shook our heads.
“‘Well,’ said he, ‘perhaps by the time I get home I will be able to
explain how little Pettie separated himself from this,’ and he twirled
the last remains. ‘Perhaps I can,’ he said. ‘I don’t bear you boys
the slightest grudge no more. I can’t. I set this dog on your pig
a-purpose, and I can’t pretend to be at all sorry that your pig et him
up.’ He shook his head again, and fixed his hat on.
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘matrimony is the mother of invention. I reckon I’ll
get out of it somehow. Good-by, boys!’ And he took one more look at
Pettie’s tail and put it in his pocket. ‘If anything happens to me you
will know who it is by that,’ said he.
“As for the rest of us, we enjoyed ourselves figuring on just _what_
that rancher could explain. You can bring home a dog and say its tail
has been cut off someway, but to bring home a tail and say the dog has
been cut off someway is a hard proposition to work on the female mind
that has lived on a ranch twenty years or so.”
X
THE FATAL GUM
A SERIO-COMEDY OF LIGHT FINGERS AND HEAVY BOOTS
Zeke Scraggs had been working out on the dry patch, where it was a long
ways between drinks, and lukewarm water from a canteen no particular
comfort. He complained, and I produced a discovery in the shape of a
tin-foil-wrapped package of chewing-gum marked “Lily Sweet.”
“If you chew a piece of that when you’re dry, Scraggy,” I said, “it
will stave off thirst for some time.”
Mr. Scraggs received the offering in his large palm, and poked it with
the forefinger of his other hand.
“Yaas,” he said; “y-a-a-s. But it’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Horrible. You don’t ketch me minglin’ myself with no ‘Lily Sweets.’
_I_ consider the lily of the field how she grows. You wouldn’t believe
that anything that sounds so innercent could be the tee-total ruin
of a large, dark-complected tin-horn, with a pair of musstaches like
Injun-polished buffler horns, would you?”
Like almost anybody else would have done, I said I wouldn’t.
“Well, it was,” said Zeke. “If you could see that gam, and compare him
to this here package of choon’-gum, you wouldn’t ever guess that either
one could do much of anything to t’other; yet I can a tale relate of
that combination that would make each particler hair stand up-ended,
like the squills of the frightful porkypine.”
“Rats!” said I, being but a youth.
“You got any hairs that’s particler by nature? No? Well, then,
I’ll spread this terrific osculation of the connimgulated forces
of Nature befo’ you, as Charley says. My kind of narrative is the
plain, unvarnished tale. Folks that tell a varnished tale is apt to
sit on the varnish before it’s dry, and they’ll stick to it, come
cold fact or red-hot argyment; whilst I’m always willin’ to prune,
cross-harrer, revise or alter accordin’ to my victim’s feelin’s. That
is, of course, if they go to corner me, which, between gentlemen, is a
low-cut outrage. But this business about the gam is dead straight. I
had relinquished all amusements and was livin’ quiet in order to save
money, before I got acquainted with the facts.
“First place, comes a female missionary out to the ranch, and she was
a corkin’ fine-lookin’ nice young woman, too, who tackled me on the
subject of chewin’ terbackker. She had me all tangled up in my own rope
and double left-sided front and back before the clock struck one.
“I tried to arger that nobody wouldn’t care whether I chewed terbackker
or grass, so long’s I was happy and doin’ no harm. But that turned out
not to be true. She said so.
“Then I tried to reach her womanly compassion by tearfully expoundin’
how I’d miss my cut of plug a day; I never touched her. Hers was a new
religion. It had a different figger on the back from any I’d had dealt
to me before. Seems it weren’t a sin to chew, but it was the control
I’d lost over myself that put me in the hole. I had just to git command
of my mind and everything would come at me, like a North Ca’lina town’s
nigger’s dogs chasin’ a three-legged cat up an alley.
