Contents

I. THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS

II. THE SLEUTHS

III. WITCHES’ LOAVES

IV. THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES

V. HOLDING UP A TRAIN

VI. ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN

VII. THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER

VIII. MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN

IX. AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS

X. A GHOST OF A CHANCE

XI. JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL

XII. THE DOOR OF UNREST

XIII. THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES

XIV. LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE

XV. OCTOBER AND JUNE

XVI. THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOT-WHEEL

XVII. NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT

XVIII. THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES

XIX. THE LADY HIGHER UP

XX. THE GREATER CONEY

XXI. LAW AND ORDER

XXII. TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY

XXIII. THE CALIPH AND THE CAD

XXIV. THE DIAMOND OF KALI

XXV. THE DAY WE CELEBRATE

I.

THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS

Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from the

Rancho Altito at the end of a three-months’ visit. It is not to be

expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits

yellow-streaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon, the

big Negro man cook, had never been able to make good biscuits. Once

before, when Nick was cooking at the Willow Ranch, Sam had been forced

to fly from his _cuisine_, after only a six-weeks’ sojourn.

On Sam’s face was an expression of sorrow, deepened with regret and

slightly tempered by the patient forgiveness of a connoisseur who

cannot be understood. But very firmly and inexorably he buckled his

saddle-cinches, looped his stake-rope and hung it to his saddle-horn,

tied his slicker and coat on the cantle, and looped his quirt on his

right wrist. The Merrydews (householders of the Rancho Altito), men,

women, children, and servants, vassals, visitors, employés, dogs, and

casual callers were grouped in the “gallery” of the ranch house, all

with faces set to the tune of melancholy and grief. For, as the coming

of Sam Galloway to any ranch, camp, or cabin between the rivers Frio or

Bravo del Norte aroused joy, so his departure caused mourning and

distress.

And then, during absolute silence, except for the bumping of a hind

elbow of a hound dog as he pursued a wicked flea, Sam tenderly and

carefully tied his guitar across his saddle on top of his slicker and

coat. The guitar was in a green duck bag; and if you catch the

significance of it, it explains Sam.

Sam Galloway was the Last of the Troubadours. Of course you know about

the troubadours. The encyclopædia says they flourished between the

eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. What they flourished doesn’t

seem clear—you may be pretty sure it wasn’t a sword: maybe it was a

fiddlebow, or a forkful of spaghetti, or a lady’s scarf. Anyhow, Sam

Galloway was one of ’em.

Sam put on a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the

expression on his face was hilarious compared with the one on his

pony’s. You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is

not unlikely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had

often guyed Sam’s pony for being ridden by a guitar player instead of

by a rollicking, cussing, all-wool cowboy. No man is a hero to his

saddle-horse. And even an escalator in a department store might be

excused for tripping up a troubadour.

Oh, I know I’m one; and so are you. You remember the stories you

memorize and the card tricks you study and that little piece on the

piano—how does it go?—ti-tum-te-tum-ti-tum—those little Arabian Ten

Minute Entertainments that you furnish when you go up to call on your

rich Aunt Jane. You should know that _omnæ personæ in tres partes

divisæ sunt_. Namely: Barons, Troubadours, and Workers. Barons have no

inclination to read such folderol as this; and Workers have no time: so

I know you must be a Troubadour, and that you will understand Sam

Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, or paint, we are

only troubadours; so let us make the worst of it.

The pony with the Dante Alighieri face, guided by the pressure of Sam’s

knees, bore that wandering minstrel sixteen miles southeastward. Nature

was in her most benignant mood. League after league of delicate, sweet

flowerets made fragrant the gently undulating prairie. The east wind

tempered the spring warmth; wool-white clouds flying in from the

Mexican Gulf hindered the direct rays of the April sun. Sam sang songs

as he rode. Under his pony’s bridle he had tucked some sprigs of

chaparral to keep away the deer flies. Thus crowned, the long-faced

quadruped looked more Dantesque than before, and, judging by his

countenance, seemed to think of Beatrice.

Straight as topography permitted, Sam rode to the sheep ranch of old

man Ellison. A visit to a sheep ranch seemed to him desirable just

then. There had been too many people, too much noise, argument,

competition, confusion, at Rancho Altito. He had never conferred upon

old man Ellison the favour of sojourning at his ranch; but he knew he

would be welcome. The troubadour is his own passport everywhere. The

Workers in the castle let down the drawbridge to him, and the Baron

sets him at his left hand at table in the banquet hall. There ladies

smile upon him and applaud his songs and stories, while the Workers

bring boars’ heads and flagons. If the Baron nods once or twice in his

carved oaken chair, he does not do it maliciously.

Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often

heard praises of Sam Galloway from other ranchmen who had been

complimented by his visits, but had never aspired to such an honour for

his own humble barony. I say barony because old man Ellison was the

Last of the Barons. Of course, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton lived too early to

know him, or he wouldn’t have conferred that sobriquet upon Warwick. In

life it is the duty and the function of the Baron to provide work for

the Workers and lodging and shelter for the Troubadours.

Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellow-white

beard and a face lined and seamed by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch

was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the

lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a

Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed

coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran on

two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither leased

nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his language

would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with him. Those

were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what illuminated,

embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have been written the

day on which a troubadour—a troubadour who, according to the

encyclopædia, should have flourished between the eleventh and the

thirteenth centuries—drew rein at the gates of his baronial castle!

Old man Ellison’s smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he saw

Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to greet

him.

“Hello, Mr. Ellison,” called Sam cheerfully. “Thought I’d drop over and

see you a while. Notice you’ve had fine rains on your range. They ought

to make good grazing for your spring lambs.”

“Well, well, well,” said old man Ellison. “I’m mighty glad to see you,

Sam. I never thought you’d take the trouble to ride over to as

out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you’re mighty welcome. ’Light.

I’ve got a sack of new oats in the kitchen—shall I bring out a feed for

your hoss?”

“Oats for him?” said Sam, derisively. “No, sir-ee. He’s as fat as a pig

now on grass. He don’t get rode enough to keep him in condition. I’ll

just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you don’t

mind.”

I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries

did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as their

parallels did that evening at old man Ellison’s sheep ranch. The

Kiowa’s biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong.

Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison’s

weather-tanned face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that he

had stumbled upon pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant meal,

a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight far

beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere that

his sensitive soul at that time craved united to confer upon him a

satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his tours

of the ranches.

After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took out

his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you—neither Sam Galloway nor

any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the late

Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the

esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his

supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his supper, and

then sing for Art’s sake.

Sam Galloway’s repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and

between thirty and forty songs. He by no means stopped there. He could

talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And he

never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could sit.

I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a portrait

as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will allow.

I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and inactive

beyond the power of imagination to conceive. He wore an

ultramarine-blue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearl-gray,

exaggerated sort of shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes,

inevitable high-heeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw

sombrero.

That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under the

hackberry trees. They lighted cigarettes; and the troubadour gaily

touched his guitar. Many of the songs he sang were the weird,

melancholy, minor-keyed _canciones_ that he had learned from the

Mexican sheep herders and _vaqueros_. One, in particular, charmed and

soothed the soul of the lonely baron. It was a favourite song of the

sheep herders, beginning: “_Huile, huile, palomita_,” which being

translated means, “Fly, fly, little dove.” Sam sang it for old man

Ellison many times that evening.

The troubadour stayed on at the old man’s ranch. There was peace and

quiet and appreciation there, such as he had not found in the noisy

camps of the cattle kings. No audience in the world could have crowned

the work of poet, musician, or artist with more worshipful and

unflagging approval than that bestowed upon his efforts by old man

Ellison. No visit by a royal personage to a humble woodchopper or

peasant could have been received with more flattering thankfulness and

joy.

On a cool, canvas-covered cot in the shade of the hackberry trees Sam

Galloway passed the greater part of his time. There he rolled his brown

paper cigarettes, read such tedious literature as the ranch afforded,

and added to his repertoire of improvisations that he played so

expertly on his guitar. To him, as a slave ministering to a great lord,

the Kiowa brought cool water from the red jar hanging under the brush

shelter, and food when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs fanned him

mildly; mocking-birds at morn and eve competed with but scarce equalled

the sweet melodies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness seemed to fill all

his world. While old man Ellison was pottering among his flocks of

sheep on his mile-an-hour pony, and while the Kiowa took his siesta in

the burning sunshine at the end of the kitchen, Sam would lie on his

cot thinking what a happy world he lived in, and how kind it is to the

ones whose mission in life it is to give entertainment and pleasure.

Here he had food and lodging as good as he had ever longed for;

absolute immunity from care or exertion or strife; an endless welcome,

and a host whose delight at the sixteenth repetition of a song or a

story was as keen as at its initial giving. Was there ever a troubadour

of old who struck upon as royal a castle in his wanderings? While he

lay thus, meditating upon his blessings, little brown cottontails would

shyly frolic through the yard; a covey of white-topknotted blue quail

would run past, in single file, twenty yards away; a _paisano_ bird,

out hunting for tarantulas, would hop upon the fence and salute him

with sweeping flourishes of its long tail. In the eighty-acre horse

pasture the pony with the Dantesque face grew fat and almost smiling.

The troubadour was at the end of his wanderings.

Old man Ellison was his own _vaciero_. That means that he supplied his

sheep camps with wood, water, and rations by his own labours instead of

hiring a _vaciero_. On small ranches it is often done.

One morning he started for the camp of Incarnación Felipe de la Cruz y

Monte Piedras (one of his sheep herders) with the week’s usual rations

of brown beans, coffee, meal, and sugar. Two miles away on the trail

from old Fort Ewing he met, face to face, a terrible being called King

James, mounted on a fiery, prancing, Kentucky-bred horse.

King James’s real name was James King; but people reversed it because

it seemed to fit him better, and also because it seemed to please his

majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman between the Alamo plaza

in San Antone and Bill Hopper’s saloon in Brownsville. Also he was the

loudest and most offensive bully and braggart and bad man in southwest

Texas. And he always made good whenever he bragged; and the more noise

he made the more dangerous he was. In the story papers it is always the

quiet, mild-mannered man with light blue eyes and a low voice who turns

out to be really dangerous; but in real life and in this story such is

not the case. Give me my choice between assaulting a large, loudmouthed

rough-houser and an inoffensive stranger with blue eyes sitting quietly

in a corner, and you will see something doing in the corner every time.

King James, as I intended to say earlier, was a fierce,

two-hundred-pound, sunburned, blond man, as pink as an October

strawberry, and with two horizontal slits under shaggy red eyebrows for

eyes. On that day he wore a flannel shirt that was tan-coloured, with

the exception of certain large areas which were darkened by

transudations due to the summer sun. There seemed to be other clothing

and garnishings about him, such as brown duck trousers stuffed into

immense boots, and red handkerchiefs and revolvers; and a shotgun laid

across his saddle and a leather belt with millions of cartridges

shining in it—but your mind skidded off such accessories; what held

your gaze was just the two little horizontal slits that he used for

eyes.

