that my humble efforts at moral improvement are best advanced by
identifying my life as closely as may be with the lives of those whom
I would lead to higher planes. At first, in my ignorance, I held aloof
from participating in the customs--many of them, seemingly,
objectionable--of my parishioners. Naturally, in turn, they held aloof
from me. I made no impression upon them. The good seed that I
scattered freely fell upon barren ground. Now, as the result of
experience, and of much soulful thought, I am wiser. Over a friendly
glass at the bar of the Forest Queen, or at other of the various bars
in our little town, I can talk to a parishioner with a kindly
familiarity that brings him close to me. By taking part in the games
of chance which form the main amusement of my flock, I still more
closely can identify their interests with my own--and even materially
improve, by such winnings as come to me in our friendly encounters,
our meagre parish finances. I have as yet taken no share in the
gun-fights which too frequently occur in our somewhat tempestuous
little community; but I am seriously considering the advisability of
still farther strengthening my hold upon the respect and the affection
of my parishioners by now and then exchanging shots with them. I am
confident that such energetic action on my part will tend still more
to endear me to them--and, after all, I must not be too nicely
fastidious as to means if I would compass my end of winning their
trust and their esteem."
While Santa Fé was talking along so slick about the way he managed his
parsoning, the little man's eyes was getting bulgier and bulgier; and
when it come to his taking a hand in shooting-scrapes they looked like
they was going to jump out of his head. All he could say was: "Good
Lord!" Then he kind of gagged, and said he'd be obliged if he could
get his brandy-and-soda right off.
Charley steered him across to the Forest Queen, and when he had his
drink in him, and another on top of it, he seemed to get some of his
grip back. But even after his drinks he seemed like he thought he must
be asleep and dreaming; and he said twice over he'd never heard tell
of such doings in all his born days.
Santa Fé just give a wink across the bar to Blister Mike--who didn't
need much winking, being a wide-awake one--and then he went ahead with
some more of the same kind. "No doubt, my dear sir, in the older
civilization to which you are accustomed my methods would seem
irregular--perhaps even reprehensible. In England, very likely,
unfavorable comment would be made upon a pastor who cordially drank
with members of his flock at public bars; who also--I do not hesitate,
you see, to give our little games of chance their harshest name--in a
friendly way gambled with them; and I can imagine that the spectacle
of a parish priest engaging with his parishioners, up and down the
street of a quiet village, in a fight with six-shooters and
Winchesters would be very generally disapproved."
"It is impossible, quite impossible," says the little man, sort of
gaspy, "to imagine such a horrible monstrosity!"
"Very likely for you, sir," says Charley, speaking affable, "it
is. But you must remember that ours is a young and a vigorous
community--too young, too vigorous, to be cramped and trammelled by
obsolete conventions and narrow Old-World rules. Life with us, you
see, has an uncertain suddenness--owing to our energetic habit of
settling our little differences promptly, and in a decisive way.
At the last meeting of our Sunshine Club, for instance--as the
result of a short but heated argument--Brother Michael, here, felt
called upon to shoot a fellow-member. While recognizing that the
occurrence was unavoidable, we regretted it keenly--Brother Michael
most of all."
"Sure I did that," said Blister, playing out quick to the lead Charley
give him. "But your Reverence remembers he drew on me first--and if
he'd been sober enough to shoot straight it's meself, and not him,
would be by now living out in the cemetery on the mesa; and another'd
be serving your drinks to you across this bar. I had the rights on my
side."
"Precisely," says Charley. "You see, sir, it was a perfectly fair
fight. Brother Michael and his fellow-member exchanged their shots in
an honorable manner--and, while we mourn the sudden decease of our
friend lost to us, our friend who survives has suffered no diminution
of our affectionate regard. Had the shooting been unfair, then the
case would have gone into another category--and our community promptly
would have manifested the sturdy sense of justice that is inherent in
it by hanging the man by whom the unfair shot had been fired. Believe
me, sir"--and Santa Fé stood up straight and stuck his chest
out--"Palomitas has its own high standards of morality: and it never
fails to maintain those standards in its own stern way!"
The little man didn't say nothing back. He looked like he was sort of
mazed. All he did was to ask for another brandy-and-soda; and when
he'd took it he allowed he'd skip having his bath and get at his
eating right away--saying he was feeling faintish, and maybe what he
needed was food. Of course that was no time of day to get victuals:
but Santa Fé was a good one at managing, and he fixed it up so he had
some sort of a hash layout; and before he went at it he give him a
wash-up in his own room.
