomitas he shook so laughing inside he most fell off the box.
Except the Mexican padre who belonged there--the one I've spoke of
that made a record, and Bishop Lamy had to bounce--and sometimes the
French ones from San Juan and the Cañada, who was straight as
strings, there wasn't a fire-escape ever showed himself in Palomitas;
and as to the ladies of the town--well, the ladies wasn't just what
you'd call the aunt kind. It's a cold fact that Palomitas, that year
when the end of the track stuck there, was the cussedest town, same as
I've said it was, in the whole Territory--and so it was no more'n
natural Hill should pretty near bust himself trying to hold in his
laughing when the Hen took to talking so off-hand about Palomitas and
Baptist ministers and aunts. She felt how he was shaking, and jammed
him hard with her elbow to keep him from letting his laugh out and
giving her away.
* * * * *
Hill said they'd got along to Pojuaque by the time the Hen had
finished telling about herself, and the fix she was in because she had
to wait along with her aunt in Palomitas till her transportation come
from Washington--and she just sick to get East and grab her little
Willy in her arms. And the old gent was that interested in it all,
Hill said, it was a sight to see how he went on.
At Pojuaque the coach always made a noon stop, and the team was
changed and the passengers got dinner at old man Bouquet's. He was a
Frenchman, old man Bouquet was; but he'd been in the Territory from
'way back, and he'd got a nice garden behind his house and things
fixed up French style. His strongest hold was his wine-making. He made
a first-class drink, as drinks of that sort go; and, for its kind, it
was pretty strong. As his cooking was first-class too, Hill's
passengers--and the other folks that stopped for grub there--always
wanted to make a good long halt.
Hill said it turned out the old gent knowed how to talk French, and
that made old man Bouquet extra obliging--and he set up a rattling
good dinner and fetched out some of the wine he said he was in the
habit of keeping for his own drinking, seeing he'd got somebody in the
house for once who really could tell the difference between good and
bad. He fixed up a table out in the garden--aside of that queer tree,
all growed together, he thought so much of--and set down with 'em
himself; and Hill said it was one of the pleasantest parties he'd ever
been at in all his born days.
The Hen and the old gent got friendlier and friendlier--she being more
cheerful when she'd been setting at table a while, and getting to
talking so comical she kept 'em all on a full laugh. Now and then,
though, she'd pull up sudden and kind of back away--making out she
didn't want it to show so much--and get her pocket-handkerchief to her
eyes and snuffle; and then she'd pull herself together sort of
conspicuous, and say she didn't want to spoil the party, but she
couldn't help thinking how long it was likely to be before she'd see
her little boy. And then the old gent would say that such tender
motherliness did her credit, and hers was a sweet nature, and he'd
hold her hand till she took it away.
Hill said the time passed so pleasant he forgot how it was going, and
when he happened to think to look at his watch he found he'd have to
everlastingly hustle his mules to get over to Palomitas in time to
ketch the Denver train. He went off in a tearing hurry to hitch up,
and old man Bouquet went along to help him--the old gent saying he
guessed he and Mrs. Chiswick would stay setting where they was, it
being cool and comfortable in the garden, till the team was put to.
They set so solid, Hill said, they didn't hear him when he sung out to
'em he was ready; and he said he let his mouth go wide open and yelled
like hell. (Hill always talked that careless way. He didn't mean no
harm by it. He said it was just a habit he'd got into driving mules.)
They not coming, he went to hurry 'em, he said--and as he come up
behind 'em the Hen was stuffing something into her frock, and the old
gent was saying: "I want you to get quickly to your dear infant, my
daughter. You can return at your convenience my trifling loan. And now
I will give you a fatherly kiss--"
But he didn't, Hill said--because the Hen heard Hill's boots on the
gravel and faced round so quick she spoiled his chance. He seemed a
little jolted, Hill said; but the Hen was so cool, and talked so
pleasant and natural about what a nice dinner they'd been having, and
what a fine afternoon it was, he braced up and got to talking easy
too.
Then they all broke for the coach, and got away across the Tesuque
River and on through the sandhills--with Hill cutting away at his
mules and using words to 'em fit to blister their hides off--and when
they fetched the Cañada they'd about ketched up again to schedule
time. After the Mexican who kept the Santa Cruz post-office had made
the mess he always did with the mail matter, and had got the cussing
he always got from Hill for doing it, they started off again--coming
slow through that bit of extra heavy road along by the Rio Grande, but
getting to the deepo at Palomitas all serene to ketch the Denver
train.