This was the man that old man Ellison met on the trail; and when you

count up in the baron’s favour that he was sixty-five and weighed

ninety-eight pounds and had heard of King James’s record and that he

(the baron) had a hankering for the _vita simplex_ and had no gun with

him and wouldn’t have used it if he had, you can’t censure him if I

tell you that the smiles with which the troubadour had filled his

wrinkles went out of them and left them plain wrinkles again. But he

was not the kind of baron that flies from danger. He reined in the

mile-an-hour pony (no difficult feat), and saluted the formidable

monarch.

King James expressed himself with royal directness. “You’re that old

snoozer that’s running sheep on this range, ain’t you?” said he. “What

right have you got to do it? Do you own any land, or lease any?”

“I have two sections leased from the state,” said old man Ellison,

mildly.

“Not by no means you haven’t,” said King James. “Your lease expired

yesterday; and I had a man at the land office on the minute to take it

up. You don’t control a foot of grass in Texas. You sheep men have got

to git. Your time’s up. It’s a cattle country, and there ain’t any room

in it for snoozers. This range you’ve got your sheep on is mine. I’m

putting up a wire fence, forty by sixty miles; and if there’s a sheep

inside of it when it’s done it’ll be a dead one. I’ll give you a week

to move yours away. If they ain’t gone by then, I’ll send six men over

here with Winchesters to make mutton out of the whole lot. And if I

find you here at the same time this is what you’ll get.”

King James patted the breech of his shot-gun warningly.

Old man Ellison rode on to the camp of Incarnación. He sighed many

times, and the wrinkles in his face grew deeper. Rumours that the old

order was about to change had reached him before. The end of Free Grass

was in sight. Other troubles, too, had been accumulating upon his

shoulders. His flocks were decreasing instead of growing; the price of

wool was declining at every clip; even Bradshaw, the storekeeper at

Frio City, at whose store he bought his ranch supplies, was dunning him

for his last six months’ bill and threatening to cut him off. And so

this last greatest calamity suddenly dealt out to him by the terrible

King James was a crusher.

When the old man got back to the ranch at sunset he found Sam Galloway

lying on his cot, propped against a roll of blankets and wool sacks,

fingering his guitar.

“Hello, Uncle Ben,” the troubadour called, cheerfully. “You rolled in

early this evening. I been trying a new twist on the Spanish Fandango

to-day. I just about got it. Here’s how she goes—listen.”

“That’s fine, that’s mighty fine,” said old man Ellison, sitting on the

kitchen step and rubbing his white, Scotch-terrier whiskers. “I reckon

you’ve got all the musicians beat east and west, Sam, as far as the

roads are cut out.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Sam, reflectively. “But I certainly do get

there on variations. I guess I can handle anything in five flats about

as well as any of ’em. But you look kind of fagged out, Uncle Ben—ain’t

you feeling right well this evening?”

“Little tired; that’s all, Sam. If you ain’t played yourself out, let’s

have that Mexican piece that starts off with: ‘_Huile, huile,

palomita_.’ It seems that that song always kind of soothes and comforts

me after I’ve been riding far or anything bothers me.”

“Why, _seguramente, señor_,” said Sam. “I’ll hit her up for you as

often as you like. And before I forget about it, Uncle Ben, you want to

jerk Bradshaw up about them last hams he sent us. They’re just a little

bit strong.”

A man sixty-five years old, living on a sheep ranch and beset by a

complication of disasters, cannot successfully and continuously

dissemble. Moreover, a troubadour has eyes quick to see unhappiness in

others around him—because it disturbs his own ease. So, on the next

day, Sam again questioned the old man about his air of sadness and

abstraction. Then old man Ellison told him the story of King James’s

threats and orders and that pale melancholy and red ruin appeared to

have marked him for their own. The troubadour took the news

thoughtfully. He had heard much about King James.

On the third day of the seven days of grace allowed him by the autocrat

of the range, old man Ellison drove his buckboard to Frio City to fetch

some necessary supplies for the ranch. Bradshaw was hard but not

implacable. He divided the old man’s order by two, and let him have a

little more time. One article secured was a new, fine ham for the

pleasure of the troubadour.

Five miles out of Frio City on his way home the old man met King James

riding into town. His majesty could never look anything but fierce and

menacing, but to-day his slits of eyes appeared to be a little wider

than they usually were.

“Good day,” said the king, gruffly. “I’ve been wanting to see you. I

hear it said by a cowman from Sandy yesterday that you was from Jackson

County, Mississippi, originally. I want to know if that’s a fact.”

“Born there,” said old man Ellison, “and raised there till I was

twenty-one.”

“This man says,” went on King James, “that he thinks you was related to

the Jackson County Reeveses. Was he right?”

“Aunt Caroline Reeves,” said the old man, “was my half-sister.”

“She was my aunt,” said King James. “I run away from home when I was

sixteen. Now, let’s re-talk over some things that we discussed a few

days ago. They call me a bad man; and they’re only half right. There’s

plenty of room in my pasture for your bunch of sheep and their increase

for a long time to come. Aunt Caroline used to cut out sheep in cake

dough and bake ’em for me. You keep your sheep where they are, and use

all the range you want. How’s your finances?”

The old man related his woes in detail, dignifiedly, with restraint and

candour.

“She used to smuggle extra grub into my school basket—I’m speaking of

Aunt Caroline,” said King James. “I’m going over to Frio City to-day,

and I’ll ride back by your ranch to-morrow. I’ll draw $2,000 out of the

bank there and bring it over to you; and I’ll tell Bradshaw to let you

have everything you want on credit. You are bound to have heard the old

saying at home, that the Jackson County Reeveses and Kings would stick

closer by each other than chestnut burrs. Well, I’m a King yet whenever

I run across a Reeves. So you look out for me along about sundown

to-morrow, and don’t worry about nothing. Shouldn’t wonder if the dry

spell don’t kill out the young grass.”

Old man Ellison drove happily ranchward. Once more the smiles filled

out his wrinkles. Very suddenly, by the magic of kinship and the good

that lies somewhere in all hearts, his troubles had been removed.

On reaching the ranch he found that Sam Galloway was not there. His

guitar hung by its buckskin string to a hackberry limb, moaning as the

gulf breeze blew across its masterless strings.

The Kiowa endeavoured to explain.

“Sam, he catch pony,” said he, “and say he ride to Frio City. What for

no can damn sabe. Say he come back to-night. Maybe so. That all.”

As the first stars came out the troubadour rode back to his haven. He

pastured his pony and went into the house, his spurs jingling

martially.

Old man Ellison sat at the kitchen table, having a tin cup of

before-supper coffee. He looked contented and pleased.

“Hello, Sam,” said he. “I’m darned glad to see ye back. I don’t know

how I managed to get along on this ranch, anyhow, before ye dropped in

to cheer things up. I’ll bet ye’ve been skylarking around with some of

them Frio City gals, now, that’s kept ye so late.”

And then old man Ellison took another look at Sam’s face and saw that

the minstrel had changed to the man of action.

And while Sam is unbuckling from his waist old man Ellison’s

six-shooter, that the latter had left behind when he drove to town, we

may well pause to remark that anywhere and whenever a troubadour lays

down the guitar and takes up the sword trouble is sure to follow. It is

not the expert thrust of Athos nor the cold skill of Aramis nor the

iron wrist of Porthos that we have to fear—it is the Gascon’s fury—the

wild and unacademic attack of the troubadour—the sword of D’Artagnan.

“I done it,” said Sam. “I went over to Frio City to do it. I couldn’t

let him put the skibunk on you, Uncle Ben. I met him in Summers’s

saloon. I knowed what to do. I said a few things to him that nobody

else heard. He reached for his gun first—half a dozen fellows saw him

do it—but I got mine unlimbered first. Three doses I gave him—right

around the lungs, and a saucer could have covered up all of ’em. He

won’t bother you no more.”

“This—is—King—James—you speak—of?” asked old man Ellison, while he

sipped his coffee.

“You bet it was. And they took me before the county judge; and the

witnesses what saw him draw his gun first was all there. Well, of

course, they put me under $300 bond to appear before the court, but

there was four or five boys on the spot ready to sign the bail. He

won’t bother you no more, Uncle Ben. You ought to have seen how close

them bullet holes was together. I reckon playing a guitar as much as I

do must kind of limber a fellow’s trigger finger up a little, don’t you

think, Uncle Ben?”

Then there was a little silence in the castle except for the

spluttering of a venison steak that the Kiowa was cooking.

“Sam,” said old man Ellison, stroking his white whiskers with a

tremulous hand, “would you mind getting the guitar and playing that

‘_Huile, huile, palomita_’ piece once or twice? It always seems to be

kind of soothing and comforting when a man’s tired and fagged out.”

There is no more to be said, except that the title of the story is

wrong. It should have been called “The Last of the Barons.” There never

will be an end to the troubadours; and now and then it does seem that

the jingle of their guitars will drown the sound of the muffled blows

of the pickaxes and trip hammers of all the Workers in the world.

II.

THE SLEUTHS

In The Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and

completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. All the

agencies of inquisition—the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the

city’s labyrinths, the closet detectives of theory and induction—will

be invoked to the search. Most often the man’s face will be seen no

more. Sometimes he will reappear in Sheboygan or in the wilds of Terre

Haute, calling himself one of the synonyms of “Smith,” and without

memory of events up to a certain time, including his grocer’s bill.

Sometimes it will be found, after dragging the rivers, and polling the

restaurants to see if he may be waiting for a well-done sirloin, that

he has moved next door.

This snuffing out of a human being like the erasure of a chalk man from

a blackboard is one of the most impressive themes in dramaturgy.

The case of Mary Snyder, in point, should not be without interest.

A man of middle age, of the name of Meeks, came from the West to New

York to find his sister, Mrs. Mary Snyder, a widow, aged fifty-two, who

had been living for a year in a tenement house in a crowded

neighbourhood.

At her address he was told that Mary Snyder had moved away longer than

a month before. No one could tell him her new address.

On coming out Mr. Meeks addressed a policeman who was standing on the

corner, and explained his dilemma.

“My sister is very poor,” he said, “and I am anxious to find her. I

have recently made quite a lot of money in a lead mine, and I want her

to share my prosperity. There is no use in advertising her, because she

cannot read.”

The policeman pulled his moustache and looked so thoughtful and mighty

that Meeks could almost feel the joyful tears of his sister Mary

dropping upon his bright blue tie.

“You go down in the Canal Street neighbourhood,” said the policeman,

“and get a job drivin’ the biggest dray you can find. There’s old women

always gettin’ knocked over by drays down there. You might see ’er

among ’em. If you don’t want to do that you better go ’round to

headquarters and get ’em to put a fly cop onto the dame.”

At police headquarters, Meeks received ready assistance. A general

alarm was sent out, and copies of a photograph of Mary Snyder that her

brother had were distributed among the stations. In Mulberry Street the

chief assigned Detective Mullins to the case.

The detective took Meeks aside and said:

“This is not a very difficult case to unravel. Shave off your whiskers,

fill your pockets with good cigars, and meet me in the café of the

Waldorf at three o’clock this afternoon.”

Meeks obeyed. He found Mullins there. They had a bottle of wine, while

the detective asked questions concerning the missing woman.

“Now,” said Mullins, “New York is a big city, but we’ve got the

detective business systematized. There are two ways we can go about

finding your sister. We will try one of ’em first. You say she’s

fifty-two?”

“A little past,” said Meeks.