“‘But ma’am,’ say I, ‘I’ve knocked off before; an’, as for control over
my mind, durin’ the hull spell me an’ Star Plug was separated, friends
had to hold me to prevent me goin’ in an’ robbin’ my own grip. Control
of my mind,’ says I, fightin’ noble, ‘why, you could ’a’ sicked a
burglar on me, an’ he couldn’t have found no such thing on my person. I
didn’t have no mind. I walked up an’ down, day and night, in that man’s
town, like a ravin’ maniac stupefied by his halloocinashuns. All that
passed beneath my shinin’ dome was: “Oh for a chew! Oh for a chew! Oh
for a choo-choo-choo-choo! Whoeep! Brakes!” And when the cars went over
the switch or a cayuse cantered up, they said: “Terbackker, terbackker,
terbackker,” to my famished ears. All I wished was that the houses was
built of plug, and all I thought of was that I could get earnest with
an ax. That’s _all_ I _could_ think--all!’
“‘But you must use the control!’ says she, eager.
[Illustration: “‘I will not use terbackker,’ says little Zekey
Scraggs.” Page 219]
“‘You mean, ma’am,’ I says, ‘that I must seek out a quiet place,
clench my fists, grind my teeth to a feather-edge and strain my
suspenders to the bustin’ point in one calamitous effort to think I’m
not thinking?’
“‘Precisely!’ says she, victorious. ‘You Western men have such a ready
grip on essentials that it is a delight to be your guide.’
“‘Well, Uncle Tom and the dogs a-bitin’ him!’ says I to myself. ‘Lead
on!’ I took off my hat aloud and bowed to within two of my noses to
the ground. ‘To be able to foller so gentle and able a guide straight
to perdition is a joy,’ says I. ‘I quit the class of roominants for
two weeks. I will not use terbackker. No!’ says little Zekey Scraggs.
‘There’s my hand on it, ma’am.’
“And she just turned pink with joy. She was an awful nice little gal.
Only she was so jam-full of knowledge that it was hard for her to
understand things.
“Having put up this job on myself, I went to our storekeep’ and called
for my time. I knew I’d need bright lights and excitement for a while.
I begun to feel already that a chew wouldn’t go bad.
“There was the storekeep’ gazin’ fixedly at a book; his lips was
movin’, but he seemed in a kind of rapture. When I hollered to him,
he jumped all over and barked at me like a dog. At the same time he
grabbed up a cigareet, stuck it in his mouth, took it out, looked at it
and fired it down again.
“A light broke on me. ‘So she got you, too?’ says I.
“‘Hooppitty Hoppitty Hippitty Yer-hoop!’ says he. ‘That’s just what
she’s done! I’m three days out. Not a smell of smoke in three days! My
soul has gone away and won’t have any more truck with me. I don’t know
who I am, nor why. I’ve been trying for an hour to find out how much
three and two make. Take your money and leave me to my fate.’
“With this picture in my mind I broke for town. Half-way there I was
chawin’ a latigo-strap like a wolf. When I hit the street, I jumped
through the drug-store door.
“‘What you got for a man that’s quit chewin’?’ I gasps to the boss.
“‘Franky Frenchman’s Fool-Killer,’ says he--and with that he turns his
head and expectorates satisfactorily into the spittoon.
“Seeing him, I near died of a broken heart.
“‘The next crack will be at your expense,’ I told him. ‘You hike out
somethin’ for my case,’ I says. He shoved me out a package, just like
that.”
Mr. Scraggs poked my gift.
“Just like that. I put the whole bizzee in my trap and chomped on it
like a lion. I walked around the town, chompin’ on it. I waved my jaws
till my face ached. Seemed to me like I’d never done anythin’ in all
my life but bite Injy-rubber. And then I pushed madly for the first
stud-poker game.
“When I got there, nothin’ was movin’. This here tin-horn I mention was
polishing his muss-tache with both hands, whilst he talked to a few
hangers-on.
“I became ashamed of that choon’-gum and I stuck it under the table,
very sly and surreptishus. I felt like a man again.
“‘Fire the engine up!’ says I. ‘Gimme five stacks to practise on.’