It was while he was hashing, Charley said, the notion come to him how
Palomitas might have some real sport with him--the same kind they had
when Hart's aunt come on her visit, only twisting things round so it
would be the holy terror side of the town that had the show. And he
said as he'd started in with the preacher racket, he thought they
might keep that up too--and make such an out and out mix-up for the
little man as would give cards to any tenderfoot game that ever was
played. Santa Fé always was full of his pranks: and this one looked to
pan out so well, and was so easy done, that he went right across to
the deepo and had a talk with Wood about how things had better be
managed; and Wood, who liked fun as much as anybody, caught on quick
and agreed to take a hand.
The little man seemed to get a brace when he had his grub inside of
him; and over he went to the deepo and give Wood the order he had
from the President to see the books--and was real intelligent, Wood
said, in finding out how railroading in them parts was done. But when
he'd cleaned up his railroad job, and took to asking questions about
the Territory, and Palomitas, and things generally--and got the sort
of answers Santa Fé had fixed should be give him, with some more
throwed in--Wood said his feet showed to be that tender he allowed it
would a-hurt him with thick boots on to walk on boiled beans.
Wood said he guessed he broke the lying record that afternoon; and he
said he reckoned if the little man swallowed half of what was give
him, and there wasn't much of anything he gagged at, he must a-thought
Palomitas--with its church twice Sundays and prayer-meetings regular
three times a week, and its faro-bank with the preacher for dealer,
and its Sunshine Club that was all mixed in with shooting-scrapes, and
its Friendly Aid Society that attended mostly to what lynchings was
needed--was something like a bit of heaven that had broke out from
the corral it belonged in and gone to grazing in hell's front yard!
When he'd stuffed him as much as was needed, Wood told him--Santa Fé
having fixed it that way--there was a Mexican church about a thousand
years old over in the Cañada that was worth looking at; and he told
him he'd take him across on his buck-board to see it if he cared to
go. He bit at that, just as Santa Fé counted on; and about four
o'clock off they went--it was only three mile or so down to the
Cañada--in good time to get him back and give him what more was coming
to him before he started off North again on the night train. Wood said
the ride was real enjoyable--the little man showing up as sensible as
anybody when he got to the church and struck things he knowed about;
and it turned out he could talk French, and that pleased the padre--he
was that French one I've spoke about, who was as white as they make
'em--and so things went along well.
* * * * *
The wind had set in to blow down the valley cool and pleasant as they
was getting along home; and coming down on it, when they got about
half a mile from Palomitas, they begun to hear shooting--and it kept
on, and more of it, the closer they come to town. Knowing what Santa
Fé had set the boys up to, Wood said he pretty near laughed out when
he heard it; but he held in, he said--and told the little man, when he
asked what it meant, that it didn't mean nothing in particular: being
only some sort of a shooting-scrape, like enough--the same as often
happened along about that time in the afternoon.
He said the little man looked queerish, and wanted to know if the men
in the town was shooting at a target; and when Wood said he guessed
they was targetting at each other, and likely there'd be some
occurrences, he said he looked queerisher--and said such savagery was
too horrible to be true. But he wasn't worried a bit about himself,
Wood said--he was as nervy a little man, Wood said, as he'd ever got
up to--and all he wanted was to have Wood whip the mules up, so he'd
get there quick and see what was going on. Wood whipped up, right
enough, and the mules took 'em a-kiting--going at a full run the last
half-mile or so, and not coming down to a walk till they'd crossed the
bridge over the Rio Grande and was most to the top of the hill. At the
top of the hill they stopped--and that was a good place to stop at,
for the circus was a-going on right there.
Things really did look serious; and Wood said--for all he'd been told
what was coming--he more'n half thought the boys had got to rumpussing
in dead earnest. Three or four was setting on the ground with their
sleeves and pants rolled up tying up their arms and legs with their
pocket-handkerchiefs; there was a feller--Nosey Green, it turned out
to be--laying on one side in a sort of mixed-up heap like as if he'd
dropped sudden; right in the middle of the road Blister Mike was
sprawled out, with Santa Fé--his black clothes all over dust and his
hat off--holding his head with one hand and feeling at his heart with
the other; and just as the buck-board stopped, right in the thick of
it, Kerosene Kate come a-tearing along, with the Sage-Brush Hen close
after her, and plumped down on Mike and yelled out: "Oh, my husband!