All the way over from Pojuaque, Hill said, he could see out of the
corner of his eye the old gent was nudging up to the Hen with his
shoulder, friendly and sociable; and he said he noticed the Hen was a
good deal less particular about making room. The old gent flushed up
and got into a regular temper, Hill said, when Wood sung out as they
pulled in to the deepo platform: "Where'd you get your Sage-Brush Hen
from?"--and that way give her what stuck fast for her name.
As it turned out, they might a-kept on a-hashing as long as they'd a
mind to at Pojuaque; and Hill might a-let his mules take it easy,
without tiring himself swearing at 'em, on a dead walk--there being a
wash-out in the Comanche Cañon, up above the Embudo, that held the
train. It wasn't much of a wash-out, the conductor said; but he said
he guessed all hands likely'd be more comfortable waiting at
Palomitas, where there was things doing, than they would be setting
still in the cañon while the track-gang finished their job--and he
said he reckoned the train wouldn't start for about three hours.
* * * * *
The Hen and the old gent was standing on the deepo platform, where
they'd landed from the coach; and Hill said as he was taking his
mails across to the express-car he heard him asking her once more if
she hadn't better come right along East to her lonely babe; and
promising to take a father's care of her all the way. The Hen seemed
to be in two minds about it for a minute, Hill said, and then she
thanked him, sweet as sugar, for his goodness to her in her time of
trouble; and told him it would be a real comfort to go East with such
a kind escort to take care of her--but she said it wouldn't work,
because she was expected in Palomitas, and not stopping there would be
disappointing to her dear uncle and aunt.
It was after sundown and getting duskish, while they was talking; and
she said she must be getting along. The old gent said he'd go with
her; but she said he mustn't think of it, as it was only a step to the
parsonage and she knew the way. While he was keeping on telling her
she really must let him see her safe with her relatives, up come Santa
Fé Charley--and Charley sung out: "Hello, old girl. So you've got
here! I was looking for you on the coach, and I thought you hadn't
come."
Hill said he begun to shake all over with laughing; being sure--for
all Charley in his black clothes and white tie looked so toney--it
would be a dead give away for her. But he said she only give a little
jump when Santa Fé sung out to her, and didn't turn a hair.
"Dear Uncle Charley, I _am_ so glad to see you!" she said easy and
pleasant; and then round she come to the old gent, and said as smooth
as butter to him: "This is my uncle, the Baptist minister, sir, come
to take me to the parsonage to my dear aunt. It's almost funny to have
so young an uncle! Aunt's young too--you see, grandfather married a
second time. We're more like sister and brother--being so near of an
age; and he always will talk to me free and easy, like he always
did--though I tell him now he's a minister it don't sound well." And
then she whipped round to Charley, so quick he hadn't time to get a
word in edgeways, and said to him: "I hope Aunt Jane's well, and
didn't have to go up to Denver--as she said she might in her last
letter--to look after Cousin Mary. And I do hope you've finished the
painting she said was going on at the parsonage--so you can take me in
there till my transportation comes and I can start East. This kind
gentleman, who's going up on to-night's train, has been offering--and
it's just as good of him, even if I can't go--to escort me home to my
dear baby; and he's been giving me in the sweetest way his sympathy
over my dear husband Captain Chiswick's loss."
Hill said he never knowed anybody take cards as quick as Santa Fé took
the cards the Hen was giving him. "I'm very happy to meet you, sir,"
he said to the old gent; "and most grateful to you for your kindness
to my poor niece Rachel in her distress. We have been sorrowing over
her during Captain Chiswick's long and painful illness--"
"My dear Captain had been sick for three months, and got up out of his
bed to go and be killed with his men by those dreadful Apaches," the
Hen cut in.
"--and when the news came of the massacre," Charley went right on, as
cool as an iced drink, "our hearts almost broke for her. Captain
Chiswick was a splendid gentleman, sir; one of the finest officers
ever sent out to this Territory. His loss is a bad thing for the
service; but it is a worse thing for my poor niece--left forsaken
along with her sweet babes. They are noble children, sir; worthy of
their noble sire!"
