Chapter I: Palomitas 1 (2)

What Charley did was to start a thirty-day pool on Hill as to when it would happen. Chances was a dollar apiece--the dates for thirty days ahead being written on bits of paper, and the bits crumpled up and put into a hat, and you took one--and the pool went to whoever got the right date, with consolation stakes to whoever got the day before and the day after. Charley made a comical speech, after the drawing, telling the boys it was what you might call a quick return investment, and he guessed all of 'em had got left who'd drawed dates more'n a week away. Hill took it all right, same as usual; and just to show 'em he didn't bear no malice he bought a chance himself. He was one of the best-natured fellows ever got born, Hill was. There wasn't no Apache in him nowhere. He was white all the way through. So he bought his chance, that way, and then he give it to the Hen--telling her if he pulled the pot himself it wouldn't be much good to him, and saying he hoped she'd get it if anybody did, and asking her--if she did get it--to have some extry nice touches put on the board.

Well, will you believe it? When Hill give that Hen his chance she begun to cry over it! She knew it wouldn't do to cry hard--seeing what a mess it would make with her color when the tears got running--and so she pulled herself up quick and mopped her eyes dry with her pocket-handkerchief. And then she let out with all four legs at once, like a Colorado mule, and everlastingly gave it to all hands! It was just like the Hen, being so good-hearted, and thinking so much of Hill, to fire up like that about Santa Fé's pool on when he'd get his medicine; and all the boys knowed that beside the address she was making to the whole congregation Santa Fé was going to get another, and a worse one, when she had him off where she could play out to him a lone hand. But the boys didn't mind the jawing she give 'em--except they was a little ashamed, knowing putting such a rig on Hill was a mean thing to do--and I guess the whole business would have ended right there (only for the dressing-down Santa Fé was to get later) if Hart's nephew hadn't taken it into his head to chip in--being drunker'n usual, and a fool anyway--and so started what turned out to be a fresh game.

I do suppose Hart's nephew was about the meanest ever got born. Bill Hart was a good enough fellow himself, and how he ever come to have such a God-forsaken chump for a nephew was more'n anybody could tell. Things must have been powerful bad, I reckon, on his mother's side. He was one of the blowing kind, with nothing behind his blow; and his feet was that tender they wasn't fit to walk on anything harder'n fresh mush. The boys all the time was putting up rigs on him; and he'd go around talking so big about what he meant to do to get even with 'em you'd think he was going to clean out the whole town. But he took mighty good care to do his tall talking promiscuous: after making the mistake of trying it once on a little man he thought he could manage--a real peaceable little feller that looked like he wouldn't stand up to a kitten--and getting his nose and his mouth and his eyes all mashed into one. The little man apologized to the rest for doing it that way, saying he'd a-been ashamed of himself all the rest of his life if he'd gone for a thing like that with his gun.

Well, it was this Hart's nephew--like enough he had some sort of a name that belonged to him, but he wasn't worth the trouble of finding out what it was--who chipped in when the Hen took to her tirading, and so give things a new turn. Standing up staggery, and talking in his drunk fool way, he told her the road across to Santa Fé was as safe as a Sunday-school; and he said he'd be glad to be in Hill's boots and drive that coach himself, seeing what an interest she took in stage-drivers; and he asked her, sort of nasty, how she managed to get along for company when Hill was at the other end of his run. Hart's nephew was drunker'n usual that night, same as I've said, or even he'd a-knowed he'd likely get into trouble talking that way to the Hen.

For about a minute things looked real serious. The Hen straightened right up, and on the back of her neck--where it showed, she not being fixed red there to start with--she got as red as canned tomatoes; and some of the boys moved a little, sort of uneasy; and Santa Fé reached out over the piles of chips for his gun. He didn't get it, because the Hen saw what he was doing and stopped him by looking at him quick--and knowing what Charley was when it come to shooting, you'll know the Hen sent that look at him about as fast as looks can go! The game had stopped right there; and it was so quiet in the room you'd a-thought the snoring of the two drunks asleep on benches in one corner was a thunder-storm coming down the cañon!

Of course what we all expected the Hen to do was to wipe up the floor with Hart's nephew by giving him such a talking to--she could use language, the Hen could, when she started in at it--as would make him sorrier'n usual he'd ever been born; and I guess, from the looks of her, that was what at the first jump she meant to do. But she was a quick-thinking one, the Hen was, and she had a way of getting more funny notions into that good-looking head of hers than any other woman that ever walked around on this earth alive--and so she give us all a real jolt by playing out cards we wasn't expecting at all. Just as sudden as a wink, she sort of twitched and twinkled--same as she always did when she was up to some new bit of deviltry--and when she set her stamps to going she talked like as if she was real pleased. She didn't look, though, as good-natured as she talked--keeping on being straightened up, and having a kind of setness in her jaws and a snappiness in them big black eyes of hers that made everybody but Hart's nephew, who was too drunk to know anything, dead sure she still was mad all the way through.