The detective conducted the Westerner to a branch advertising office of

one of the largest dailies. There he wrote the following “ad” and

submitted it to Meeks:

“Wanted, at once—one hundred attractive chorus girls for a new musical

comedy. Apply all day at No. –––– Broadway.”

Meeks was indignant.

“My sister,” said he, “is a poor, hard-working, elderly woman. I do not

see what aid an advertisement of this kind would be toward finding

her.”

“All right,” said the detective. “I guess you don’t know New York. But

if you’ve got a grouch against this scheme we’ll try the other one.

It’s a sure thing. But it’ll cost you more.”

“Never mind the expense,” said Meeks; “we’ll try it.”

The sleuth led him back to the Waldorf. “Engage a couple of bedrooms

and a parlour,” he advised, “and let’s go up.”

This was done, and the two were shown to a superb suite on the fourth

floor. Meeks looked puzzled. The detective sank into a velvet armchair,

and pulled out his cigar case.

“I forgot to suggest, old man,” he said, “that you should have taken

the rooms by the month. They wouldn’t have stuck you so much for ’em.

“By the month!” exclaimed Meeks. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’ll take time to work the game this way. I told you it would

cost you more. We’ll have to wait till spring. There’ll be a new city

directory out then. Very likely your sister’s name and address will be

in it.”

Meeks rid himself of the city detective at once. On the next day some

one advised him to consult Shamrock Jolnes, New York’s famous private

detective, who demanded fabulous fees, but performed miracles in the

way of solving mysteries and crimes.

After waiting for two hours in the anteroom of the great detective’s

apartment, Meeks was shown into his presence. Jolnes sat in a purple

dressing-gown at an inlaid ivory chess table, with a magazine before

him, trying to solve the mystery of “They.” The famous sleuth’s thin,

intellectual face, piercing eyes, and rate per word are too well known

to need description.

Meeks set forth his errand. “My fee, if successful, will be $500,” said

Shamrock Jolnes.

Meeks bowed his agreement to the price.

“I will undertake your case, Mr. Meeks,” said Jolnes, finally. “The

disappearance of people in this city has always been an interesting

problem to me. I remember a case that I brought to a successful outcome

a year ago. A family bearing the name of Clark disappeared suddenly

from a small flat in which they were living. I watched the flat

building for two months for a clue. One day it struck me that a certain

milkman and a grocer’s boy always walked backward when they carried

their wares upstairs. Following out by induction the idea that this

observation gave me, I at once located the missing family. They had

moved into the flat across the hall and changed their name to Kralc.”

Shamrock Jolnes and his client went to the tenement house where Mary

Snyder had lived, and the detective demanded to be shown the room in

which she had lived. It had been occupied by no tenant since her

disappearance.

The room was small, dingy, and poorly furnished. Meeks seated himself

dejectedly on a broken chair, while the great detective searched the

walls and floor and the few sticks of old, rickety furniture for a

clue.

At the end of half an hour Jolnes had collected a few seemingly

unintelligible articles—a cheap black hat pin, a piece torn off a

theatre programme, and the end of a small torn card on which was the

word “left” and the characters “C 12.”

Shamrock Jolnes leaned against the mantel for ten minutes, with his

head resting upon his hand, and an absorbed look upon his intellectual

face. At the end of that time he exclaimed, with animation:

“Come, Mr. Meeks; the problem is solved. I can take you directly to the

house where your sister is living. And you may have no fears concerning

her welfare, for she is amply provided with funds—for the present at

least.”

Meeks felt joy and wonder in equal proportions.

“How did you manage it?” he asked, with admiration in his tones.

Perhaps Jolnes’s only weakness was a professional pride in his

wonderful achievements in induction. He was ever ready to astound and

charm his listeners by describing his methods.

“By elimination,” said Jolnes, spreading his clues upon a little table,

“I got rid of certain parts of the city to which Mrs. Snyder might have

removed. You see this hatpin? That eliminates Brooklyn. No woman

attempts to board a car at the Brooklyn Bridge without being sure that

she carries a hatpin with which to fight her way into a seat. And now I

will demonstrate to you that she could not have gone to Harlem. Behind

this door are two hooks in the wall. Upon one of these Mrs. Snyder has

hung her bonnet, and upon the other her shawl. You will observe that

the bottom of the hanging shawl has gradually made a soiled streak

against the plastered wall. The mark is clean-cut, proving that there

is no fringe on the shawl. Now, was there ever a case where a

middle-aged woman, wearing a shawl, boarded a Harlem train without

there being a fringe on the shawl to catch in the gate and delay the

passengers behind her? So we eliminate Harlem.

“Therefore I conclude that Mrs. Snyder has not moved very far away. On

this torn piece of card you see the word ‘Left,’ the letter ‘C,’ and

the number ‘12.’ Now, I happen to know that No. 12 Avenue C is a

first-class boarding house, far beyond your sister’s means—as we

suppose. But then I find this piece of a theatre programme, crumpled

into an odd shape. What meaning does it convey. None to you, very

likely, Mr. Meeks; but it is eloquent to one whose habits and training

take cognizance of the smallest things.

“You have told me that your sister was a scrub woman. She scrubbed the

floors of offices and hallways. Let us assume that she procured such

work to perform in a theatre. Where is valuable jewellery lost the

oftenest, Mr. Meeks? In the theatres, of course. Look at that piece of

programme, Mr. Meeks. Observe the round impression in it. It has been

wrapped around a ring—perhaps a ring of great value. Mrs. Snyder found

the ring while at work in the theatre. She hastily tore off a piece of

a programme, wrapped the ring carefully, and thrust it into her bosom.

The next day she disposed of it, and, with her increased means, looked

about her for a more comfortable place in which to live. When I reach

thus far in the chain I see nothing impossible about No. 12 Avenue C.

It is there we will find your sister, Mr. Meeks.”

Shamrock Jolnes concluded his convincing speech with the smile of a

successful artist. Meeks’s admiration was too great for words. Together

they went to No. 12 Avenue C. It was an old-fashioned brownstone house

in a prosperous and respectable neighbourhood.

They rang the bell, and on inquiring were told that no Mrs. Snyder was

known there, and that not within six months had a new occupant come to

the house.

When they reached the sidewalk again, Meeks examined the clues which he

had brought away from his sister’s old room.

“I am no detective,” he remarked to Jolnes as he raised the piece of

theatre programme to his nose, “but it seems to me that instead of a

ring having been wrapped in this paper it was one of those round

peppermint drops. And this piece with the address on it looks to me

like the end of a seat coupon—No. 12, row C, left aisle.”

Shamrock Jolnes had a far-away look in his eyes.

“I think you would do well to consult Juggins,” said he.

“Who is Juggins?” asked Meeks.

“He is the leader,” said Jolnes, “of a new modern school of detectives.

Their methods are different from ours, but it is said that Juggins has

solved some extremely puzzling cases. I will take you to him.”

They found the greater Juggins in his office. He was a small man with

light hair, deeply absorbed in reading one of the bourgeois works of

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The two great detectives of different schools shook hands with

ceremony, and Meeks was introduced.

“State the facts,” said Juggins, going on with his reading.

When Meeks ceased, the greater one closed his book and said:

“Do I understand that your sister is fifty-two years of age, with a

large mole on the side of her nose, and that she is a very poor widow,

making a scanty living by scrubbing, and with a very homely face and

figure?”

“That describes her exactly,” admitted Meeks. Juggins rose and put on

his hat.

“In fifteen minutes,” he said, “I will return, bringing you her present

address.”

Shamrock Jolnes turned pale, but forced a smile.

Within the specified time Juggins returned and consulted a little slip

of paper held in his hand.

“Your sister, Mary Snyder,” he announced calmly, “will be found at No.

162 Chilton street. She is living in the back hall bedroom, five

flights up. The house is only four blocks from here,” he continued,

addressing Meeks. “Suppose you go and verify the statement and then

return here. Mr. Jolnes will await you, I dare say.”

Meeks hurried away. In twenty minutes he was back again, with a beaming

face.

“She is there and well!” he cried. “Name your fee!”

“Two dollars,” said Juggins.

When Meeks had settled his bill and departed, Shamrock Jolnes stood

with his hat in his hand before Juggins.

“If it would not be asking too much,” he stammered—“if you would favour

me so far—would you object to—”

“Certainly not,” said Juggins pleasantly. “I will tell you how I did

it. You remember the description of Mrs. Snyder? Did you ever know a

woman like that who wasn’t paying weekly instalments on an enlarged

crayon portrait of herself? The biggest factory of that kind in the

country is just around the corner. I went there and got her address off

the books. That’s all.”

III.

WITCHES’ LOAVES

Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one where

you go up three steps, and the bell tinkles when you open the door).

Miss Martha was forty, her bank-book showed a credit of two thousand

dollars, and she possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart.

Many people have married whose chances to do so were much inferior to

Miss Martha’s.

Two or three times a week a customer came in in whom she began to take

an interest. He was a middle-aged man, wearing spectacles and a brown

beard trimmed to a careful point.

He spoke English with a strong German accent. His clothes were worn and

darned in places, and wrinkled and baggy in others. But he looked neat,

and had very good manners.

He always bought two loaves of stale bread. Fresh bread was five cents

a loaf. Stale ones were two for five. Never did he call for anything

but stale bread.

Once Miss Martha saw a red and brown stain on his fingers. She was sure

then that he was an artist and very poor. No doubt he lived in a

garret, where he painted pictures and ate stale bread and thought of

the good things to eat in Miss Martha’s bakery.

Often when Miss Martha sat down to her chops and light rolls and jam

and tea she would sigh, and wish that the gentle-mannered artist might

share her tasty meal instead of eating his dry crust in that draughty

attic. Miss Martha’s heart, as you have been told, was a sympathetic

one.

In order to test her theory as to his occupation, she brought from her

room one day a painting that she had bought at a sale, and set it

against the shelves behind the bread counter.

It was a Venetian scene. A splendid marble palazzio (so it said on the

picture) stood in the foreground—or rather forewater. For the rest

there were gondolas (with the lady trailing her hand in the water),

clouds, sky, and chiaro-oscuro in plenty. No artist could fail to

notice it.

Two days afterward the customer came in.

“Two loafs of stale bread, if you blease.

“You haf here a fine bicture, madame,” he said while she was wrapping

up the bread.

“Yes?” says Miss Martha, revelling in her own cunning. “I do so admire

art and” (no, it would not do to say “artists” thus early) “and

paintings,” she substituted. “You think it is a good picture?”

“Der balance,” said the customer, “is not in good drawing. Der

bairspective of it is not true. Goot morning, madame.”

He took his bread, bowed, and hurried out.

Yes, he must be an artist. Miss Martha took the picture back to her

room.

How gentle and kindly his eyes shone behind his spectacles! What a

broad brow he had! To be able to judge perspective at a glance—and to

live on stale bread! But genius often has to struggle before it is

recognized.

What a thing it would be for art and perspective if genius were backed

by two thousand dollars in bank, a bakery, and a sympathetic heart to—

But these were day-dreams, Miss Martha.

Often now when he came he would chat for a while across the showcase.

He seemed to crave Miss Martha’s cheerful words.

He kept on buying stale bread. Never a cake, never a pie, never one of

her delicious Sally Lunns.

She thought he began to look thinner and discouraged. Her heart ached

to add something good to eat to his meagre purchase, but her courage

failed at the act. She did not dare affront him. She knew the pride of

artists.