My poor husband! He is foully slain!"
It was all so natural, Wood said, that seeing it sudden that way give
him a first-class jolt. For a minute, he said, he couldn't help
thinking it was the real thing. As for the little man--and he likely
would have took matters just the same, and no blame to him, if his
feet had been as hard as anybody's--he swallowed the show whole. "Good
Heavens!" says he, getting real palish. "What a dreadful thing this
is!"
Santa let go of Mike's head and got up, brushing his pants off, and
says solemn: "Our poor brother has passed from us. Palomitas has lost
one of its most useful citizens--there was nobody who could mix drinks
as he could--and the world has lost a noble man! Take away his
stricken wife, my dear," he says, speaking to the Sage-Brush Hen.
"Take poor Sister Rebecca home with you to the parsonage--my duties
lie elsewhere at present--and pour out to her from your tender heart
the balm of comfort that you so well know how to give."
Then he come along to the buck-board, and says to the little man: "I
greatly regret that this unfortunate incident should have occurred
while you are with us. From every point of view the event is
lamentable. Brother Green, known familiarly among us because of his
facial peculiarity as Nosey Green--the gentleman piled up over there
on the other side of the road--was as noble-hearted a man as ever
lived; so was Brother Michael, whom you met in all the pride of his
manly strength only this morning at the Forest Queen bar. Both were
corner-stones of our Sunshine Club, and among the most faithful of my
parishioners. In deep despondency we mourn their loss!"
"It is dreadful--dreadful!" says the little man. And then he wanted to
know how the shooting begun.
"The dispute that has come to this doubly fatal ending," says Santa
Fé, shaking his head sorrowful, "related to cock-tails. In what I am
persuaded was a purely jesting spirit, Brother Green cast aspersions
upon Brother Michael's skill as a drink-mixer. The injustice of his
remarks, even in jest, aroused Brother Michael's hot Celtic nature and
led to a retort, harshly personal, that excited Brother Green's
anger--and from words they passed quickly to a settlement of the
matter with their guns. However, as the fight was conducted by both of
them in an honorable manner, and was creditable equally to their
courage and to their proficiency in the use of arms, it is now a back
number and we may discharge it from our minds. Moreover, my dear sir,
our little domestic difficulties must not be suffered to interfere
with the duties of hospitality. It is high time that you should have
your supper; and I even venture to ask that you will hurry your meal a
little--to the end that you may have opportunity, before the departure
of your train this evening, to see something of the brighter side of
our little town. After this sombre scene, you will find, I trust,
agreeable mental refreshment in witnessing--perhaps even in
participating in--our friendly card-playing, and in taking part with
us in our usual cheerful evening dance. By your leave, Brother Wood, I
will seat myself on the rear of your buck-board and drive along with
you into town."
The little man was too jolted to say anything--and up Charley hiked
on the back of the buck-board, and away they went down the road.
The rest followed on after: with the Hen holding fast to Kerosene,
and Kerosene yelling for all she was worth; and behind come some of
the boys toting Blister's corpse--with Blister swearing at 'em for the
way they had his legs twisted, and ending by kicking loose and
making a break by the shortcut back of the freight-house for home.
The other corpse--seeing the way Blister was monkeyed with--stood
off the ones that wanted to carry him, allowing he'd be more
comfortable if he walked.
* * * * *
When the buck-board got down to the deepo the little man said he felt
sickish--not being used to such goings-on--and didn't care much for
eating his supper; and he said he thought likely he'd be better if he
had a brandy-and-soda to settle his insides. So him and Santa Fé went
across to the Forest Queen to get it--and the first thing they struck
was Blister, come to life again, behind the bar!
Santa Fé hadn't counted on that card coming out--but he shook one to
meet it down his sleeve, and played it as quick as he knowed how. "Ah,
Patrick," says he, "so you have taken your poor brother's place." And
to the little man, who was staring at Blister like a stuck pig, he
says: "They were twin brothers, sir, this gentleman and the
deceased--and, as you see, so alike that few of their closest friends
could tell them apart."