"If he'll lend 'em to you, and I guess he will, why don't you get into Mr. Hill's boots?" she said to Hart's nephew. And then she fetched up a nice sort of smile, and said to him real friendly-sounding: "I do like stage-drivers, and that's a fact--and there's no telling how pleasant I'll make things for you if you'll take the coach across to Santa Fé to-morrow over that Sunday-school road! Will you do it?" And then the Hen give him one of them fetching looks of hers, and asked him over: "Will you do it--to oblige _me_?"

Now that was more words at one time than the Hen had dropped on Hart's nephew since he struck the camp; and as the few he'd ever got from her mostly hadn't been nice ones, and these sounding to him--he being drunk--like as if they was real good-natured, he was that pleased he didn't know what to do. Of course he was dead set on the Hen, same as everybody else was--she truly was a powerful fine woman--and it just was funny to see how he tried to steady himself on his legs gentlemanly, and was all over fool smiles.

So he said back to the Hen--speaking slow, to keep his words from tumbling all over each other--he'd just drive that coach across to Santa Fé a-hooping if Hill'd lend it to him; and then he asked Hill if he might have it--and told him he could trust him to handle it in good shape, because everybody knowed he was a real daisy at driving mules.

For a fact, Hart's nephew did manage well at mule-driving. It was one of the blame few things that fool knowed how to do. Denver Jones allowed it was because he was related to 'em--on the father's side.

"Just for this once, Mr. Hill," said the Hen, speaking coaxy. And she got her head round a little--so Hart's nephew couldn't see what she was doing--and give Hill a wink to come into the game.

Hill didn't know what in the world the Hen was up to--nobody ever did know what that Hen was up to when once she got started--but he reckoned he could take it back in the morning if he didn't think what she wanted would answer, so in he come: telling Hart's nephew he might have the coach to do anything (Hill was a kind of a careless talker) he damn pleased with; and saying he'd have it hitched up and ready down at the deepo next morning, same as usual, so he could start right off when the Denver train come in.

When things was settled, all quick that way, Hart's nephew took to squirming--he seeing, drunk as he was, he'd bit off a blame sight more'n he cared to chew. But with the Hen right after him--and Hill and all the rest of the boys backing her, they being sure she'd dandy cards up her sleeve for the queer game she was playing--he couldn't make nothing by all his squirms. The boys got at him and told him anybody could see he was afraid; and the Hen got at him and told him anybody could see he wasn't, and she said she knew he was about the bravest man alive; and Hill got at him and told him the road had improved so, lately, the nearest to road-agents you ever seen on it was burros and cotton-tail rabbits; and all of 'em together kept getting more drinks in him right along. So the upshot of it was: first Hart's nephew stopped his squirming; and then he took to telling what a holy wonder he was at mule-driving; and then he went to blowing the biggest kind--till he got so he couldn't talk no longer--about what he'd do in the shooting line if any road-agents come around trying their monkey-shine hold-ups on _him_! So it ended, good enough, by their getting him fixed tight in his hole.

The boys kept things going with him pretty late that night, and when he showed up in the morning at the deepo--a delegation seeing to it he got there, and Hill having the coach all ready for him--he still had on him a fairly sizable jag. But he'd sobered up enough--having slept quite a little, and soaked his head at the railroad tank--to want to try all he knew how to spill himself out of his job. It took all the Hen could do--the Hen had got up early and come down to the deepo a-purpose to attend to him--and all the boys could do helping her, to get him up on that coach-box and boosted off out of town.

He was that nervous he was shaking all over; and what made him nervouser was having no passengers--nobody for Santa Fé having come in on the Denver train. It was just a caution to see his shooting outfit! The box of the coach looked like it was a gun-shop--being piled up with two Winchesters and a double-barrelled shot-gun (the shot-gun, he said, was to cripple anybody he didn't think it was needful to kill); and beside that he had a machete some Mexican lent him hooked on to his belt, and along with it a brace of derringers and two forty-fives. Hill was the only one who didn't laugh fit to kill himself over that layout. Hill said Hart's nephew done just right to take along all the guns he could get a-hold of; and Hill said he'd attended to the proper loading of every one of them weepons himself.

At last--with all the boys laughing away and firing fool talk at him, and the Hen keeping him up to the collar by going on about how brave he was--he did manage to whip up his mules and start off. Sick was no name for him--and he was so scared stiff he looked like he was about ready to cry. After he'd got down the slope, and across the bridge over the Rio Grande, and was walking his mules on that first little stretch of sandy road on the way to La Cañada, we could see him reaching down and fussing over his layout of guns.