Miss Martha took to wearing her blue-dotted silk waist behind the

counter. In the back room she cooked a mysterious compound of quince

seeds and borax. Ever so many people use it for the complexion.

One day the customer came in as usual, laid his nickel on the showcase,

and called for his stale loaves. While Miss Martha was reaching for

them there was a great tooting and clanging, and a fire-engine came

lumbering past.

The customer hurried to the door to look, as any one will. Suddenly

inspired, Miss Martha seized the opportunity.

On the bottom shelf behind the counter was a pound of fresh butter that

the dairyman had left ten minutes before. With a bread knife Miss

Martha made a deep slash in each of the stale loaves, inserted a

generous quantity of butter, and pressed the loaves tight again.

When the customer turned once more she was tying the paper around them.

When he had gone, after an unusually pleasant little chat, Miss Martha

smiled to herself, but not without a slight fluttering of the heart.

Had she been too bold? Would he take offense? But surely not. There was

no language of edibles. Butter was no emblem of unmaidenly forwardness.

For a long time that day her mind dwelt on the subject. She imagined

the scene when he should discover her little deception.

He would lay down his brushes and palette. There would stand his easel

with the picture he was painting in which the perspective was beyond

criticism.

He would prepare for his luncheon of dry bread and water. He would

slice into a loaf—ah!

Miss Martha blushed. Would he think of the hand that placed it there as

he ate? Would he—

The front door bell jangled viciously. Somebody was coming in, making a

great deal of noise.

Miss Martha hurried to the front. Two men were there. One was a young

man smoking a pipe—a man she had never seen before. The other was her

artist.

His face was very red, his hat was on the back of his head, his hair

was wildly rumpled. He clinched his two fists and shook them

ferociously at Miss Martha. _At Miss Martha_.

“_Dummkopf!_” he shouted with extreme loudness; and then

“_Tausendonfer!_” or something like it in German.

The young man tried to draw him away.

“I vill not go,” he said angrily, “else I shall told her.”

He made a bass drum of Miss Martha’s counter.

“You haf shpoilt me,” he cried, his blue eyes blazing behind his

spectacles. “I vill tell you. You vas von _meddingsome old cat!_”

Miss Martha leaned weakly against the shelves and laid one hand on her

blue-dotted silk waist. The young man took the other by the collar.

“Come on,” he said, “you’ve said enough.” He dragged the angry one out

at the door to the sidewalk, and then came back.

“Guess you ought to be told, ma’am,” he said, “what the row is about.

That’s Blumberger. He’s an architectural draftsman. I work in the same

office with him.

“He’s been working hard for three months drawing a plan for a new city

hall. It was a prize competition. He finished inking the lines

yesterday. You know, a draftsman always makes his drawing in pencil

first. When it’s done he rubs out the pencil lines with handfuls of

stale bread crumbs. That’s better than India rubber.

“Blumberger’s been buying the bread here. Well, to-day—well, you know,

ma’am, that butter isn’t—well, Blumberger’s plan isn’t good for

anything now except to cut up into railroad sandwiches.”

Miss Martha went into the back room. She took off the blue-dotted silk

waist and put on the old brown serge she used to wear. Then she poured

the quince seed and borax mixture out of the window into the ash can.

IV.

THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES

Said Mr. Kipling, “The cities are full of pride, challenging each to

each.” Even so.

New York was empty. Two hundred thousand of its people were away for

the summer. Three million eight hundred thousand remained as caretakers

and to pay the bills of the absentees. But the two hundred thousand are

an expensive lot.

The New Yorker sat at a roof-garden table, ingesting solace through a

straw. His panama lay upon a chair. The July audience was scattered

among vacant seats as widely as outfielders when the champion batter

steps to the plate. Vaudeville happened at intervals. The breeze was

cool from the bay; around and above—everywhere except on the stage—were

stars. Glimpses were to be had of waiters, always disappearing, like

startled chamois. Prudent visitors who had ordered refreshments by

’phone in the morning were now being served. The New Yorker was aware

of certain drawbacks to his comfort, but content beamed softly from his

rimless eyeglasses. His family was out of town. The drinks were warm;

the ballet was suffering from lack of both tune and talcum—but his

family would not return until September.

Then up into the garden stumbled the man from Topaz City, Nevada. The

gloom of the solitary sightseer enwrapped him. Bereft of joy through

loneliness, he stalked with a widower’s face through the halls of

pleasure. Thirst for human companionship possessed him as he panted in

the metropolitan draught. Straight to the New Yorker’s table he

steered.

The New Yorker, disarmed and made reckless by the lawless atmosphere of

a roof garden, decided upon utter abandonment of his life’s traditions.

He resolved to shatter with one rash, dare-devil, impulsive,

hair-brained act the conventions that had hitherto been woven into his

existence. Carrying out this radical and precipitous inspiration he

nodded slightly to the stranger as he drew nearer the table.

The next moment found the man from Topaz City in the list of the New

Yorker’s closest friends. He took a chair at the table, he gathered two

others for his feet, he tossed his broad-brimmed hat upon a fourth, and

told his life’s history to his new-found pard.

The New Yorker warmed a little, as an apartment-house furnace warms

when the strawberry season begins. A waiter who came within hail in an

unguarded moment was captured and paroled on an errand to the Doctor

Wiley experimental station. The ballet was now in the midst of a

musical vagary, and danced upon the stage programmed as Bolivian

peasants, clothed in some portions of its anatomy as Norwegian fisher

maidens, in others as ladies-in-waiting of Marie Antoinette,

historically denuded in other portions so as to represent sea nymphs,

and presenting the _tout ensemble_ of a social club of Central Park

West housemaids at a fish fry.

“Been in the city long?” inquired the New Yorker, getting ready the

exact tip against the waiter’s coming with large change from the bill.

“Me?” said the man from Topaz City. “Four days. Never in Topaz City,

was you?”

“I!” said the New Yorker. “I was never farther west than Eighth Avenue.

I had a brother who died on Ninth, but I met the cortege at Eighth.

There was a bunch of violets on the hearse, and the undertaker

mentioned the incident to avoid mistake. I cannot say that I am

familiar with the West.”

“Topaz City,” said the man who occupied four chairs, “is one of the

finest towns in the world.”

“I presume that you have seen the sights of the metropolis,” said the

New Yorker, “Four days is not a sufficient length of time in which to

view even our most salient points of interest, but one can possibly

form a general impression. Our architectural supremacy is what

generally strikes visitors to our city most forcibly. Of course you

have seen our Flatiron Building. It is considered—”

“Saw it,” said the man from Topaz City. “But you ought to come out our

way. It’s mountainous, you know, and the ladies all wear short skirts

for climbing and—”

“Excuse me,” said the New Yorker, “but that isn’t exactly the point.

New York must be a wonderful revelation to a visitor from the West.

Now, as to our hotels—”

“Say,” said the man from Topaz City, “that reminds me—there were

sixteen stage robbers shot last year within twenty miles of—”

“I was speaking of hotels,” said the New Yorker. “We lead Europe in

that respect. And as far as our leisure class is concerned we are far—”

“Oh, I don’t know,” interrupted the man from Topaz City. “There were

twelve tramps in our jail when I left home. I guess New York isn’t so—”

“Beg pardon, you seem to misapprehend the idea. Of course, you visited

the Stock Exchange and Wall Street, where the—”

“Oh, yes,” said the man from Topaz City, as he lighted a Pennsylvania

stogie, “and I want to tell you that we’ve got the finest town marshal

west of the Rockies. Bill Rainer he took in five pickpockets out of the

crowd when Red Nose Thompson laid the cornerstone of his new saloon.

Topaz City don’t allow—”

“Have another Rhine wine and seltzer,” suggested the New Yorker. “I’ve

never been West, as I said; but there can’t be any place out there to

compare with New York. As to the claims of Chicago I—”

“One man,” said the Topazite—“one man only has been murdered and robbed

in Topaz City in the last three—”

“Oh, I know what Chicago is,” interposed the New Yorker. “Have you been

up Fifth Avenue to see the magnificent residences of our mil—”

“Seen ’em all. You ought to know Reub Stegall, the assessor of Topaz.

When old man Tilbury, that owns the only two-story house in town, tried

to swear his taxes from $6,000 down to $450.75, Reub buckled on his

forty-five and went down to see—”

“Yes, yes, but speaking of our great city—one of its greatest features

is our superb police department. There is no body of men in the world

that can equal it for—”

“That waiter gets around like a Langley flying machine,” remarked the

man from Topaz City, thirstily. “We’ve got men in our town, too, worth

$400,000. There’s old Bill Withers and Colonel Metcalf and—”

“Have you seen Broadway at night?” asked the New Yorker, courteously.

“There are few streets in the world that can compare with it. When the

electrics are shining and the pavements are alive with two hurrying

streams of elegantly clothed men and beautiful women attired in the

costliest costumes that wind in and out in a close maze of

expensively—”

“Never knew but one case in Topaz City,” said the man from the West.

“Jim Bailey, our mayor, had his watch and chain and $235 in cash taken

from his pocket while—”

“That’s another matter,” said the New Yorker. “While you are in our

city you should avail yourself of every opportunity to see its wonders.

Our rapid transit system—”

“If you was out in Topaz,” broke in the man from there, “I could show

you a whole cemetery full of people that got killed accidentally.

Talking about mangling folks up! why, when Berry Rogers turned loose

that old double-barrelled shot-gun of his loaded with slugs at

anybody—”

“Here, waiter!” called the New Yorker. “Two more of the same. It is

acknowledged by every one that our city is the centre of art, and

literature, and learning. Take, for instance, our after-dinner

speakers. Where else in the country would you find such wit and

eloquence as emanate from Depew and Ford, and—”

“If you take the papers,” interrupted the Westerner, “you must have

read of Pete Webster’s daughter. The Websters live two blocks north of

the court-house in Topaz City. Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty

days and nights without waking up. The doctors said that—”

“Pass the matches, please,” said the New Yorker. “Have you observed the

expedition with which new buildings are being run up in New York?

Improved inventions in steel framework and—”

“I noticed,” said the Nevadian, “that the statistics of Topaz City

showed only one carpenter crushed by falling timbers last year and he

was caught in a cyclone.”

“They abuse our sky line,” continued the New Yorker, “and it is likely

that we are not yet artistic in the construction of our buildings. But

I can safely assert that we lead in pictorial and decorative art. In

some of our houses can be found masterpieces in the way of paintings

and sculpture. One who has the entree to our best galleries will find—”

“Back up,” exclaimed the man from Topaz City. “There was a game last

month in our town in which $90,000 changed hands on a pair of—”

“Ta-romt-tara!” went the orchestra. The stage curtain, blushing pink at

the name “Asbestos” inscribed upon it, came down with a slow midsummer

movement. The audience trickled leisurely down the elevator and stairs.

On the sidewalk below, the New Yorker and the man from Topaz City shook

hands with alcoholic gravity. The elevated crashed raucously, surface

cars hummed and clanged, cabmen swore, newsboys shrieked, wheels

clattered ear-piercingly. The New Yorker conceived a happy thought,

with which he aspired to clinch the pre-eminence of his city.