"Oh, Uncle Charley!" said the Hen. "Didn't you get my letter telling
you my little Jane died of croup? I've only my little Willy, now!" And
she kind of gagged.
"My poor child. My poor child!" said Santa Fé. "I did not know that
death had winged a double dart at you like that--your letter never
came." And then he said to the old gent: "The mail service in this
Territory, sir, is a disgrace to the country. The Government ought to
be ashamed!"
Hill said while they was giving it and taking it that way he most
choked--particular as the old gent just gulped it all down whole.
Hill said the three of 'em was sort of quiet and sorrowful for a
minute, and then Santa Fé said: "It is too bad, Rachel, but your Aunt
Jane did have to go up to Denver yesterday--a despatch came saying
Cousin Mary's taken worse. And the parsonage is in such a mess still
with the painters that I've moved over to the Forest Queen Hotel. But
you can come there too--it's kept by an officer's widow, you know, and
is most quiet and respectable--and you'll be almost as comfortable
waiting there till your transportation comes along as you would be if
I could take you home."
Hill said hearing the Forest Queen talked about as quiet and
respectable, and Santa Fé's so sort of off-hand making an officer's
widow out of old Tenderfoot Sal, set him to shaking at such a rate he
had to get to where there was a keg of railroad spikes and set down on
it and hold his sides with both hands.
Santa Fé turned to the old gent, Hill said--talking as polite as a
Pullman conductor--and told him since he'd been so kind to his unhappy
niece he hoped he'd come along with 'em to the hotel too--where he'd
be more comfortable, Santa Fé said, getting something to eat and drink
than he would be kicking around the deepo waiting till they'd filled
in the wash-out and the train could start.
Hill said the Hen give Santa Fé a queer sort of look at that, as much
as to ask him if he was dead sure he had the cards for that lead.
Santa Fé give her a look back again, as much as to say he knew what
was and what wasn't on the table; and then he went on to the old gent,
speaking pleasant, telling him likely it might be a little bit noisy
over at the hotel--doing her best, he said, Mrs. Major Rogers couldn't
help having noise sometimes, things being so rough and tumble out
there on the frontier; but he had a private room for his study, where
he wrote his sermons, he said, and got into it by a side door--and so
he guessed things wouldn't be too bad.
That seemed to make the Hen easy, Hill said; and away the three of 'em
went together to the Forest Queen. Hill knowed it was straight enough
about the private room and the side door--Santa Fé had it to do
business in for himself, on the quiet, when he didn't have to deal;
and Hill'd known of a good many folks who'd gone in that private room
by that side door and hadn't come out again till Santa Fé'd scooped
their pile. But it wasn't no business of his, he said; and he said he
was glad to get shut of 'em so he might have a chance to let out the
laughing that fairly was hurting his insides.
As they was going away from the deepo, Hill said, he heard Santa Fé
telling the old gent he was sorry it was getting so dark--as he'd like
to take him round so he could see the parsonage, and the new church
they'd just finished building and was going to put an organ in as soon
as they'd raised more funds; but it wasn't worth while going out of
their way, he said, because they wouldn't show to no sort of advantage
with the light so bad. As the only church in Palomitas was the Mexican
mud one about two hundred years old, and as the nearest thing to a
parsonage was the Padre's house that Denver Jones had rented and had
his faro-bank in, Hill said he guessed Charley acted sensible in not
trying to show the old gent around that part of the town.
* * * * *
Hill said after he'd got his supper he thought he'd come down to the
deepo and sort of wait around there; on the chance he'd ketch on--when
the old gent come over to the train--to what Santa Fé and the Hen'd
been putting up on him. Sure enough, he did.
Along about ten o'clock a starting-order come down--the track-gang by
that time having the wash-out so near fixed it would be fit by the
time the train got there to go across; and Wood--he was the agent,
Wood was--sent word over to the Forest Queen to the old gent, who was
the only Pullman passenger, he'd better be coming along.
In five minutes or so he showed up. He wasn't in the best shape, Hill
said, and Santa Fé and the Hen each of 'em was giving him an arm;
though what he seemed to need more'n arms, Hill said, was legs--the
ones he had, judging from the way he couldn't manage 'em, not being in
first-class order and working bad. But he didn't make no exhibition of
himself, and talked right enough--only he spoke sort of short and
scrappy--and the three of 'em was as friendly together as friendly
could be. Hill said he didn't think it was any hurt to listen, things
being the way they was, and he edged up close to 'em--while they stood
waiting for the porter to light up the Pullman--and though he couldn't
quite make sense of all they was saying he did get on to enough of it
to size up pretty close how they'd put the old gent through.