For a cold fact, there was a right smart chance that Hart's nephew--and 'specially because his fool luck made most things come to him contrary--really might run himself into a hold-up; and, if he did, it was like as not his chips might get called in. For all Hill's funny talk about meeting nothing worse'n burros and cotton-tail rabbits, that road was a bad road--and things was liable to occur. Hill himself was taking his chances, and he blame well knowed it, every day. But it was the sense of the meeting that if a hold-up of that coach attended by fatalities was coming, it couldn't come at a better time than when Hart's nephew was on the box--the feeling being general that Hart's nephew was one that could be spared. I guess Bill Hart felt just the same about it as the rest of us--leastways, he didn't strain himself any trying to keep his nephew home.

* * * * *

Things went kind of nervous that day at Palomitas. All the boys seemed to have a feeling, somehow, there was going to be happenings; and we all just sort of idled round waiting for 'em--taking more drinks 'n usual, and in spite of the drinks getting every minute lower and lower in our minds. Except the day Hart's aunt spent with him, and Santa Fé Charley run the kindergarten, I reckon it was the quietest day we ever went through--at least till we got along to the clean-up that turned Palomitas into what some of us felt was a blame sight too much of a Sunday-school town.

One reason why we all was so serious was because the Sage-Brush Hen--who started most of what happened--didn't show up as usual; and all hands got a real jolt when some of the boys went off to the Forest Queen to ask about her, and old Tenderfoot Sal told 'em she was laying down in her room and wasn't feeling well. The Hen being always an out-and-out hustler, and hard as an Indian pony, her not being well shook us up bad. Everybody was friends with her, same as she was friends with everybody--even when she got into one of her tantrums, and took to jawing you, you couldn't help liking her--and knowing she wasn't feeling like she ought to feel put a big lot more of a damper on all hands. So we just kept on taking drinks and getting miserabler with 'em--and feeling all the time surer something was coming bouncing out at us from round the corner, and wondering what kind of a stir-up we was likely to have.

It was along about four o'clock in the afternoon the cyclone struck us; and it was such a small-sized one, when we did get it, we didn't know whether to laugh or swear. But the cyclone himself didn't think there was anything small about him: being Hart's nephew--so scared to death all the few wits he ever had was knocked clean out of him--who come into Palomitas, white as white-wash, riding bareback one of the coach mules.

He just sort of rolled off the mule, in front of the Forest Queen, and went in to the bar and got four drinks in him before he could speak a word--and then he said he'd been held up at the Barranca Grande by about two hundred road-agents who'd opened up on him and killed all the mules except the one he'd got away on; and his getting away at all, he said, was only because he'd put up such a fight he'd scared 'em--and after that because they couldn't hit him when once he was off, and had the mule going on a dead run. Then he took two more drinks, and told his story all over again; and as it was about the same story both times--and he so scared, and by the time he told it over again so set up with his drinks, it didn't seem likely he'd sense enough left to be lying--the boys allowed like enough it was true.

What he had to tell--except he piled on more road-agents than was needed--was about reasonable. He said he'd done well enough as far as Pojuaque--where he'd had his dinner and changed mules, same as usual, at old man Bouquet's. And after he'd left Pojuaque he'd got along all right, he said, except he had to go slow through the sandhills, till he come to the Barranca Grande.

It's a bad place, that barranca is. The road goes sharp down into it, and then sharp up out of it--and both banks so steep you want all the brakes you've got to get to the bottom of it, and more mules than you're likely to have to get to the top on the other side.

Well, Hart's nephew said he'd just got the coach down to the bottom of the barranca--he'd took the last of the slope at a run, he said, and was licking away at his mules for all he was worth to start 'em up the far side--when the road-agents opened on him, being hid in among the cedar-bushes, from the top of the bank and from both sides of the trail. You never seen such a blaze of shooting in all your life, Hart's nephew said; and he said before he'd a chance to get a gun up all his mules was hit but one. He said he jumped quick from the box, taking both Winchesters and the shot-gun with him, and having his guns and the derringers in his belt beside, and got behind the one mule that hadn't been downed and opened up on the bushes where the smoke was and let go as hard as he knowed how. He said he must a-killed more'n twenty of 'em, he guessed, judging by the yelling and groaning, and by the way they slacked up on their fire. Their slacking that way give him a chance, he said, and he took it--cutting the mule loose from the harness with one hand, while he kept on blazing away over her back with the other; then letting 'em have it from both hands for a minute, from what guns he had left that wasn't empty, to sort of paralyze 'em; and then getting quick on the mule's back and starting her down the barranca on a dead run.

He had balls buzzing all about him, he said, till he got out of sight around a turn in the barranca; and he said before he made that turn he looked back once and saw a big feller up on top of the bank letting off at him as hard as he could go. Just to show he still had fight in him, he said, he let off back at him with his two derringers--which was all he had left to shoot with--and he was pretty sure, though of course it was only luck did it with the mule bouncing him so, the big feller went down. He was a tremendous tall man, he said; and he guessed he was a Greaser, seeing he had a big black beard and was dressed in Greaser clothes.