“You must admit,” said he, “that in the way of noise New York is far

ahead of any other—”

“Back to the everglades!” said the man from Topaz City. “In 1900, when

Sousa’s band and the repeating candidate were in our town you

couldn’t—”

The rattle of an express wagon drowned the rest of the words.

V.

HOLDING UP A TRAIN

Note. The man who told me these things was for several years an outlaw

in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he so frankly describes.

His description of the _modus operandi_ should prove interesting, his

counsel of value to the potential passenger in some future “hold-up,”

while his estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induce

any one to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in almost exactly

his own words.

O. H.

Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up

a train would be a hard job. Well, it isn’t; it’s easy. I have

contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of

express companies, and the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was

in being swindled by unscrupulous people while spending the money I

got. The danger wasn’t anything to speak of, and we didn’t mind the

trouble.

One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two have

succeeded a few times; three can do it if they are hustlers, but five

is about the right number. The time to do it and the place depend upon

several things.

The first “stick-up” I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I

got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business.

Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone

wrong. The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man

and plays some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire

fences and “nesters” made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth.

Jim S–––– and I were working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado. The nesters

had the cowman on the go. They had taken up the land and elected

officers who were hard to get along with. Jim and I rode into La Junta

one day, going south from a round-up. We were having a little fun

without malice toward anybody when a farmer administration cut in and

tried to harvest us. Jim shot a deputy marshal, and I kind of

corroborated his side of the argument. We skirmished up and down the

main street, the boomers having bad luck all the time. After a while we

leaned forward and shoved for the ranch down on the Ceriso. We were

riding a couple of horses that couldn’t fly, but they could catch

birds.

A few days after that, a gang of the La Junta boomers came to the ranch

and wanted us to go back with them. Naturally, we declined. We had the

house on them, and before we were done refusing, that old ’dobe was

plumb full of lead. When dark came we fagged ’em a batch of bullets and

shoved out the back door for the rocks. They sure smoked us as we went.

We had to drift, which we did, and rounded up down in Oklahoma.

Well, there wasn’t anything we could get there, and, being mighty hard

up, we decided to transact a little business with the railroads. Jim

and I joined forces with Tom and Ike Moore—two brothers who had plenty

of sand they were willing to convert into dust. I can call their names,

for both of them are dead. Tom was shot while robbing a bank in

Arkansas; Ike was killed during the more dangerous pastime of attending

a dance in the Creek Nation.

We selected a place on the Santa Fé where there was a bridge across a

deep creek surrounded by heavy timber. All passenger trains took water

at the tank close to one end of the bridge. It was a quiet place, the

nearest house being five miles away. The day before it happened, we

rested our horses and “made medicine” as to how we should get about it.

Our plans were not at all elaborate, as none of us had ever engaged in

a hold-up before.

The Santa Fé flyer was due at the tank at 11.15 p. m. At eleven, Tom

and I lay down on one side of the track, and Jim and Ike took the

other. As the train rolled up, the headlight flashing far down the

track and the steam hissing from the engine, I turned weak all over. I

would have worked a whole year on the ranch for nothing to have been

out of that affair right then. Some of the nerviest men in the business

have told me that they felt the same way the first time.

The engine had hardly stopped when I jumped on the running-board on one

side, while Jim mounted the other. As soon as the engineer and fireman

saw our guns they threw up their hands without being told, and begged

us not to shoot, saying they would do anything we wanted them to.

“Hit the ground,” I ordered, and they both jumped off. We drove them

before us down the side of the train. While this was happening, Tom and

Ike had been blazing away, one on each side of the train, yelling like

Apaches, so as to keep the passengers herded in the cars. Some fellow

stuck a little twenty-two calibre out one of the coach windows and

fired it straight up in the air. I let drive and smashed the glass just

over his head. That settled everything like resistance from that

direction.

By this time all my nervousness was gone. I felt a kind of pleasant

excitement as if I were at a dance or a frolic of some sort. The lights

were all out in the coaches, and, as Tom and Ike gradually quit firing

and yelling, it got to be almost as still as a graveyard. I remember

hearing a little bird chirping in a bush at the side of the track, as

if it were complaining at being waked up.

I made the fireman get a lantern, and then I went to the express car

and yelled to the messenger to open up or get perforated. He slid the

door back and stood in it with his hands up. “Jump overboard, son,” I

said, and he hit the dirt like a lump of lead. There were two safes in

the car—a big one and a little one. By the way, I first located the

messenger’s arsenal—a double-barrelled shot-gun with buckshot

cartridges and a thirty-eight in a drawer. I drew the cartridges from

the shot-gun, pocketed the pistol, and called the messenger inside. I

shoved my gun against his nose and put him to work. He couldn’t open

the big safe, but he did the little one. There was only nine hundred

dollars in it. That was mighty small winnings for our trouble, so we

decided to go through the passengers. We took our prisoners to the

smoking-car, and from there sent the engineer through the train to

light up the coaches. Beginning with the first one, we placed a man at

each door and ordered the passengers to stand between the seats with

their hands up.

If you want to find out what cowards the majority of men are, all you

have to do is rob a passenger train. I don’t mean because they don’t

resist—I’ll tell you later on why they can’t do that—but it makes a man

feel sorry for them the way they lose their heads. Big, burly drummers

and farmers and ex-soldiers and high-collared dudes and sports that, a

few moments before, were filling the car with noise and bragging, get

so scared that their ears flop.

There were very few people in the day coaches at that time of night, so

we made a slim haul until we got to the sleeper. The Pullman conductor

met me at one door while Jim was going round to the other one. He very

politely informed me that I could not go into that car, as it did not

belong to the railroad company, and, besides, the passengers had

already been greatly disturbed by the shouting and firing. Never in all

my life have I met with a finer instance of official dignity and

reliance upon the power of Mr. Pullman’s great name. I jabbed my

six-shooter so hard against Mr. Conductor’s front that I afterward

found one of his vest buttons so firmly wedged in the end of the barrel

that I had to shoot it out. He just shut up like a weak-springed knife

and rolled down the car steps.

I opened the door of the sleeper and stepped inside. A big, fat old man

came wabbling up to me, puffing and blowing. He had one coat-sleeve on

and was trying to put his vest on over that. I don’t know who he

thought I was.

“Young man, young man,” says he, “you must keep cool and not get

excited. Above everything, keep cool.”

“I can’t,” says I. “Excitement’s just eating me up.” And then I let out

a yell and turned loose my forty-five through the skylight.

That old man tried to dive into one of the lower berths, but a screech

came out of it and a bare foot that took him in the bread-basket and

landed him on the floor. I saw Jim coming in the other door, and I

hollered for everybody to climb out and line up.

They commenced to scramble down, and for a while we had a three-ringed

circus. The men looked as frightened and tame as a lot of rabbits in a

deep snow. They had on, on an average, about a quarter of a suit of

clothes and one shoe apiece. One chap was sitting on the floor of the

aisle, looking as if he were working a hard sum in arithmetic. He was

trying, very solemn, to pull a lady’s number two shoe on his number

nine foot.

The ladies didn’t stop to dress. They were so curious to see a real,

live train robber, bless ’em, that they just wrapped blankets and

sheets around themselves and came out, squeaky and fidgety looking.

They always show more curiosity and sand than the men do.

We got them all lined up and pretty quiet, and I went through the

bunch. I found very little on them—I mean in the way of valuables. One

man in the line was a sight. He was one of those big, overgrown, solemn

snoozers that sit on the platform at lectures and look wise. Before

crawling out he had managed to put on his long, frock-tailed coat and

his high silk hat. The rest of him was nothing but pajamas and bunions.

When I dug into that Prince Albert, I expected to drag out at least a

block of gold mine stock or an armful of Government bonds, but all I

found was a little boy’s French harp about four inches long. What it

was there for, I don’t know. I felt a little mad because he had fooled

me so. I stuck the harp up against his mouth.

“If you can’t pay—play,” I says.

“I can’t play,” says he.

“Then learn right off quick,” says I, letting him smell the end of my

gun-barrel.

He caught hold of the harp, turned red as a beet, and commenced to

blow. He blew a dinky little tune I remembered hearing when I was a

kid:

Prettiest little gal in the country—oh!

Mammy and Daddy told me so.

I made him keep on playing it all the time we were in the car. Now and

then he’d get weak and off the key, and I’d turn my gun on him and ask

what was the matter with that little gal, and whether he had any

intention of going back on her, which would make him start up again

like sixty. I think that old boy standing there in his silk hat and

bare feet, playing his little French harp, was the funniest sight I

ever saw. One little red-headed woman in the line broke out laughing at

him. You could have heard her in the next car.

Then Jim held them steady while I searched the berths. I grappled

around in those beds and filled a pillow-case with the strangest

assortment of stuff you ever saw. Now and then I’d come across a little

pop-gun pistol, just about right for plugging teeth with, which I’d

throw out the window. When I finished with the collection, I dumped the

pillow-case load in the middle of the aisle. There were a good many

watches, bracelets, rings, and pocket-books, with a sprinkling of false

teeth, whiskey flasks, face-powder boxes, chocolate caramels, and heads

of hair of various colours and lengths. There were also about a dozen

ladies’ stockings into which jewellery, watches, and rolls of bills had

been stuffed and then wadded up tight and stuck under the mattresses. I

offered to return what I called the “scalps,” saying that we were not

Indians on the war-path, but none of the ladies seemed to know to whom

the hair belonged.

One of the women—and a good-looker she was—wrapped in a striped

blanket, saw me pick up one of the stockings that was pretty chunky and

heavy about the toe, and she snapped out:

“That’s mine, sir. You’re not in the business of robbing women, are

you?”

Now, as this was our first hold-up, we hadn’t agreed upon any code of

ethics, so I hardly knew what to answer. But, anyway, I replied: “Well,

not as a specialty. If this contains your personal property you can

have it back.”

“It just does,” she declared eagerly, and reached out her hand for it.

“You’ll excuse my taking a look at the contents,” I said, holding the

stocking up by the toe. Out dumped a big gent’s gold watch, worth two

hundred, a gent’s leather pocket-book that we afterward found to

contain six hundred dollars, a 32-calibre revolver; and the only thing

of the lot that could have been a lady’s personal property was a silver

bracelet worth about fifty cents.

I said: “Madame, here’s your property,” and handed her the bracelet.

“Now,” I went on, “how can you expect us to act square with you when

you try to deceive us in this manner? I’m surprised at such conduct.”

The young woman flushed up as if she had been caught doing something

dishonest. Some other woman down the line called out: “The mean thing!”

I never knew whether she meant the other lady or me.

When we finished our job we ordered everybody back to bed, told ’em

good night very politely at the door, and left. We rode forty miles

before daylight and then divided the stuff. Each one of us got

$1,752.85 in money. We lumped the jewellery around. Then we scattered,

each man for himself.

That was my first train robbery, and it was about as easily done as any

of the ones that followed. But that was the last and only time I ever

went through the passengers. I don’t like that part of the business.

Afterward I stuck strictly to the express car. During the next eight

years I handled a good deal of money.