“The gam hopped gleeful toward the table and give the drawer a yank.
She stuck. He cussed and pulled harder. She came open with a jerk and a
kind of a long, sticky s-m-aaa-ack, followed the strings of gray.
“The gam arose from where he’d sot on his backbone and looked at the
drawer.
“‘We’re not doin’ any business to-day,’ says he, showing me my little
eagle-bird.
“‘What’s happened to the trade?’ says I.
“He simply p’inted to the hunk of gum (which I had most unforchinit
jammed ag’in’ the drawer).
“‘My wildest fancies have got exceeded,’ says he. ‘Do you want to hear
a weird and wilful tale of woe?’
“‘Of course not,’ I says.
“‘All right,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you.’
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘here’s the way she come up. I’m a lost one in the
wilderness out at a telegraph station. I see where I get my talents
buried in a napkin made of sole-leather, hence I get handy with a deck
of cards in front of the lookin’-glass. My work is so good after a
while that I lose my whole salary to myself, and yet watchin’ careful
all the time in the lookin’-glass. I’m fit to handle the steamboat
trade, but I aims higher: I buy me a ticket to Noo York and hunt up a
place where they hew to the line, let the chips fall where they will.
“‘“What’s your noo box o’ tricks?” says the Murphy that run the joint.
“‘“Well,” says I, “nothin’ new, but the good old reliable line. The
world is my oyster, as Hamlet says, and I’ve got openers.”
“‘“H’m,” says he, makin’ a fat man’s shift in his chair and pushin’ his
seegar into the other corner of his face. “I want you to understand
this is a dead-straight game run here, my bucko--yet you look
good--s’pose I’ve come in an’ laid thirty cents or so on the king,
coppered. Lift the joker out of that deck an’ le’s see what happens.”
“‘He threw me a pack and I riffled and boxed ’em.
“‘“Why, you lose,” says I, much surprised as the king came out open on
the turn.
“‘“And not so worse,” says he. “Play on!”
“‘I slid ’em out of the box to the last card. “You only lost your
footin’ once,” says he. “The way you beat my corner play was a little
obvious. Exercise your little finger till it’s soopler. You can handle
a roll to-night. But mind this,” says he as he grunted himself on his
feet, “this is a dead-straight house. If anybuddy _ketches_ you bein’
technical, we jump you, from me to the cop on watch. You get five per
cent.”
“‘Well, sir, that was the loveliest little bower of rosebuds you ever
smelt! Checks was joolry. We didn’t have change for nothin’ below a
fifty-dollar bill. Our line of customers was these tur’ble knowin’
young men of the world, who’d stood the terrific experience of a
college careerin’. They was a darin’ outfit. They was so fast they
couldn’t help talk about the pace they was hittin’, and what they
didn’t know about the game of faro was my business. It was like bein’
knocked down in the street by a strong man and have money pushed into
your clothes. I did things at that table that never happened before
in a civilized community. I was so youthful, you know, and it was a
constant problem to me whether they’d stand for biting off the corner
of a card to make things come my way.
“‘I run in rhinecaboos that ’ud make a heathen Scandahonian farmer
fall off his hay-wagon, but them men of the world simply contributed
yallerbacks--oh, good old yallerbacks!--beautiful to the eye; soft to
the touch; _so_ encouragin’ to the feelin’s! I reckoned I’d buy the
durned old Western Union an’ get even with the cuss who used to pound
it to me from up the line--Ouch! vanished dream! Sweet vision stuck to
earth by that con-cussed, snappy, stringy, bouncy, mud-colored foolish
food fer flighty females you see before you!’
“At this p’int,” said Mr. Scraggs, “he shot his finger at my gum,
breathin’ hard an’ glitterin’ his eyes.