He said he didn't mind owning up he was scared bad while he was in it; but he said he guessed anybody would a-been scared with all them fellers shooting away at him--and, as he'd made as good a fight of it as he knowed how, he didn't think he was to be blamed for ending by running from such a crowd. He kept on down the barranca for about two miles, he said, till he struck the cross-trail to Tesuque; and he headed north on that till he got to Pojuaque--where he give the mule a rest, she was blowed all to bits, the mule was, he said; and he got some of old man Bouquet's wine in him, feeling pretty well blowed to bits himself; and then he come along home.

Well, that seemed a straight enough story. The only thing in it you really could pick on--except the number of road-agents, he only having seen one, and the rest being his scared guesswork--was the mule not being hit while he was doing all that firing over the back of her. But all fights has their queer chances in 'em; and that was a chance that might a-happened, same as others. Of course, the one big general thing that didn't seem likely was that such a runt as Hart's nephew should have stood up the way he said he did to as much as one road-agent--let alone to the half-dozen or so that like enough had got at him. But even a thing like Hart's nephew sometimes will put up a fight when it's scared so bad it really don't more'n half know what it's doing--and the boys allowed he might have done his fighting that way.

That the size of his scare had been big enough to make him do a'most anything showed up from the way he kept on being scared after it was all over--he coming into Palomitas looking like a wet white rag when, by his own showing, he'd been out of reach of anybody's hurting him for four or five hours anyway, and had had a chance to cool off at Pojuaque while he was loading in old man Bouquet's wine. And so, taking the story by and large, the boys allowed that likely most of it was true; and some of 'em even went so far as to say maybe Hart's nephew wasn't more'n half rotten, after all.

It was a good story to hear, anyway; and everybody was sorry the Hen wasn't around to hear it. But when some of the boys tried to rout her out, Tenderfoot Sal stood 'em off savage--telling 'em to go about their business, and the Hen's head was aching bad. So the boys had to take it out in making Hart's nephew keep on telling all he had to tell over and over; and he was glad of the chance to, and did--till he got so many drinks in him he couldn't tell anything; and then his uncle, with Shorty Smith helping, took him off home.

* * * * *

Next morning, having pretty much slept himself sober, Hart's nephew went cavorting around Palomitas--that little runt did--like he was about ten foot tall! He had the whole thing over, in the course of the day, a dozen times or more; and as he kept on telling it--now he was sober enough to add things on--it got to be about the biggest fight with road-agents that ever was. The thing that was biggest was the one man he allowed he'd really seen. Why, Goliath of Gath wasn't in it with that fellow, according to Hart's nephew! And he was that desperate and dangerous to look at, he said, not many men would a-had the nerve to try at him with only a derringer--and, what was more, to bring him down. It was well along in the afternoon before we got it for a fact that Hart's nephew really had killed the Greaser. The thing growed that way--from his first telling how he thought he'd hit him--until it ended with the Greaser giving a yell like a stuck pig; and then staggering and throwing his arms up; and then rolling over and over down the side of the barranca to the bottom of it--with his goose cooked all the way through!

We was all down at the deepo waiting for the Denver train to pull out, same as usual, while Hart's nephew was doing his tallest talking--and while he was hard at it somebody jumped up and sung out the Santa Fé coach was coming along on the other side of the river from Santa Cruz. Well, that was about the last thing anybody was expecting--and everybody hustled up off the barrels and boxes where they was a-setting and looked with all their eyes.

Sure enough, there the old coach was--just as it always was, about that time of day--coming along as natural as you please. After a while, it keeping on getting nearer, we could see it was old Hill himself up on the box driving his mules in good shape; and when he got along near the bridge we could hear him swearing at 'em--Hill did use terrible bad language to them mules--in just his ordinary way. Then he rattled the mules over the bridge and brought 'em a-clipping up the slope this side of it; and then in another minute he pulled right up at the deepo platform where we all was. Hill was laughing all over as he come up to us, and so was a Mexican who was setting on the box with him--a nice tidy little chap, with a powerful big black beard on him--and Hill sung out: "Have you boys heard about the hold-up?" And then he and the little Mexican got to laughing so it was a wonder they didn't fall off.

Nobody was thinking nothing about Hart's nephew--till he let off a yell and sung out: "That's the man held the coach up! Get a bead on him with your guns!" And he got his own gun out--and like enough would a-done some fool thing with it if Santa Fé Charley, who was right by him, hadn't smacked him and jerked it out of his hand.

Santa Fé smacked so's to hurt him; and he put his hand up to his face and said, kind of whimpery: "What are you hitting me like that for, Charley? I ain't done nothing. I tell you that man on the box with Hill is the one I was held up by yesterday. He's dangerous. If we don't get a-hold of him quick he'll be doing something to us with his gun!" And Hart's nephew a'most broke out crying--being all worked up, and Santa Fé having smacked him blame hard.