"It was worse than that," says Blister, following right along with the
same suit. "Only when one of us was drunk and the other sober, and
that way there being a difference betwane us, could we tell our own
selves apart--and indade I'm half for thinking that maybe it's meself,
and not poor Mike, that's been killed by Nosey Green this day. But
whichever of us it is that's dead, it's a domn good job--if your
Reverence will excuse me saying so--the other one of us has made of
Nosey: bad luck to the heart and lights of him, that are cooking this
blessed minute in the hottest corner of hell!"
"Tut! Tut! Brother Patrick," says Santa Fé, speaking friendly but
serious. "You know how strongly I feel about profanity--even when, as
in the present instance, justly aroused resentment lends to it a
colorable excuse. And also, my dear brother, I beg you to temper with
charity your views as to Brother Green's present whereabouts. It is
sufficient for all purposes of human justice that he has passed away.
And now, if you please, you will supply our visitor, here--whose
nerves not unnaturally are shaken by the tragic events of the past
hour--with the brandy-and-soda that I am satisfied he really needs. In
that need, my own nerves being badly disordered, I myself share; and
as the agonizing loss that you have suffered has put a still more
severe strain upon your nerves, Brother Patrick, I beg that you will
join us. The drinks are on me."
"Sure your Reverence has a kind heart in you, and that's the holy
truth," says Blister. "It's to me poor dead brother's health I'll be
drinking, and with all the good-will in the world!"
They had another after that; and then Blister said there was luck in
odd numbers, and he wanted to show Palomitas knowed how to be
hospitable to strangers, and they must have one on the bar. They had
it all right, and by that time--having the three of 'em in him--the
little man said he was feeling better; but, even with his drinks to
help him, when he come to eating his supper he didn't make out much of
a meal. He seemed to be all sort of dreamy, and was like he didn't
know where he was.
Santa Fé kept a-talking away to him cheerful while they was hashing;
and when they'd finished off he told him he hoped what he'd see of the
bright side of Palomitas--before his train started--would make him
forget the cruelly sorrowful shadows of that melancholy afternoon. He
was a daisy at word-slinging, Charley was--better'n most auctioneers.
Then they come along together back to the bar-room--where the cloth
was off the table, and the cards and chips out, ready for business to
begin. All the boys was jammed in there--Nosey Green with his face
tied up like he had a toothache, so it didn't show who he was--waiting
to see what more was coming; and they was about busting with the
laughs they had inside 'em, and ready to play close up to Santa Fé's
hand.
Charley set down to deal, same as usual, and asked the little man to
set down aside of him--telling him he'd likely be interested in
knowing that what come to the bank that night would go to getting the
melodeon the Sunday-school needed bad. And then he shoved the cards
round the table, and things begun. The little man took it all
dreamy--saying kind of to himself he'd never in all his born days
expected to see a minister making money for Sunday-school melodeons by
running a faro-bank. But he wasn't so dreamy but he had sense enough
to keep out of the game. Santa Fé kept a-asking him polite to come
in; but he kept answering back polite he wouldn't--saying he was no
sort of a hand at cards.
About the size of it was, in all the matters he could see his way to
that little man had as good a load of sand as anybody--and more'n
most. Like enough at home he'd read a lot of them fool Wild West
stories--the kind young fellers from the East, who swallow all that's
told 'em, write up in books with scare pictures--and that was why in
some ways he was so easy fooled. But I guess it would a-been a mistake
to pick him up for a fool all round. Anyhow, Santa Fé got a set-back
from him on his melodeon-faro racket--and set-backs didn't often come
Santa Fé's way.
It wasn't a real game the little man was up against, and like enough
he had the savey to ketch on to what was being give him. For the look
of the thing they'd fixed to start with a baby limit, and not raise it
till he got warmed up and asked to; and it was fixed only what he
dropped--the rest going back to the boys--should stay with the bank.
But as he didn't warm up any worth speaking of, and wasn't giving
himself no chances at all to do any dropping, Santa Fé pretty soon
found out they might as well hang up the melodeon fund and go on to
the next turn.
* * * * *
The Sage-Brush Hen managed most of what come next, and she done it
well. She'd dressed herself up in them white clothes of hers with a
little blue bow tied on at the neck--looking that quiet and tidy and
real lady-like you'd never a-notioned what a mixed lot she was
truly--and she'd helped the other girls rig out as near the same way
as they could come. Some of 'em didn't come far; but they all done as
well as they knowed how to, and so they wasn't to be blamed. Old
Tenderfoot Sal--she was the limit, Sal was--wasn't to be managed no
way; so they just kept her out of the show.