“‘Yes, sir!’ says he. ‘There lies the cause of my roon! And such a
fiddlin’, triflin’ stuff to wreck a man!’ He got some of his breath
back. ‘You orter ask “How?”’ says he, ‘and I reply, “By contractin’ the
habit”’--‘Not of gnawin’ it’--he adds hasty, ‘but steppin’ on it. Here
was I sittin’ on sunset clouds and floatin’ over beautiful scenery,
till there comes a cold blast of the winds of chance, and from that
moment my path in life was strewed with the discard from rosy lips. For
two solid weeks I did nothin’ but scuff my feet or flag a shine-stand
to get rid of the day’s gatherin’ of gum. Them Eye-talians used to grin
in a way that made me want an open season on furriners, as I cantered
up to ’em, smicky-smacky, smicky-smacky, trailin’ soft gray hairs
behind me like a retired minister’s whiskers.
“‘They’d look up at the sky and make dago remarks, whilst they curried
my feet with a brick, till the cold sweat of mortification melted my
b’iled collar. And once a flap-doodle actor goat, with a red, white and
blue hatband, got gay and told me not to use such naughty words about
these tributes from the mouth of beauty. I swatted the air where he’d
been when I started to hit him an’ he took me by most of my trousers
and turned me ten somersaults. How was I to know he was Honest Mike,
the Deck Hand, who chucked the villain over Brooklyn Bridge every night
and Saturday matinée?
“‘Well, I’ll cut it short. No matter where I fled, the fiend pursued
me. I went to the opery one night, to get my frazzled nerves soothed
by the champion yelpers of the pack. For two solid hours I lived
untroubled, not even worried by the show, as I couldn’t understand a
word of it and nobuddy on the stage had complaints too deep to sing
about; but comin’ out, me enemy waited on the edge of a step for me
and I landed astride of a stout lady’s neck, beggin’ her pardon and
fightin’ a half-dozen men for five minutes. When I explained, even the
stout lady laughed.
“‘The boss at my joint cussed himself into asthma, wondering what the
sticky stuff, tracked all over his new seven-dollar-a-yard carpet, was.
“‘But I ain’t goin’ to weary you with trifles. One day the boss tipped
me off that there was a bunch of alum-eyes due that evenin’; he said
they was fellers that had took the college course, but recovered, and
that the bowlegged elephant song and dance that extracted money from
our regulars would be looked upon with reproach by the new-comers. I
got nervous. Playin’ ag’in’ them little first-crow roosters had been
bad practice. I soaked my hands in warm water and prepared as best I
could, but when I saw that gang before me I knew why they was called
alum-eyes. They puckered my soul up, my hands got too wet with sweat
for business--you know your fingers has got to be not too dry, to slip,
and not too wet, to stick, if you’re turnin’ out high-grade work.
“‘Well, I was excited, yet it was a reel pleasure to be up against reel
men.
“‘I had a habit of running my fingers over the rung of my chair, to
keep ’em in right shape. ’Twas a thing nobuddy could complain of, and
the game just held on to its hat and flew. How much money you had was
the limit, and to put my little bank on the other side of the river,
quick, was the idea of the alum-eyes.
“‘I forgot everythin’. I was fair hollerin’ inside for joy. My buckers
had a good square chance to catch me at it, if they could, and I was
haulin’ money when--well, Fortune had patted me on the back with one
hand, while she got ready with a black-jack in the other. In my state
of feelin’ I put a heel, a chewin’-gum-covered-heel, on the rung of
that chair and took it off again, without noticin’. As the play stood,
the outfit had me whipsawed. I drug my fingers over the rung of that
chair, that chewin’-gum-covered-rung, without noticing; then I wiggled
my fingers in a Chinee ketch-as-ketch-can over the box and raised ’em
with a playin’-card firmly stuck to each finger. _Then_ I noticed,
yes; and everybody noticed. Silence fell six foot deep. One of them
alum-eyes says:
“‘“That may be magnifercent, but it ain’t Hoyle.”
“‘And I excused myself by ducking under the table and jumping over the
banisters.
“‘Once on the street, I hoopled her for the corner. My play was to
wait till the crowd went out, and then see the old man, who had a
rubber-band on my roll.