At that, Denver Jones cut in with: "I thought you said the one you was held up by was more'n fourteen foot high, and you killed him? This man ain't big enough to hold up a baby-carriage with you in it--and he's sure enough alive. What are you giving us--you blame fool?"

There's no telling what kind of an answer Denver would a-got from Hart's nephew--for he hadn't a chance to give him no answer at all. Just then Hill did the talking, and what Hill said was: "Boys, he's dead right about it. This here's the bad man that held the coach up--and as I was there, and seen it done, and drove the coach on with five mules to Santa Fé afterwards, I guess I know!" And Hill, and the little Mexican with him, just roared.

When Hill could talk for laughing, he went on: "I'll own up right now, boys, I was extry over-precautious when I fixed up with empty shells that gun-shop Hart's nephew took along on the coach when he started out with it. For all the harm he done with them guns, I might just as well a-left 'em loaded the usual way. He was that scared when this here gigantic ruffian stopped him--I just happened to be a-setting in among the cedar-bushes at the time, smoking a seegar and looking on sort of casual--he couldn't do nothing more'n yell out he wasn't going to shoot, and not to murder him; and then down he jumped from the box--me a-smoking away looking at him, and this here ruffian a-shooting his Winchester across the top of the coach to where he said he thought he seen a jack-rabbit--and cut out the near wheeler; and then he scrambled up anyhow on that mule's back, and away he went down the barranca as hard as hell!" (Hill oughtn't to have said that word. But he was careless in his talk, Hill was, and he did).

"But Hart's nephew being scared that way," Hill went on, a'most choking, "don't count one way or the other when you get down to the facts. It was this here dangerous devil that done that wicked deed, and he done it all alone by his dangerous self. At the risk of my life, gentlemen, I've got a-hold of him to bring him to justice, and here he is. And I guess the sooner we yank him up to the usual telegraph-pole, and so get shut of him, the sooner it'll be safe for folks to travel these roads. He's the most dangerous I ever see," said Hill, and by that time Hill was so near busted with his laughing he was purple; "and what makes him such a particular holy terror is he goes disguised!" And then--choking so he could hardly speak plain--Hill whipped round to the little Mexican and says to him: "Get your disguise off of you, you murdersome critter! Get it off, I say, and give these gentlemen a look at the terrible wicked face of you--before you and that telegraph-pole gets to being friends!"

And then the little Mexican switched his big black beard off--and right smack there before us was the Sage-Brush Hen! You never heard such a yell as the boys give in all your born days!

* * * * *

And you never in all your born days saw such goings on as there was that night at the Forest Queen! Everybody in Palomitas was right there. The other banks and bars hadn't a soul left in 'em but the dealers and the drink-slingers--and they, not having nothing to do at home, just shut up shop and come along too. All the girls from all the dance-halls showed up, the Hen being real down popular with 'em--which told well for her--and they wanting to see the fun. Cherry happened to be down from his ranch that night; and Becker got wind of what was up and footed it across from Santa Cruz de la Cañada; and word was sent to the Elbogen brothers--they was real clever young fellows, them two Germans--and over they come a-kiting on their buck-board from San Juan. I guess it was about the biggest jam the Forest Queen ever had.

Hart's nephew was the only one around the place who hung back a little, but he got there all right--being fished out of an empty flour-barrel, where he'd hid under the counter in his uncle's store, and brought along by the invitation committee sent to look for him all dabbed over with flour.

Some thought the way they used Hart's nephew that night was just a little mite too hard lines--he not being let to have as much as a single drink in him, and so kept plumb sober while the Hen give him his medicine; but all hands allowed--after his sassy talk to her--he didn't get no more'n she'd a right to give. She just went at him like a blister, the Hen did; and she blistered him worse because she did it in her own funny way--telling him she did just dote on stage-drivers, and if he really wanted to please her he'd take Hill's job regular; and leading the boys up to him and introducing him, lady-like, as "the hold-up hero"; and asking him to please to tell her all about that fourteen-foot road-agent he'd killed; and just rubbing the whole thing in on him every way she knowed how. Before the Hen got done with him he was about the sickest man, Hart's nephew was, you ever seen! But I guess it learned him quite a little about how when he talked to ladies he'd better be polite.

Fun wasn't no name that night for that Hen! She kept on wearing her Mexican clothes, and she did look real down cute in 'em; and she'd got a God-forsaken old rusty pepper-box six-shooter from somewheres, and went flourishing it about saying it was what she'd held up the coach with; and in between times, when she wasn't deviling Hart's nephew, she'd go round the room drawing beads on the boys with her pepper-box, and making out she was dangerous by putting her big black beard on, and standing up in attitudes so the boys might see, she said, how road-agenty she looked and bad and bold! Why, the Hen did act so comical that night all hands pretty near died with their laugh!