"Although it is for my struggling church, a weak blade of grass in the
desert," Santa Fé was saying when Hill got the range of 'em, "I cannot
but regret having taken from you your splendid contribution to our
parish fund in so unusual, I might almost say in so unseemly, a way.
That I have returned to you a sufficient sum to enable you to
prosecute your journey to its conclusion places you under no
obligation to me. Indeed, I could not have done less--considering the
very liberal loan that you have made to my poor niece to enable her to
return quickly to her helpless babe. As I hardly need tell you, that
loan will be returned promptly--as soon as Mrs. Captain Chiswick gets
East and is able to disentangle her affairs."
"Indeed it will," the Hen put in. "My generous benefactor shall be
squared with if I have to sell my clothes!"
"Mustn't think of such a thing. Catch cold," the old gent said.
"Pleasure's all mine to assist such noble a woman in her unmerited
distress. And now I shall have happiness, and same time sorrow, to
give her fatherly kiss for farewell."
The Hen edged away a little, Hill said, and Santa Fé shortened his
grip a little on the old gent's arm--so his fatherly kissing missed
fire. But he didn't seem to notice, and said to Santa Fé: "Never knew
a minister know cards like you. Wonderful! And wonderful luck what you
held. Played cards a good deal myself. Never could play like you!"
Santa Fé steadied the old gent, Hill said, and said to him in a
kind of explaining way: "As I told you, my dear sir, in my wild
college days--before I got light on my sinful path and headed for
the ministry--I was reckoned something out of the common as a
card-player; and what the profane call luck used to be with me all
the time. Of course, since I humbly--but, I trust, helpfully--took
to being a worker in the vineyard, I have not touched those devil's
picture-books; nor should I have touched them to-night but for my
hope that a little game would help to while away your time of
tedious waiting. As for playing for money, that would have been
quite impossible had it not been for my niece's suggestion that my
winnings--in case such came to me--should be added to our meagre
parish fund. I trust that I have not done wrong in yielding to my
impulse. At least I have to sustain me the knowledge that if you, my
dear sir, are somewhat the worse, my impoverished church is much the
better for our friendly game of chance."
Hill said hearing Santa Fé Charley talking about chance in any game
where he had the dealing was so funny it was better'n going to the
circus. But the old gent took it right enough--and the Hen added on:
"Yes, Uncle Charley can get the organ he's been wanting so badly for
his church, now. And I'm sure we'll all think of how we owe its sweet
music to you every time we hear it played!"--and she edged up to him
again, so he could hold her hand. "It must make you very, very
happy, sir," she kept on, speaking kind of low and gentle, but not
coming as close as he wanted her, "to go about the world doing such
generous-hearted good deeds! I'm sure I'd like to thank you
enough--only there aren't any fit words to thank you in--for your
noble-hearted generous goodness to me!"
The old gent hauled away on her hand, Hill said, trying to get her
closer, and said back to her: "Words quite unnecessary. Old man's
heart filled with pleasure obliging such dear child. Never mind about
words. Accept old man's fatherly kiss, like daughter, for good-bye."
But he missed it that time too, Hill said--and Hill said, speaking in
his careless cuss-word way, it was pretty damn rough on him what poor
luck in fatherly kisses he seemed to have--because just then the train
conductor swung his lantern and sung out: "All aboard!"
That ended things. Before the old gent knowed what had got him, Santa
Fé and the Hen had boosted him up the steps onto the platform of the
Pullman--where the Pullman conductor got a grip on him just in time to
save him from spilling--and then the train pulled out: with the
Pullman conductor keeping him steady, and he throwing back good-bye
kisses to the Hen with both hands.
Hill said the Hen and Santa Fé kept quiet till the hind-lights showed
beyond the end of the deepo platform: and then the Hen grabbed Santa
Fé round the neck and just hung onto him--so full of laugh she was
limp--while they both roared. And Hill said he roared too. It was the
most comical bit of business, he said, he'd tumbled to in all his born
days!