The best haul I made was just seven years after the first one. We found

out about a train that was going to bring out a lot of money to pay off

the soldiers at a Government post. We stuck that train up in broad

daylight. Five of us lay in the sand hills near a little station. Ten

soldiers were guarding the money on the train, but they might just as

well have been at home on a furlough. We didn’t even allow them to

stick their heads out the windows to see the fun. We had no trouble at

all in getting the money, which was all in gold. Of course, a big howl

was raised at the time about the robbery. It was Government stuff, and

the Government got sarcastic and wanted to know what the convoy of

soldiers went along for. The only excuse given was that nobody was

expecting an attack among those bare sand hills in daytime. I don’t

know what the Government thought about the excuse, but I know that it

was a good one. The surprise—that is the keynote of the train-robbing

business. The papers published all kinds of stories about the loss,

finally agreeing that it was between nine thousand and ten thousand

dollars. The Government sawed wood. Here are the correct figures,

printed for the first time—forty-eight thousand dollars. If anybody

will take the trouble to look over Uncle Sam’s private accounts for

that little debit to profit and loss, he will find that I am right to a

cent.

By that time we were expert enough to know what to do. We rode due west

twenty miles, making a trail that a Broadway policeman could have

followed, and then we doubled back, hiding our tracks. On the second

night after the hold-up, while posses were scouring the country in

every direction, Jim and I were eating supper in the second story of a

friend’s house in the town where the alarm started from. Our friend

pointed out to us, in an office across the street, a printing press at

work striking off handbills offering a reward for our capture.

I have been asked what we do with the money we get. Well, I never could

account for a tenth part of it after it was spent. It goes fast and

freely. An outlaw has to have a good many friends. A highly respected

citizen may, and often does, get along with very few, but a man on the

dodge has got to have “sidekickers.” With angry posses and

reward-hungry officers cutting out a hot trail for him, he must have a

few places scattered about the country where he can stop and feed

himself and his horse and get a few hours’ sleep without having to keep

both eyes open. When he makes a haul he feels like dropping some of the

coin with these friends, and he does it liberally. Sometimes I have, at

the end of a hasty visit at one of these havens of refuge, flung a

handful of gold and bills into the laps of the kids playing on the

floor, without knowing whether my contribution was a hundred dollars or

a thousand.

When old-timers make a big haul they generally go far away to one of

the big cities to spend their money. Green hands, however successful a

hold-up they make, nearly always give themselves away by showing too

much money near the place where they got it.

I was in a job in ’94 where we got twenty thousand dollars. We followed

our favourite plan for a get-away—that is, doubled on our trail—and

laid low for a time near the scene of the train’s bad luck. One morning

I picked up a newspaper and read an article with big headlines stating

that the marshal, with eight deputies and a posse of thirty armed

citizens, had the train robbers surrounded in a mesquite thicket on the

Cimarron, and that it was a question of only a few hours when they

would be dead men or prisoners. While I was reading that article I was

sitting at breakfast in one of the most elegant private residences in

Washington City, with a flunky in knee pants standing behind my chair.

Jim was sitting across the table talking to his half-uncle, a retired

naval officer, whose name you have often seen in the accounts of doings

in the capital. We had gone there and bought rattling outfits of good

clothes, and were resting from our labours among the nabobs. We must

have been killed in that mesquite thicket, for I can make an affidavit

that we didn’t surrender.

Now I propose to tell why it is easy to hold up a train, and, then, why

no one should ever do it.

In the first place, the attacking party has all the advantage. That is,

of course, supposing that they are old-timers with the necessary

experience and courage. They have the outside and are protected by the

darkness, while the others are in the light, hemmed into a small space,

and exposed, the moment they show a head at a window or door, to the

aim of a man who is a dead shot and who won’t hesitate to shoot.

But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy is

the element of surprise in connection with the imagination of the

passengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed you

will understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed.

That horse gets the awfullest imagination on him in the world. You

can’t coax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks

as big to him as the Mississippi River. That’s just the way with the

passenger. He thinks there are a hundred men yelling and shooting

outside, when maybe there are only two or three. And the muzzle of a

forty-five looks like the entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all

right, although he may do mean little tricks, like hiding a wad of

money in his shoe and forgetting to dig-up until you jostle his ribs

some with the end of your six-shooter; but there’s no harm in him.

As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than if

they had been so many sheep. I don’t mean that they are cowards; I mean

that they have got sense. They know they’re not up against a bluff.

It’s the same way with the officers. I’ve seen secret service men,

marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek as

Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under

his seat and dig up along with the rest while I was taking toll. He

wasn’t afraid; he simply knew that we had the drop on the whole outfit.

Besides, many of those officers have families and they feel that they

oughtn’t to take chances; whereas death has no terrors for the man who

holds up a train. He expects to get killed some day, and he generally

does. My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold-up, is to line

up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may

be of some benefit to you. Another reason why officers are backward

about mixing things with a train robber is a financial one. Every time

there is a scrimmage and somebody gets killed, the officers lose money.

If the train robber gets away they swear out a warrant against John Doe

et al. and travel hundreds of miles and sign vouchers for thousands on

the trail of the fugitives, and the Government foots the bills. So,

with them, it is a question of mileage rather than courage.

I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is

the best card in playing for a hold-up.

Along in ’92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers

down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got

so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job

they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were

going to hold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station

of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.

That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in Muscogee

and put them on the train. Beside them they had fifty armed men hid in

the depot at Pryor Creek.

When the Katy Flyer pulled in not a Dalton showed up. The next station

was Adair, six miles away. When the train reached there, and the

deputies were having a good time explaining what they would have done

to the Dalton gang if they had turned up, all at once it sounded like

an army firing outside. The conductor and brakeman came running into

the car yelling, “Train robbers!”

Some of those deputies lit out of the door, hit the ground, and kept on

running. Some of them hid their Winchesters under the seats. Two of

them made a fight and were both killed.

It took the Daltons just ten minutes to capture the train and whip the

escort. In twenty minutes more they robbed the express car of

twenty-seven thousand dollars and made a clean get-away.

My opinion is that those deputies would have put up a stiff fight at

Pryor Creek, where they were expecting trouble, but they were taken by

surprise and “locoed” at Adair, just as the Daltons, who knew their

business, expected they would.

I don’t think I ought to close without giving some deductions from my

experience of eight years “on the dodge.” It doesn’t pay to rob trains.

Leaving out the question of right and morals, which I don’t think I

ought to tackle, there is very little to envy in the life of an outlaw.

After a while money ceases to have any value in his eyes. He gets to

looking upon the railroads and express companies as his bankers, and

his six-shooter as a cheque book good for any amount. He throws away

money right and left. Most of the time he is on the jump, riding day

and night, and he lives so hard between times that he doesn’t enjoy the

taste of high life when he gets it. He knows that his time is bound to

come to lose his life or liberty, and that the accuracy of his aim, the

speed of his horse, and the fidelity of his “sider,” are all that

postpone the inevitable.

It isn’t that he loses any sleep over danger from the officers of the

law. In all my experience I never knew officers to attack a band of

outlaws unless they outnumbered them at least three to one.

But the outlaw carries one thought constantly in his mind—and that is

what makes him so sore against life, more than anything else—he knows

where the marshals get their recruits of deputies. He knows that the

majority of these upholders of the law were once lawbreakers, horse

thieves, rustlers, highwaymen, and outlaws like himself, and that they

gained their positions and immunity by turning state’s evidence, by

turning traitor and delivering up their comrades to imprisonment and

death. He knows that some day—unless he is shot first—his Judas will

set to work, the trap will be laid, and he will be the surprised

instead of a surpriser at a stick-up.

That is why the man who holds up trains picks his company with a

thousand times the care with which a careful girl chooses a sweetheart.

That is why he raises himself from his blanket of nights and listens to

the tread of every horse’s hoofs on the distant road. That is why he

broods suspiciously for days upon a jesting remark or an unusual

movement of a tried comrade, or the broken mutterings of his closest

friend, sleeping by his side.

And it is one of the reasons why the train-robbing profession is not so

pleasant a one as either of its collateral branches—politics or

cornering the market.

VI.

ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN

Do you know the time of the dogmen?

When the forefinger of twilight begins to smudge the clear-drawn lines

of the Big City there is inaugurated an hour devoted to one of the most

melancholy sights of urban life.

Out from the towering flat crags and apartment peaks of the cliff

dwellers of New York steals an army of beings that were once men. Even

yet they go upright upon two limbs and retain human form and speech;

but you will observe that they are behind animals in progress. Each of

these beings follows a dog, to which he is fastened by an artificial

ligament.

These men are all victims to Circe. Not willingly do they become

flunkeys to Fido, bell boys to bull terriers, and toddlers after

Towzer. Modern Circe, instead of turning them into animals, has kindly

left the difference of a six-foot leash between them. Every one of

those dogmen has been either cajoled, bribed, or commanded by his own

particular Circe to take the dear household pet out for an airing.

By their faces and manner you can tell that the dogmen are bound in a

hopeless enchantment. Never will there come even a dog-catcher Ulysses

to remove the spell.

The faces of some are stonily set. They are past the commiseration, the

curiosity, or the jeers of their fellow-beings. Years of matrimony, of

continuous compulsory canine constitutionals, have made them callous.

They unwind their beasts from lamp posts, or the ensnared legs of

profane pedestrians, with the stolidity of mandarins manipulating the

strings of their kites.

Others, more recently reduced to the ranks of Rover’s retinue, take

their medicine sulkily and fiercely. They play the dog on the end of

their line with the pleasure felt by the girl out fishing when she

catches a sea-robin on her hook. They glare at you threateningly if you

look at them, as if it would be their delight to let slip the dogs of

war. These are half-mutinous dogmen, not quite Circe-ized, and you will

do well not to kick their charges, should they sniff around your

ankles.

Others of the tribe do not seem to feel so keenly. They are mostly

unfresh youths, with gold caps and drooping cigarettes, who do not

harmonize with their dogs. The animals they attend wear satin bows in

their collars; and the young men steer them so assiduously that you are

tempted to the theory that some personal advantage, contingent upon

satisfactory service, waits upon the execution of their duties.

The dogs thus personally conducted are of many varieties; but they are

one in fatness, in pampered, diseased vileness of temper, in insolent,

snarling capriciousness of behaviour. They tug at the leash

fractiously, they make leisurely nasal inventory of every door step,

railing, and post. They sit down to rest when they choose; they wheeze

like the winner of a Third Avenue beefsteak-eating contest; they

blunder clumsily into open cellars and coal holes; they lead the dogmen

a merry dance.

These unfortunate dry nurses of dogdom, the cur cuddlers, mongrel

managers, Spitz stalkers, poodle pullers, Skye scrapers, dachshund

dandlers, terrier trailers and Pomeranian pushers of the cliff-dwelling

Circes follow their charges meekly. The doggies neither fear nor

respect them. Masters of the house these men whom they hold in leash

may be, but they are not masters of them. From cosey corner to fire

escape, from divan to dumbwaiter, doggy’s snarl easily drives this

two-legged being who is commissioned to walk at the other end of his

string during his outing.

One twilight the dogmen came forth as usual at their Circes’ pleading,

guerdon, or crack of the whip. One among them was a strong man,

apparently of too solid virtues for this airy vocation. His expression

was melancholic, his manner depressed. He was leashed to a vile white

dog, loathsomely fat, fiendishly ill-natured, gloatingly intractable

toward his despised conductor.

At a corner nearest to his apartment house the dogman turned down a

side street, hoping for fewer witnesses to his ignominy. The surfeited

beast waddled before him, panting with spleen and the labour of motion.