IV

SANTA FÉ CHARLEY'S KINDERGARTEN

When Bill Hart, who was a good fellow and kept the principal store in Palomitas, got word his aunt in Vermont was coming out to pay him a visit--it being too late to stop her, and he knowing he'd have to worry the thing through somehow till he could start her back East again--he was the worst broke-up man you ever seen.

"Great Scott! Joe," Hart said, when he was telling Cherry about it, "Palomitas ain't no sort of a town to bring aunts to--and it's about the last town I know of where Aunt Maria'll fit in! She's the old-fashioned kind, right up to the limit, Aunt Maria is. Sewing-societies and Sunday-schools is the hands she holds flushes in; and she has the preacher once a week to supper; and when it comes to kindergartens--Hart was so worked up he talked careless--she's simply hell! What's a woman like that going to do, I want to know, in a place like this--that's mainly made up of saloons and dance-halls and faro-banks, and everybody mostly drunk, and shooting-scrapes going on all the time? It just makes me sick to think about it." And Hart groaned.

Cherry swore for a while, sort of friendly and sociable--he was a sympathetic man, Cherry was, and always did what he could to help--and as Hart was too far gone to swear for himself, in a way that amounted to anything, hearing what Cherry had to say seemed to do him good.

"I'd stop her, if there was any stop to her," he went on, in a minute or two, speaking hopeless and miserable; "but there ain't. She says she's starting the day after she writes--having a chance to come sudden with friends--and that means she's most here now. And there's no heading her off--because she says the friends she's hooked fast to may be coming to Pueblo and may be coming to Santa Fé. But it don't make any difference, she says, as she's told she can get down easy by the railroad from Pueblo, or she can slide across to Palomitas by 'a short and pleasant coach-ride'--that's what she calls it--from Santa Fé.

"That's all she tells about her coming. The rest of what's in her letter is about how glad she'll be to see me, and about how glad she knows I'll be to see her--being lonely so far from my folks, and likely needing my clothes mended, and pleased to be eating some of her home-made pies. It's just like Aunt Maria to put in things like that. You see, she brought me up--and she's never got out of her head I'm more'n about nine years old. What I feel like doing is going out in the sage-brush and blowing the top of my fool head off, and letting the coyotes eat what's left of me and get me out of the way!"

Hart really did look as if he meant it, Cherry said afterwards. He was the miserablest-looking man, he said, he'd ever seen alive.

Cherry said he begun to have a notion, though, while Hart was talking, how the thing might be worked so there wouldn't be no real trouble if it could be fixed so Hart's aunt wouldn't stay in Palomitas more'n about a day; and he come right on down to the Forest Queen to see if he could get the boys to help him put it through. He left Hart clearing out the room he kept flour and meal in--being the cleanest--trying to rig up for his aunt some sort of a bunking-place. He was going to give her his own cot and mattress, he said; and he could fit her out with a looking-glass and a basin and pitcher all right because he kept them sort of things to sell; and he said he'd make the place extra tidy by putting a new horse-blanket on the floor. Seeing his way to getting a grip on that much of the contract, Cherry said, seemed to make him feel a little less bad.

Cherry waited till the deal was over, when he got to the Forest Queen; and then he asked Santa Fé Charley if he'd let him speak to the boys for a minute before the game went on. He was always polite and obliging, Santa Fé was, and he said of course he might; and he rapped on the table with his derringer for order, and said Mr. Cherry had the floor. Charley was old-fashioned in his ways of fighting. He always had a six-shooter in his belt, same as other folks; but he said he kept it mainly for show. Derringers, he said, was better and surer--because you could work 'em around in your pocket while the other fellow was getting his gun out, and before he was ready for business you could shoot him right through your pants. Later on, it was that very way Santa Fé shot Hart. But he always was friendly with Hart till he did shoot him; and it was more his backing than anything else--'specially when it come to the kindergarten--that made Cherry's plan for helping Hart out go through.

When the game was stopped, and the boys was all listening, Cherry told about the hole Hart was in and allowed it was a deep one; and he said it was only fair--Hart having done good turns for most everybody, one time and another--his friends should be willing to take some trouble to get him out of it. Hart's aunt, he said, come from a quiet part of Vermont, and likely would be jolted bad when she struck Palomitas if things was going the ordinary way--she being elderly, and like enough a little set in her ways, and not used much to crazy drunks, and shooting-matches, and such kinds of lively carryings-on. But she'd only stay one day, or at most a day and a half--Hart having agreed to take her right back East himself, if she couldn't be got rid of no other way--and that gave 'em a chance to fix things so her feelings wouldn't be hurt, though doing it was going to be hard on all hands. And then, having got the boys worked up wondering what he was driving at, Cherry went ahead and said he wanted 'em to agree--just for the little while Hart's aunt was going to stay there--to run Palomitas like it was a regular back-East Sunday-school town. He knew he was asking a good deal, he said, but he did ask it--and he appealed to the better feelings of the gentlemen assembled around that faro-table to do that much to get Bill Hart out of his hole. Then Cherry said he wasn't nobody's orator, but he guessed he'd made clear what he wanted to lay before the meeting; and he said he was much obliged, and had pleasure in setting up drinks for the crowd.