“‘I thought I’d peek around the corner until all was clear, then rush
the boss with my hard-luck game of talk, extract a little of the juice
of the root of evil from him, then fold up my legs like a jack-rabbit
and silently lift myself through the breeze, back to the sagebush--back
to where the prairie-dog and the owl and the rattlesnake live in
harmony together--never excepting the rattlesnake, so long’s there’s
plenty of young dogs and owls.
“‘The game must have busted when I took the fence, for here come the
bunch of alum-eyes right up the street. I had the curiosity to wait
and hear what they was talkin’ about, as I had a corner to duck behind
when they come close. Well, I waited, and didn’t hear nothin’ I’d care
to write home to mother. They made me so cussed mad, I overstayed
my time. Just when they got within range, I started to hop swiftly
backwards. But I didn’t. No. My feet had grew fast to that sidewalk.
Seems the city had been mending the block pavement, as usual, and some
horney-souled son of toil had spilt a square yard of coal-tar on the
sidewalk. Me to the middle of the coal-tar district, of course--you can
chew coal-tar, you know; I’ve done it.
“‘So, as I remarked, I didn’t gracefully side-step. Exactly not. I gave
one yank and landed with my knees up in the air. Them feet was riveted
fast, you bet, and my joints just had to yield accordin’.
“‘“What is this we have?” said one alum-eye.
“‘There was a gas lamp on the corner. They knew me by my face.
“‘“Are you going to deal flagstones with your feet?” asks one of them.
“‘Let’s pull down the blinds. It was their whirl at the bat. They
brought all the folks, includin’ the old man and Tommy the cop.
“‘They yee-hooed on my feet till I had to holler for mercy. Then they
sat on the curb and rocked and hollered like the pack of fools they
were. They tried to lift my shoulders up, but found that my coat had
took a violent affection for the sidewalk, too. Some of ’em didn’t
even try for the curbstone then. They rolled around on the sidewalk
and kicked their legs, whilst I frayed my vocal chords readin’ their
customs and habits to ’em.
“‘But I was in a runnin’ noose; the harder I cussed at ’em, the worse
they laughed.
“‘“Ain’t he the slick one, though!” says the old man, holdin’ on to his
stummick with both hands. “Don’t do nothin’ more to him for a minute,
boys, or the coroner’ll be sittin’ on me.”
“‘Every time I gee-nashed my teeth an’ tried to reach ’em they waltzed
on one leg and shrieked. There must ’a’ been nigh three hundred fools
watchin’ and havin’ the time of their lives. Little messenger-boys was
there, the night-watchmen took a peep, ladies with a past improved a
shinin’ present, the dago shoeblacks heard the racket and come runnin’
up and hollered, “Choon-gum extract! Ten a cent!”
“‘And there I lay, flat on my back, with my knees in the air, scart to
move, because I couldn’t wiggle a finger without the crowd throwin’
a fit. Oh, murder! Le’s cut it! They unlaced my shoes and snaked me
out of my coat, and instead of bein’ sad at them pathetical shoes and
coat lying in the coal-tar, the boss fell over sideways and the rest
was too feeble to stop me as I broke away. I made that block in two
stocking-footed leps.
“‘I had a hundred or two in my pants. I bought three dollars’ worth
of coat and shoes from a second-hand store for fifteen dollars and a
promise that if anything happened I wouldn’t mention the shop to the
police. Then I come here, far from the gadding crowds, far from the
lady with the developed jaw-swing, and I get--that.’
“Here,” said Mr. Scraggs, “he p’inted to my chewin’-gum and wiped his
white brow off with his white handkercher, and he says: ‘Have we come
to this?’
“I swallered hard and looked at him.
“‘Have you such a thing as a plug of terbackker in your possession?’
“‘Yes,’ says he, surprised. ‘I have.’
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘ruther than to further add to your troubles, I’ll
break my word to a lady--gimme that plug! We haven’t come to this--this
has come to us.’