It wasn't till the train got clean round the curve above the station,
Hill said, that Charley and the Hen could pull 'emselves together so
they could talk. Then the Hen let a-go of Santa Fé's neck and said
comical--speaking kind of precise and toney, like as if she was an
officer's wife sure enough: "You had better return to your study, dear
Uncle Charley, and finish writing that sermon you said we'd
interrupted you in that was about caring for the sheep as well as the
lambs!"
And then they went off together yelling, Hill said, over to the Forest
Queen.
III
HART'S NEPHEW'S HOLD-UP
Hill always said he counted on coming into Palomitas some day on one
of his mules bareback--leaving the other five dead or stampeded, and
the coach stalled somewhere--and bringing his hair only because
road-agents hadn't no use for hair and his wasn't easy to get anyhow,
he being so bald on top there wasn't nothing to ketch a-hold of if
anybody wanted to lift what little there was along the sides. Of
course that was just Hill's comical way of putting it; but back of his
fool talk there was hard sense--as there was apt to be back of Hill's
talk every time. He knew blame well what he was up against, Hill did;
and if he hadn't been more'n extra sandy he never could a-held down
his job.
Till Hill started his coach up, the only way to get across to Santa Fé
from Palomitas was to go a-horseback or walk. Both ways was unhealthy;
and the coach, being pretty near as liable to hold-ups, wasn't much
healthier. It had to go slow, the coach had--that was a powerful mean
road after you left Pojuaque and got in among the sandhills--and you
never was sure when some of them bunches of scrub-cedar wasn't going
to wake up and take to pumping lead into you. Only a nervy man, like
Hill was, ever could have took the contract; and Hill said he got so
rattled sometimes--when it happened he hadn't no passengers and was
going it alone in among them sandhills--he guessed it was only because
he had so little hair to turn anything it didn't turn gray.
Hill slept at the Forest Queen, the nights he was in Palomitas--he
drove one way one day and the other way the next--and the boys made
things cheerfuller for him by all the time rigging him about the poor
show he had for sticking long at his job. He'd look well, they said,
a-laying out there in the sage-brush plugged full of lead waiting for
his friends to call for him; and they asked him how he thought he'd
enjoy being a free-lunch counter for coyotes; and they told him he'd
better write down on a piece of paper anything he'd like particular to
have painted on the board--and they just generally devilled him all
round. Hill didn't mind the fool talk they give him--he always was a
good-natured fellow, Hill was--and he mostly managed to hit back at
'em, one way or another, so they'd come out about even and end up with
drinks for all hands.
The only one who really didn't like that sort of talk, and always
kicked when the boys started in on it, was the Sage-Brush Hen. She
said it was a mean shame to make a joke about a thing like that,
seeing there wasn't a day when it mightn't happen; and it wasn't like
an ordinary shooting-match, she said, that come along in the regular
way and both of you took your chances; and sometimes she'd get that
mad and worried she'd go right smack out of the room.
You see, the Hen always thought a heap of Hill--they having got to be
such friends together that first day when he brought her over to
Palomitas on the coach and helped her put up her rig on the old gent
from Washington; and, back of her liking Hill specially, she really
was about as good-natured a woman as ever lived. Except Hart's
nephew--she did just hate Hart's nephew, who was a chump if ever there
was one--she always was as pleasant as pie with everybody; and if any
of the boys was hurt--like when Denver Jones got that jag in his
shoulder rumpussing with Santa Fé Charley; and she more friends with
Charley, of course, than with anybody else--she'd turn right in and
help all she knowed how.
But it's a cold fact, for all her being so good-natured and obliging,
that wherever that Hen was there was a circus. It was on her account
Charley and Denver had their little difficulty; and, one way and
another, there was more shooting-scrapes about her than about all the
other girls put together in all the dance-halls in town. Why, it got
to be so that one corner of the new cemetery out on the mesa was
called her private lot. It wasn't her fault, she always said; and, in
one way, it wasn't--she always being willing to be sociable and
friendly all round. But, all the same, wherever that Sage-Brush Hen
was, there was dead sure to be an all-right cyclone.
* * * * *
One night when the boys at the Forest Queen was rigging Hill worse'n
usual, and the Hen all the time getting madder and madder, Santa Fé
Charley come into the game himself. Knowing how down the Hen was on
such doings he usually didn't. I guess he and she'd been having some
sort of a ruction that day, and he wanted to get even with her.
Anyhow, in he come--and the way he played his hand just got the Hen
right up on her ear.