As was to be expected of 'em, all the boys--knowing Hart for a square-acting man, and liking him--tumbled right off to Cherry's plan. Santa Fé said--this was after they'd had their drinks--he s'posed he was chairman of the meeting, and he guessed he spoke the sense of the meeting when he allowed Mr. Cherry's scheme was about the only way out for their esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Hart, and it ought to go through. But as it was a matter that seriously affected the comfort and convenience of everybody in Palomitas, he said, it was only square to take a vote on it--and so he'd ask all in favor of Mr. Cherry's motion to say "Ay." And everybody in the room--except the few that was asleep, or too drunk to say anything--said "Ay" as loud as they knowed how.

"Mr. Cherry's motion is carried, gentlemen," Santa Fé said; "and I will now appoint a committee to draught a notice to be posted at the deepo, and to call around at the other banks and saloons in the town and notify verbally our fellow-citizens of the action we have taken--and I will ask the Hen here kindly to inform the other ladies of Palomitas of our intentions, and to request their assistance in realizing them. She had better tell them, I reckon, that the way they can come to the front most effectively in this crisis is by keeping entirely out of sight in the rear."

The Sage-Brush Hen, along with some of the other girls, had come in from the back room--where the dancing was--to find out what the circus was about; and when they caught on to what Palomitas was going to be like when Hart's aunt struck it they all just yelled.

"You've come out well once as the Baptist minister, Charley," the Hen said, shaking all over; "and I reckon you can do it again--only it won't be so easy showing off the new church and the parsonage by daylight as it was in the dark. About us girls laying low, maybe you're right and maybe you're not right. Anyway, don't you worry about us. All I'll say is, it won't be the ladies in this combine that'll give anything away!" And she and the other girls got so to laughing over it they all of 'em had to set down.

Cherry was more pleased than a little the way things had gone--and he said so to the boys, and set up drinks all round again. Then he and Abe Simons--they was the committee to do it--wrote out a notice that was tacked up on the deepo door and read this way:

TO THE CITIZENS OF PALOMITAS

Mr. William Hart's aunt is coming to pay him a visit, and will
strike this town either by the Denver train to-morrow morning or
the Santa Fé coach to-morrow afternoon.

She is a perfect lady, and it is ordered that during her stay in
Palomitas this town has got to behave itself so her feelings won't
be hurt. She is to be took care of and given a pleasant
impression. All fights and drunks must be put off till she's
gone. Persons neglecting to do so will be taken out into the
sage-brush by members of the committee, and are likely to get
hurt.

Mr. Hart regrets this occurrence as much as anybody, and agrees
his aunt's visit sha'n't last beyond a day and a half if she comes
down from Denver, and only one day if she comes in from Santa Fé.

(_Signed_) THE COMMITTEE.

When Cherry got a-hold of Hart and told him what the town had agreed to do for him he was that grateful--being all worked up, anyway--he pretty near cried.

As it turned out, Hart's aunt come in on Hill's coach from Santa Fé--her friends having gone down that way by the Atchison--and as Hill had been at the meeting at the Forest Queen he was able to give things a good start. Hill always was a friendly sort of a fellow, and--except he used terrible bad language, which he said come of his having to drive mules--he was a real first-class ladies' man.

Hill said he spotted Hart's aunt the minute he set his eyes on her waiting for the coach at the Fonda, there not being likely to be more'n one in the Territory of that kind. She was a trig little old lady, dressed up in black clothes as neat as wax, he said, with a little black bonnet setting close to her head; and she wore gold specs and had a longish nose. But she'd a real friendly look about her, he said; and while she spoke a little precise and particular she wasn't a bit stuck-up, and seemed to be taking things about as they happened to come along. When he asked her if she wouldn't set up on the box with him, so she could see the country, she said that was just what would suit her; and up she come, he said, as spry as a queer little bird. Then he whipped up his mules--being careful not to use any language--and got the coach started, and begun right off to be agreeable by telling her he guessed he had the pleasure of knowing her nephew, and asking her if she wasn't the aunt of Mr. William Hart.

Well, of course that set things to going pleasant between 'em; and when she'd allowed she was Hart's aunt, and said she was glad to meet a friend of his, she started in asking all the questions about Bill and about Palomitas she knowed how to ask.