Suddenly the dog stopped. A tall, brown, long-coated, wide-brimmed man

stood like a Colossus blocking the sidewalk and declaring:

“Well, I’m a son of a gun!”

“Jim Berry!” breathed the dogman, with exclamation points in his voice.

“Sam Telfair,” cried Wide-Brim again, “you ding-basted old

willy-walloo, give us your hoof!”

Their hands clasped in the brief, tight greeting of the West that is

death to the hand-shake microbe.

“You old fat rascal!” continued Wide-Brim, with a wrinkled brown smile;

“it’s been five years since I seen you. I been in this town a week, but

you can’t find nobody in such a place. Well, you dinged old married

man, how are they coming?”

Something mushy and heavily soft like raised dough leaned against Jim’s

leg and chewed his trousers with a yeasty growl.

“Get to work,” said Jim, “and explain this yard-wide hydrophobia

yearling you’ve throwed your lasso over. Are you the pound-master of

this burg? Do you call that a dog or what?”

“I need a drink,” said the dogman, dejected at the reminder of his old

dog of the sea. “Come on.”

Hard by was a café. ’Tis ever so in the big city.

They sat at a table, and the bloated monster yelped and scrambled at

the end of his leash to get at the café cat.

“Whiskey,” said Jim to the waiter.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“You’re fatter,” said Jim, “and you look subjugated. I don’t know about

the East agreeing with you. All the boys asked me to hunt you up when I

started. Sandy King, he went to the Klondike. Watson Burrel, he married

the oldest Peters girl. I made some money buying beeves, and I bought a

lot of wild land up on the Little Powder. Going to fence next fall.

Bill Rawlins, he’s gone to farming. You remember Bill, of course—he was

courting Marcella—excuse me, Sam—I mean the lady you married, while she

was teaching school at Prairie View. But you was the lucky man. How is

Missis Telfair?”

“S-h-h-h!” said the dogman, signalling the waiter; “give it a name.”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“She’s well,” he continued, after his chaser. “She refused to live

anywhere but in New York, where she came from. We live in a flat. Every

evening at six I take that dog out for a walk. It’s Marcella’s pet.

There never were two animals on earth, Jim, that hated one another like

me and that dog does. His name’s Lovekins. Marcella dresses for dinner

while we’re out. We eat tabble dote. Ever try one of them, Jim?”

“No, I never,” said Jim. “I seen the signs, but I thought they said

‘table de hole.’ I thought it was French for pool tables. How does it

taste?”

“If you’re going to be in the city for awhile we will—”

“No, sir-ee. I’m starting for home this evening on the 7.25. Like to

stay longer, but I can’t.”

“I’ll walk down to the ferry with you,” said the dogman.

The dog had bound a leg each of Jim and the chair together, and had

sunk into a comatose slumber. Jim stumbled, and the leash was slightly

wrenched. The shrieks of the awakened beast rang for a block around.

“If that’s your dog,” said Jim, when they were on the street again,

“what’s to hinder you from running that habeas corpus you’ve got around

his neck over a limb and walking off and forgetting him?”

“I’d never dare to,” said the dogman, awed at the bold proposition. “He

sleeps in the bed, I sleep on a lounge. He runs howling to Marcella if

I look at him. Some night, Jim, I’m going to get even with that dog.

I’ve made up my mind to do it. I’m going to creep over with a knife and

cut a hole in his mosquito bar so they can get in to him. See if I

don’t do it!”

“You ain’t yourself, Sam Telfair. You ain’t what you was once. I don’t

know about these cities and flats over here. With my own eyes I seen

you stand off both the Tillotson boys in Prairie View with the brass

faucet out of a molasses barrel. And I seen you rope and tie the

wildest steer on Little Powder in 39 1-2.”

“I did, didn’t I?” said the other, with a temporary gleam in his eye.

“But that was before I was dogmatized.”

“Does Misses Telfair—” began Jim.

“Hush!” said the dogman. “Here’s another café.”

They lined up at the bar. The dog fell asleep at their feet.

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“I thought about you,” said Jim, “when I bought that wild land. I

wished you was out there to help me with the stock.”

“Last Tuesday,” said the dogman, “he bit me on the ankle because I

asked for cream in my coffee. He always gets the cream.”

“You’d like Prairie View now,” said Jim. “The boys from the round-ups

for fifty miles around ride in there. One corner of my pasture is in

sixteen miles of the town. There’s a straight forty miles of wire on

one side of it.”

“You pass through the kitchen to get to the bedroom,” said the dogman,

“and you pass through the parlour to get to the bath room, and you back

out through the dining-room to get into the bedroom so you can turn

around and leave by the kitchen. And he snores and barks in his sleep,

and I have to smoke in the park on account of his asthma.”

“Don’t Missis Telfair—” began Jim.

“Oh, shut up!” said the dogman. “What is it this time?”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“Well, I’ll be racking along down toward the ferry,” said the other.

“Come on, there, you mangy, turtle-backed, snake-headed, bench-legged

ton-and-a-half of soap-grease!” shouted the dogman, with a new note in

his voice and a new hand on the leash. The dog scrambled after them,

with an angry whine at such unusual language from his guardian.

At the foot of Twenty-third Street the dogman led the way through

swinging doors.

“Last chance,” said he. “Speak up.”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“I don’t know,” said the ranchman, “where I’ll find the man I want to

take charge of the Little Powder outfit. I want somebody I know

something about. Finest stretch of prairie and timber you ever squinted

your eye over, Sam. Now if you was—”

“Speaking of hydrophobia,” said the dogman, “the other night he chewed

a piece out of my leg because I knocked a fly off of Marcella’s arm.

‘It ought to be cauterized,’ says Marcella, and I was thinking so

myself. I telephones for the doctor, and when he comes Marcella says to

me: ‘Help me hold the poor dear while the doctor fixes his mouth. Oh, I

hope he got no virus on any of his toofies when he bit you.’ Now what

do you think of that?”

“Does Missis Telfair—” began Jim.

“Oh, drop it,” said the dogman. “Come again!”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

They walked on to the ferry. The ranchman stepped to the ticket window.

Suddenly the swift landing of three or four heavy kicks was heard, the

air was rent by piercing canine shrieks, and a pained, outraged,

lubberly, bow-legged pudding of a dog ran frenziedly up the street

alone.

“Ticket to Denver,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” shouted the ex-dogman, reaching for his inside pocket.

VII.

THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER

If you should speak of the Kiowa Reservation to the average New Yorker

he probably wouldn’t know whether you were referring to a new political

dodge at Albany or a leitmotif from “Parsifal.” But out in the Kiowa

Reservation advices have been received concerning the existence of New

York.

A party of us were on a hunting trip in the Reservation. Bud Kingsbury,

our guide, philosopher, and friend, was broiling antelope steaks in

camp one night. One of the party, a pinkish-haired young man in a

correct hunting costume, sauntered over to the fire to light a

cigarette, and remarked carelessly to Bud:

“Nice night!”

“Why, yes,” said Bud, “as nice as any night could be that ain’t

received the Broadway stamp of approval.”

Now, the young man was from New York, but the rest of us wondered how

Bud guessed it. So, when the steaks were done, we besought him to lay

bare his system of ratiocination. And as Bud was something of a

Territorial talking machine he made oration as follows:

“How did I know he was from New York? Well, I figured it out as soon as

he sprung them two words on me. I was in New York myself a couple of

years ago, and I noticed some of the earmarks and hoof tracks of the

Rancho Manhattan.”

“Found New York rather different from the Panhandle, didn’t you, Bud?”

asked one of the hunters.

“Can’t say that I did,” answered Bud; “anyways, not more than some. The

main trail in that town which they call Broadway is plenty travelled,

but they’re about the same brand of bipeds that tramp around in

Cheyenne and Amarillo, At first I was sort of rattled by the crowds,

but I soon says to myself, ‘Here, now, Bud; they’re just plain folks

like you and Geronimo and Grover Cleveland and the Watson boys, so

don’t get all flustered up with consternation under your saddle

blanket,’ and then I feels calm and peaceful, like I was back in the

Nation again at a ghost dance or a green corn pow-wow.

“I’d been saving up for a year to give this New York a whirl. I knew a

man named Summers that lived there, but I couldn’t find him; so I

played a lone hand at enjoying the intoxicating pleasures of the

corn-fed metropolis.

“For a while I was so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights and

the noises of the phonographs and the second-story railroads that I

forgot one of the crying needs of my Western system of natural

requirements. I never was no hand to deny myself the pleasures of

sociable vocal intercourse with friends and strangers. Out in the

Territories when I meet a man I never saw before, inside of nine

minutes I know his income, religion, size of collar, and his wife’s

temper, and how much he pays for clothes, alimony, and chewing tobacco.

It’s a gift with me not to be penurious with my conversation.

“But this here New York was inaugurated on the idea of abstemiousness

in regard to the parts of speech. At the end of three weeks nobody in

the city had fired even a blank syllable in my direction except the

waiter in the grub emporium where I fed. And as his outpourings of

syntax wasn’t nothing but plagiarisms from the bill of fare, he never

satisfied my yearnings, which was to have somebody hit. If I stood next

to a man at a bar he’d edge off and give a Baldwin-Ziegler look as if

he suspected me of having the North Pole concealed on my person. I

began to wish that I’d gone to Abilene or Waco for my _paseado_; for

the mayor of them places will drink with you, and the first citizen you

meet will tell you his middle name and ask you to take a chance in a

raffle for a music box.

“Well, one day when I was particular hankering for to be gregarious

with something more loquacious than a lamp post, a fellow in a caffy

says to me, says he:

“‘Nice day!’

“He was a kind of a manager of the place, and I reckon he’d seen me in

there a good many times. He had a face like a fish and an eye like

Judas, but I got up and put one arm around his neck.

“‘Pardner,’ I says, ‘sure it’s a nice day. You’re the first gentleman

in all New York to observe that the intricacies of human speech might

not be altogether wasted on William Kingsbury. But don’t you think,’

says I, ‘that ’twas a little cool early in the morning; and ain’t there

a feeling of rain in the air to-night? But along about noon it sure was

gallupsious weather. How’s all up to the house? You doing right well

with the caffy, now?’

“Well, sir, that galoot just turns his back and walks off stiff,

without a word, after all my trying to be agreeable! I didn’t know what

to make of it. That night I finds a note from Summers, who’d been away

from town, giving the address of his camp. I goes up to his house and

has a good, old-time talk with his folks. And I tells Summers about the

actions of this coyote in the caffy, and desires interpretation.

“‘Oh,’ says Summers, ‘he wasn’t intending to strike up a conversation

with you. That’s just the New York style. He’d seen you was a regular

customer and he spoke a word or two just to show you he appreciated

your custom. You oughtn’t to have followed it up. That’s about as far

as we care to go with a stranger. A word or so about the weather may be

ventured, but we don’t generally make it the basis of an acquaintance.’

“‘Billy,’ says I, ‘the weather and its ramifications is a solemn

subject with me. Meteorology is one of my sore points. No man can open

up the question of temperature or humidity or the glad sunshine with

me, and then turn tail on it without its leading to a falling

barometer. I’m going down to see that man again and give him a lesson

in the art of continuous conversation. You say New York etiquette

allows him two words and no answer. Well, he’s going to turn himself

into a weather bureau and finish what he begun with me, besides

indulging in neighbourly remarks on other subjects.’