When Santa Fé come to see faro-banking for melodeons wasn't
money-making, he passed out word to the Hen to start up her part of
the circus--and in the Hen come, looking real pretty in her white
frock, and put her hand on his shoulder married-like and says: "Now,
my dear, it isn't fair for you gentlemen to keep us ladies waiting
another minute longer. We want our share in the evening's amusement.
Do put the cards away and let us have our dance." And then she says to
the little man, nice and friendly: "My husband is so eager to get our
melodeon--and we really do need it badly, of course--that I have
trouble with him every night to make him stop the game and give us
ladies the dance that we do so enjoy." And then she says on to Charley
again: "How has the melodeon fund come out to-night, my dear?"
"Very well indeed. Very well indeed, my angel," Charley says back to
her. "Eleven dollars and a half have been added to that sacred
deposit; and the contributions have been so equally distributed that
no one of us will feel the trifling loss. But in interrupting our
game, my dear, you are quite right--as you always are. Our guest is
not taking part in it; and--as he cannot be expected to feel, as we
do, a pleasurable excitement in the augmentation of our cherished
little hoard--we owe it to him to pass to a form of harmless diversion
in which he can have a share." And then he says to the little man: "I
am sure, sir, that Mrs. Charles will be charmed to have you for her
partner in the opening dance of what we playfully term our ball."
"The pleasure will be mine," says the little man--he was a real
friendly polite little old feller--and up he gets and bows to the Hen
handsome and gives her his arm: and then in he went with her to the
dance-hall, with Santa Fé and the rest of us following on. It give us
a first-class jolt to find all the girls so quiet-looking; and they
being that way braced up the whole crowd to be like a dancing-party
back East. To see the boys a-bowing away to their partners, while
José--he was the fiddler, José was--was a tuning up, you wouldn't
a-knowed where you was!
It was a square dance to start in with: with the little man and
the Hen, and Charley and Kerosene Kate, a-facing each other; and
Denver Jones with Carrots--that was the only name she ever had in
Palomitas--and Shorty Smith and Juanita, at the sides. Them three was
the girls the Hen had done best with; and she'd fixed 'em off so well
they most might have passed for back-East school-ma'ams--at least, in
a thickish crowd. Everybody else just stood around and looked
on--and that time, with all the Forest Queen ways of managing dancing
upset, it was the turn of the Palomitas folks to think they'd struck a
dream! The little man, of course, didn't know he'd struck anything
but what went on always--and the way he kicked around spirited on
them short little fat legs of his was just a sight to see!
Like as not he hadn't got a good sight of Kerosene Kate while she was
doing her killed husband act before supper; or, maybe, it was her
being dressed up so tidy made a difference. Anyways, he didn't at
first ketch on to her being about the freshest-made widow he'd ever
tumbled to in a dancing-party. But he got there all right when the
square dance was over, and José flourished his fiddle and sung out for
the Señores and Señoritas to take partners for a _valsa_, and the Hen
brought up Kerosene to foot it with him--telling him she was the
organist who was going to play the melodeon when they got it, and he'd
find her a nice partner as she was about the best dancer they had.
When he did size her up he was that took aback he couldn't talk
straight. "But--but," says he, "isn't this the lady whose husband
was--was--" and he stuck fast.
"Whose husband met with an accident this afternoon," says the Hen,
helping him out with it. "Yes, this is our poor sister Rebecca--but
the accident happened, you know, so many hours ago that the pang of it
has passed; and--as Mr. Green, the gentleman who shot her husband, was
shot right off himself--she feels, as we all do, that the incident is
closed."
And then Kerosene put in: "Great Scott, mister, you don't know
Palomitas! Widows in these parts don't set round moping their
heads off all the rest of their lives. They wait long enough for
politeness--same as I've done--and then they start in on a new deal."
The little man likely was too mixed up to notice Kerosene didn't talk
pretty, like Santa Fé and the Hen knowed how to; and he was so
all-round jolted that before he knew it--Kerosene getting a-hold of
his hand with one of hers, and putting the other on his shoulder--he
had his arm round her waist kind of by instinct and was footing it
away with her the best he knowed how. But while he was a-circling
about with her he was the dreamiest looking one you ever seen.
Kerosene said afterwards she heard him saying to himself over and
over: "This can't be real! This can't be real!"