Hill said he guessed that day they had to lay off the regular recording angel and put a hired first-class stenographer on his job--seeing how no plain angel, not writing shorthand, could a-kept up with all the lies he felt it his duty to tell if he was going to bring Bill through in good shape and keep up the reputation of the town. It wasn't square to charge them lies up to him, anyway, Hill said, seeing he only was playing Cherry's hand for him; and he said he hoped they was put in Cherry's bill. By the time he'd got through with his fairy tales, he said, he'd give Hart such a character he didn't know him himself; and he'd touched up Palomitas till he'd got it so it might a-been a town just outside Boston--only he allowed they was sometimes troubled with hard cases passing through; and he told her of course she'd find things kind of half-baked and noisy out there on the frontier. And she must remember, he told her, that all the folks in the town was young--young men who'd brought their young wives with 'em, come to hustle in a new country--and she mustn't mind if things went livelier'n the way she was used to back East.

Hill said she said she wasn't expecting to find things like they was at home, and she guessed she'd manage all right--seeing she always got on well with young people, and wasn't a bit set in her own ways. And she said she was as pleased as she was surprised to find out the kind of a town Palomitas was--because her nephew William's letters had led her to think it had a good many bad characters in it; and he'd not mentioned any church but the Catholic one where the natives went; and as to the Bible Class and the Friendly Aid Society, he'd never said a word about 'em at all. She went on talking so cheerful and pleasant, Hill said, it give him creeps in his back; and he got so rattled the last half of the run--coming on from Pojuaque, where they'd had dinner at old man Bouquet's--he hardly knowed what he'd told and what he hadn't, and whether he was standing on his head or his heels.

Being that way, he made the only break that gave trouble afterwards. She asked him if there was a school in Palomitas, and he told her there wasn't, because all the folks in town was so young--except the natives, who hadn't no use for schools--they hadn't any children big enough to go to one. And then she said sudden, and as it seemed to him changing the subject: "Isn't there a kindergarten?" Hill said he'd never heard tell of such a concern; but he sized it up to be some sort of a fancy German garden--like the one Becker'd fixed up for himself over to Santa Cruz--and he said he allowed, from the way she asked about it, it was what Palomitas ought to have. So he told her there was, and it was the best one in the Territory--and let it go at that. He said she said she was glad to hear it, as she took a special interest in kindergartens, and she'd go and see it the first thing.

Hill said he knowed he'd put his foot in it somehow; but as he didn't know how he'd put his foot in it, he just switched her off by telling her about the Dorcas Society. He had the cards for that, he said, because his mother'd helped run a Dorcas Society back East and he knowed what he was talking about. The Palomitas one met Thursdays, he told her, at the Forest Queen. That was the principal hotel, he told her, and was kept by Mrs. Major Rogers, who was an officer's widow and had started the society to make clothes for some of the Mexican poor folks--and he said it was a first-rate charity and worked well. It tickled him so, he said, thinking of any such doings at the Forest Queen--with old Tenderfoot Sal, of all people, bossing the job!--he had to work off the laugh he had inside of him by taking to licking his mules.

But it went all right with the little old lady; and she was that interested he had to strain himself, he said, making up more stories about it--till by good luck she took to telling him about the Dorcas Society she belonged to herself, back home in Vermont; and was so full of it she kept things going easy for him till they'd crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande and was coming up the slope into the town at a walk.

Up at the top of the slope Santa Fé Charley stood a-waiting for 'em--looking, of course, in them black clothes and a white tie on, like he was a sure-enough preacher--and as the coach come along he sung out, pleasant and friendly: "Good-afternoon, Brother Hill. I missed you at the Bible Class last evening. No doubt you were detained unavoidably, and it's all right. But be sure to come next Friday. We don't get along well without you, Brother Hill." And Santa Fé took his hat off stylish and made the old lady the best sort of a bow.

Hill caught on quick and played right up to Santa Fé's lead. "That's our minister, Mr. Charles, ma'am. The one I've been telling you about," he said. "He's just friendly and sociable like that all the time. He looks after the folks in this town closer'n any preacher I ever knowed." A part of that, Hill said, was dead certain truth--seeing as Santa Fé had his eyes out straight along for everybody about the place who'd a dollar in his pocket, and wasn't satisfied till he'd scooped in that dollar over his table at the Forest Queen.

"There's the new church we're building," Hill went on, as they got to the top of the slope and headed for the deepo. "It ain't much to look at yet, the spire not being put on; and it won't show up well, even when it gets its spire on it, with churches East. But we're going to be satisfied with it, seeing it's the best we can do. You'll be interested to know, ma'am, your nephew give the land."

"William hasn't let on anything about it," Hart's aunt said, looking pleased all over. "But what in the world is a church doing with a railroad track running into it, Mr. Hill?"

Hill said he'd forgot about the track when he settled to use the new freight-house for church purposes; but he said he pulled himself together quick and told her the track was temp'ry--put in so building material could unload right on the ground. And then he took to talking about how obliging the railroad folks had been helping 'em--and kept a-talking that way till he got the coach to the deepo, and didn't need to hustle making things up any more. He said he never was so thankful in his life as he was when his stunt was done. He was just tired out, he said, lying straight ahead all day over thirty miles of bad road and not being able once to speak natural to his mules.

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