“So I explained, and he opened his stock exchange. I reckon he was
right about the bad effects of chewin’-gum, too, or maybe what’s a
medal winner in N’ York ain’t art west of the Missouri. Anyhow, you
don’t hear me kickin’ about that nice missionary young lady. If I cared
for joolry, I’d be wearin’ that tin-horn’s diamon’ chest protector
right now. Gum has different effects on different people. ’Twas fatal
to his constitooshun.”
XI
BLESSED BE THE PEACEMAKERS
THE QUEST FOR QUIET ON THE PART OF THE HUMAN CONCERTINA
“The peaceful season has come around again,” said Mr. Scraggs. “It
does that every year. It is a good thing to have a certain date to be
peaceful on; you prepare for it, put all troublesome things away, and
wind up, as I usually do, with four friends trying to hold me down
because I feel so light in the head.
“Peace is one of the finest things on earth, but the makin’ of it
will never be confined to one of these here monopolies. Listen! What
better could a man do than go into a home being tore wide open by the
dissensions and discussions of one husband and one wife, using such
domestic articles as flat-irons, coal-scuttles, brooms and the like of
that, upon each other, and extract from the dust one large, smooth,
round, white hunk of peace? It is nice to think of.
“I remember Long John. He was a feller built on the concertina plan.
When he sat down in a chair he didn’t look like a man more’n seven
feet high, but when he got up, and up, and more up, he was that kind
of build that made little Bill holler, the first time he saw the ack,
‘How much more of you is there down cellar?’ And Bill said to me on the
quiet: ‘Old Gabe will have to play an oncore if he expects John to get
up before the resurrection is all over.’
“But John had a disposition that couldn’t be beat. He was for peace all
the time. Bits of men that wouldn’t more’n come up to his waist used
to talk to him as rough as they liked and John wouldn’t give them one
word back. He simply hit them a slam, and then there was peace, you bet
your life.
“But it was done out of pure good-natur. ‘They got no business to talk
like that to nobody,’ says John, ‘and I can correc’ them without it
looking anything like a fight. Ain’t you noticed that that stops ’em
from being sassy?’ It sure did, but I lived in fear and tremblin’ some
feller would be an inch nearer than John cal’lated and would remain
quiet for several million years. That would have broke his heart.
“Well, John put in a solid eight months without ever pinting a foot
toward town. Then he collected and went off for a little quiet trip on
his own hook. He said that nobody could ask for a better people than
we were, yet we was kind of rough in our ways, and he wanted to see
domestic felicity, and the soothing inflooence of Woman. That there
was a strain in his ideas that made him need kind and gentle treatment
oncet in so often.
“It ain’t, perhaps, necessary for me to say that I have been exposed to
the inflooence of seventy or eighty Mrs. Scraggs for enough number of
years to heave a sigh on what was comin’ to John; but I never guessed
how complete his whole idea of the way this universe runs would be
ruined.
“Off goes Johnny Boy, dressed up in his best black suit, that looked
as if it had been made for a statue of a life-sized giant. The sleeves
hung down to the middle of his fingers, the pants rolled up six inches
at the bottom, and, as he was a ga’nt critter, there was enough stuff
in them clothes to make it look as if he could turn right around inside
them without attracting attention.
“And he come back.
“This is what happened. He come into the bull-pen slower than usual. He
sat down on the bunk, with his face completely surrounded by hands,
and he never opened his yorp till long after we’d et our supper. Then
he took me by the arm, and says, ‘Scraggsy, you been my friend for a
long time. Come out till I tell you something.’
“I went out and he smoked his cigareet for another half-hour until I
had to say: ‘If you have got anything real to tell me, John, why don’t
you do it to-night, while we’re sitting out here so comfortable in the
frost?’
“Says he: ‘I got up there all right. It was a nice town. There was
swimming. There was peace. There was sidewalks, and fellers wearing
strange hats. Everything was there, and I think,’ he says, ‘I was more
scared of the things I didn’t know whether they could happen or not
than I was of the things I knew could happen.