“Summers talked agin it, but I was irritated some and I went on the

street car back to that caffy.

“The same fellow was there yet, walking round in a sort of back corral

where there was tables and chairs. A few people was sitting around

having drinks and sneering at one another.

“I called that man to one side and herded him into a corner. I

unbuttoned enough to show him a thirty-eight I carried stuck under my

vest.

“‘Pardner,’ I says, ‘a brief space ago I was in here and you seized the

opportunity to say it was a nice day. When I attempted to corroborate

your weather signal, you turned your back and walked off. Now,’ says I,

‘you frog-hearted, language-shy, stiff-necked cross between a

Spitzbergen sea cook and a muzzled oyster, you resume where you left

off in your discourse on the weather.’

“The fellow looks at me and tries to grin, but he sees I don’t and he

comes around serious.

“‘Well,’ says he, eyeing the handle of my gun, ‘it was rather a nice

day; some warmish, though.’

“‘Particulars, you mealy-mouthed snoozer,’ I says—‘let’s have the

specifications—expatiate—fill in the outlines. When you start anything

with me in short-hand it’s bound to turn out a storm signal.’

“‘Looked like rain yesterday,’ says the man, ‘but it cleared off fine

in the forenoon. I hear the farmers are needing rain right badly

up-State.’

“‘That’s the kind of a canter,’ says I. ‘Shake the New York dust off

your hoofs and be a real agreeable kind of a centaur. You broke the

ice, you know, and we’re getting better acquainted every minute. Seems

to me I asked you about your family?’

“‘They’re all well, thanks,’ says he. ‘We—we have a new piano.’

“‘Now you’re coming it,’ I says. ‘This cold reserve is breaking up at

last. That little touch about the piano almost makes us brothers.

What’s the youngest kid’s name?’ I asks him.

“‘Thomas,’ says he. ‘He’s just getting well from the measles.’

“‘I feel like I’d known you always,’ says I. ‘Now there was just one

more—are you doing right well with the caffy, now?’

“‘Pretty well,’ he says. ‘I’m putting away a little money.’

“‘Glad to hear it,’ says I. ‘Now go back to your work and get

civilized. Keep your hands off the weather unless you’re ready to

follow it up in a personal manner, It’s a subject that naturally

belongs to sociability and the forming of new ties, and I hate to see

it handed out in small change in a town like this.’

“So the next day I rolls up my blankets and hits the trail away from

New York City.”

For many minutes after Bud ceased talking we lingered around the fire,

and then all hands began to disperse for bed.

As I was unrolling my bedding I heard the pinkish-haired young man

saying to Bud, with something like anxiety in his voice:

“As I say, Mr. Kingsbury, there is something really beautiful about

this night. The delightful breeze and the bright stars and the clear

air unite in making it wonderfully attractive.”

“Yes,” said Bud, “it’s a nice night.”

VIII.

MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN

The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his

time. A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before

taking anything else.

The house was a private residence. By its boarded front door and

untrimmed Boston ivy the burglar knew that the mistress of it was

sitting on some oceanside piazza telling a sympathetic man in a

yachting cap that no one had ever understood her sensitive, lonely

heart. He knew by the light in the third-story front windows, and by

the lateness of the season, that the master of the house had come home,

and would soon extinguish his light and retire. For it was September of

the year and of the soul, in which season the house’s good man comes to

consider roof gardens and stenographers as vanities, and to desire the

return of his mate and the more durable blessings of decorum and the

moral excellencies.

The burglar lighted a cigarette. The guarded glow of the match

illuminated his salient points for a moment. He belonged to the third

type of burglars.

This third type has not yet been recognized and accepted. The police

have made us familiar with the first and second. Their classification

is simple. The collar is the distinguishing mark.

When a burglar is caught who does not wear a collar he is described as

a degenerate of the lowest type, singularly vicious and depraved, and

is suspected of being the desperate criminal who stole the handcuffs

out of Patrolman Hennessy’s pocket in 1878 and walked away to escape

arrest.

The other well-known type is the burglar who wears a collar. He is

always referred to as a Raffles in real life. He is invariably a

gentleman by daylight, breakfasting in a dress suit, and posing as a

paperhanger, while after dark he plies his nefarious occupation of

burglary. His mother is an extremely wealthy and respected resident of

Ocean Grove, and when he is conducted to his cell he asks at once for a

nail file and the _Police Gazette_. He always has a wife in every State

in the Union and fiancées in all the Territories, and the newspapers

print his matrimonial gallery out of their stock of cuts of the ladies

who were cured by only one bottle after having been given up by five

doctors, experiencing great relief after the first dose.

The burglar wore a blue sweater. He was neither a Raffles nor one of

the chefs from Hell’s Kitchen. The police would have been baffled had

they attempted to classify him. They have not yet heard of the

respectable, unassuming burglar who is neither above nor below his

station.

This burglar of the third class began to prowl. He wore no masks, dark

lanterns, or gum shoes. He carried a 38-calibre revolver in his pocket,

and he chewed peppermint gum thoughtfully.

The furniture of the house was swathed in its summer dust protectors.

The silver was far away in safe-deposit vaults. The burglar expected no

remarkable “haul.” His objective point was that dimly lighted room

where the master of the house should be sleeping heavily after whatever

solace he had sought to lighten the burden of his loneliness. A “touch”

might be made there to the extent of legitimate, fair professional

profits—loose money, a watch, a jewelled stick-pin—nothing exorbitant

or beyond reason. He had seen the window left open and had taken the

chance.

The burglar softly opened the door of the lighted room. The gas was

turned low. A man lay in the bed asleep. On the dresser lay many things

in confusion—a crumpled roll of bills, a watch, keys, three poker

chips, crushed cigars, a pink silk hair bow, and an unopened bottle of

bromo-seltzer for a bulwark in the morning.

The burglar took three steps toward the dresser. The man in the bed

suddenly uttered a squeaky groan and opened his eyes. His right hand

slid under his pillow, but remained there.

“Lay still,” said the burglar in conversational tone. Burglars of the

third type do not hiss. The citizen in the bed looked at the round end

of the burglar’s pistol and lay still.

“Now hold up both your hands,” commanded the burglar.

The citizen had a little, pointed, brown-and-gray beard, like that of a

painless dentist. He looked solid, esteemed, irritable, and disgusted.

He sat up in bed and raised his right hand above his head.

“Up with the other one,” ordered the burglar. “You might be amphibious

and shoot with your left. You can count two, can’t you? Hurry up, now.”

“Can’t raise the other one,” said the citizen, with a contortion of his

lineaments.

“What’s the matter with it?”

“Rheumatism in the shoulder.”

“Inflammatory?”

“Was. The inflammation has gone down.” The burglar stood for a moment

or two, holding his gun on the afflicted one. He glanced at the plunder

on the dresser and then, with a half-embarrassed air, back at the man

in the bed. Then he, too, made a sudden grimace.

“Don’t stand there making faces,” snapped the citizen, bad-humouredly.

“If you’ve come to burgle why don’t you do it? There’s some stuff lying

around.”

“’Scuse me,” said the burglar, with a grin; “but it just socked me one,

too. It’s good for you that rheumatism and me happens to be old pals. I

got it in my left arm, too. Most anybody but me would have popped you

when you wouldn’t hoist that left claw of yours.”

“How long have you had it?” inquired the citizen.

“Four years. I guess that ain’t all. Once you’ve got it, it’s you for a

rheumatic life—that’s my judgment.”

“Ever try rattlesnake oil?” asked the citizen, interestedly.

“Gallons,” said the burglar. “If all the snakes I’ve used the oil of

was strung out in a row they’d reach eight times as far as Saturn, and

the rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back.”

“Some use Chiselum’s Pills,” remarked the citizen.

“Fudge!” said the burglar. “Took ’em five months. No good. I had some

relief the year I tried Finkelham’s Extract, Balm of Gilead poultices

and Potts’s Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried

in my pocket what done the trick.”

“Is yours worse in the morning or at night?” asked the citizen.

“Night,” said the burglar; “just when I’m busiest. Say, take down that

arm of yours—I guess you won’t—Say! did you ever try Blickerstaff’s

Blood Builder?”

“I never did. Does yours come in paroxysms or is it a steady pain?”

The burglar sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his gun on his

crossed knee.

“It jumps,” said he. “It strikes me when I ain’t looking for it. I had

to give up second-story work because I got stuck sometimes half-way up.

Tell you what—I don’t believe the bloomin’ doctors know what is good

for it.”

“Same here. I’ve spent a thousand dollars without getting any relief.

Yours swell any?”

“Of mornings. And when it’s goin’ to rain—great Christopher!”

“Me, too,” said the citizen. “I can tell when a streak of humidity the

size of a table-cloth starts from Florida on its way to New York. And

if I pass a theatre where there’s an ‘East Lynne’ matinee going on, the

moisture starts my left arm jumping like a toothache.”

“It’s undiluted—hades!” said the burglar.

“You’re dead right,” said the citizen.

The burglar looked down at his pistol and thrust it into his pocket

with an awkward attempt at ease.

“Say, old man,” he said, constrainedly, “ever try opodeldoc?”

“Slop!” said the citizen angrily. “Might as well rub on restaurant

butter.”

“Sure,” concurred the burglar. “It’s a salve suitable for little Minnie

when the kitty scratches her finger. I’ll tell you what! We’re up

against it. I only find one thing that eases her up. Hey? Little old

sanitary, ameliorating, lest-we-forget Booze. Say—this job’s off—’scuse

me—get on your clothes and let’s go out and have some. ’Scuse the

liberty, but—ouch! There she goes again!”

“For a week,” said the citizen. “I haven’t been able to dress myself

without help. I’m afraid Thomas is in bed, and—”

“Climb out,” said the burglar, “I’ll help you get into your duds.”

The conventional returned as a tidal wave and flooded the citizen. He

stroked his brown-and-gray beard.

“It’s very unusual—” he began.

“Here’s your shirt,” said the burglar, “fall out. I knew a man who said

Omberry’s Ointment fixed him in two weeks so he could use both hands in

tying his four-in-hand.”

As they were going out the door the citizen turned and started back.

“‘Liked to forgot my money,” he explained; “laid it on the dresser last

night.”

The burglar caught him by the right sleeve.

“Come on,” he said bluffly. “I ask you. Leave it alone. I’ve got the

price. Ever try witch hazel and oil of wintergreen?”

IX.

AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS

I never could quite understand how Tom Hopkins came to make that

blunder, for he had been through a whole term at a medical

college—before he inherited his aunt’s fortune—and had been considered

strong in therapeutics.

We had been making a call together that evening, and afterward Tom ran

up to my rooms for a pipe and a chat before going on to his own

luxurious apartments. I had stepped into the other room for a moment

when I heard Tom sing out:

“Oh, Billy, I’m going to take about four grains of quinine, if you

don’t mind— I’m feeling all blue and shivery. Guess I’m taking cold.”

“All right,” I called back. “The bottle is on the second shelf. Take it

in a spoonful of that elixir of eucalyptus. It knocks the bitter out.”

After I came back we sat by the fire and got our briars going. In about

eight minutes Tom sank back into a gentle collapse.