Chapter IV: Part 4

When we reached a state of mind where we could discuss the matter calmly, we asked Cunningham if he still intended to live in the tent. Oh, yes, yes, indeed! The tent was all right; it was the wind that was wrong. Then followed a learned disquisition on vacuums, and worlds, and other meteorological phenomena which stumped us completely. Indeed, it came to my mind that Cunningham almost proved that he and the tent never went into the Chantay Seeche.

Part of his theory which I can remember is that the wind, in passing over the coulée, partially exhausted the air beneath it, like the action of an atomizer, he explained to our unscientific minds. And thus Tent Cunningham was drawn up and on to disaster most unlawfully. The idea of Cunningham and the tent being “atomized” into the creek strikes me as being particularly good. I feel still more entertained when I think of the tin cans, the ham, the bacon, the lantern, the little sheet-iron cooking-stove, various articles of clothing, et cetera, which were included in the spray.

It is perhaps needless to add that the gathering of all these was the work of most of a morning. I don’t believe I ever saw anything more pathetic than the little stove stranded on a bar some distance down the river, its tiny legs lifted in appeal to the now speckless heavens. Perhaps it was thinking of the untimely fate of the frying pan and kettle that had warmed themselves at its fires so often.

When Cunningham gazed upon this jettisoned cargo his face betrayed his feelings. His soul, which loved cleanliness, order, and system with a blind worship, revolted. One could see that it was in his mind for the moment to “jump the country,” but it passed. The determination and courage which were at the bottom of the man’s nature rose in force, and he busied himself in restoring the former status, singing a loud air without any tune to it, the while. The territory of Dakota was a large country--some of the belongings never appeared again. It is pleasant to think that Cunningham’s card-case may have fallen into the hands of a wandering Indian, and thus spread the refinements of civilization.

It seemed that our friend was going to buck the elements on first principles--put up the tent in the same old way, and have it blown to Halifax in the same old way to a dead certainty. There was no more use in trying to argue with him on the subject than if it were a question of politics; but Billy, who used more tact in one minute than I could understand in ten, turned the point without the least friction.

He asked Cunningham to expound the theory of the levitation of the tent again. It was done, at length, and breadth, and thickness.

“Now, as I understand it,” said Billy, “a vacuum’s a place where there ain’t anything, and when things try to get in it makes trouble--are my sights at the right elevation?”

I assured him he was correct so far.

“Well, then, see here, Cunny, why don’t you kind of fill in around the tent with sods? You can’t make much of a vacuum out of good deep-cut sods, I’ll bet my wardrobe. You see the place where the vacuum would have to be, to do you dirt, will be occupied and it can vacuumize all it wants to around the prairie after that, and you needn’t care.”

“An ex-cellent idea! “cried Cunningham. “I thank you very much, Mr. Wykam.”

So it came to pass that Tent Cunningham was surrounded by a wall of sod eight feet high and four feet thick. The only criticism I heard was from a stranger who put up at Billy’s for a while.

One morning he came in and took me by the shoulder, “Come with me,” he said. We went on until Tent Cunningham hove in sight.

“I’ve seen lots of what strikes me as strange things in this country,” the stranger said, “but that place knocks the spots off the cards. Would you be kind enough to tell me what that wild-Injun-peaceful-settler contraption is?”

“That?” I asked with a sober face. “Why, that’s Camp Cunningham.”

“I dare say it is,” he returned. “But that ain’t the point I was looking for. What I want to know is, why did the population go to all the trouble of building a sod house, and then put up a tent inside of it?”

“Merely a question of taste--it’s his hundred and sixty; why shouldn’t he build what he likes on it?”

“That’s so, too,” replied the stranger. “Excuse me for meddling; it’s a free country, if ever there was one.”

So the matter dropped right there.

IX

HOHANKTON, PETTIE AND OTHERS

THE TALE OF THE TRAINED PIG

“Do you remember Red’s pig, Foxy Bill?” said Hydraulic Smith. “Well, I was in a camp that had a pig for its chief feature, myself. He wasn’t a fat, comfortable old lad like Foxy Bill, but a sort of cross between a razor-back and a buffalo. He was a little feller, with a mane on his head and on his shoulders. He had high shoulders on him, like a buffalo, but, as for the rest of him, he was that thin you wouldn’t have known him for a pig, except for the curly tail at the end.

“He was our sole and only pet. We was too high in the air for cats. They died of heart disease. Nobody owned a dog. We called piggie Johanus Eliphas Hohankton for a noted statesman in that part of the country, a great man on the pension vote (believe he drew three himself), that told us politics with one wooden leg and a mouthful of language trying to gurgle through Greaser Pepe’s gin.

“I think Hohankton discovered the lack of dogs in town, for he tried to act the part as much as he could. He’d go trotting up Main Street, kind of sniffing at you and rolling his eyes, give two or three squeals like a dog, when you called to him, then sometimes he’d go mosying around important, full of his own business, just as you see dogs do.

“He took care of the coats and the lunch-boxes. If a stranger came around he’d show his tusk with his lip all curled up, and growl something ferocious. He was a right smart animal. I can see him now, going the lengths of Main Street, sounding like a busted clarinet player telling his woes in music, to let you know he was there, and that if there was a doughnut or some apple-sass, or, in fact, almost anything that a hog might like, you could please your friend Hohankton by putting it forth.

“But nothing in the world would get him fat. He was built like a fish, fore and aft, and in a straightaway I think he could hold a jack-rabbit.

“The Judge, he was a heavy-built old man who wore his chin on his breast most of the time. When Hank walked alongside of him he hunched up his back like the Judge, and put on much the same expression, until the Judge rumbled out, ‘Durn that hawg!’ and give him a scratch on the back with his cane.

“Then, if there was a lively bunch, why, Hank was merry, too. He would trot and amble with one side, and gallop with the other, make prancing steps, biting at his own tail till an oyster’d laugh.

“We had miles of claims on the bank. The pay was light, howsomever, and you had to send about twenty acres down the stream to get enough to pay the hands off. We had plenty of water on a two-hundred-foot fall, or it wouldn’t have paid for the trouble.

“Howsomever, we sent an almighty lot of farm land down where the ranchers didn’t want it. They objected to our covering their vegetables with four solid foot of tailings, consequently they kicked like anything, but it was just mine job against vegetable job, and after the law courts had been worn out and decided:

The rose is red, the sky is blue;
We don’t know nothing, no more’n you,

and everybody had an injunction out against somebody else, which he couldn’t enforce, why it came back to our old friend, physical trouble, again. The farmers outnumbered us, but we ranked in the first class for physical trouble, so there hadn’t been anything but an exchange of personal remarks.

“There was just one rancher, who grew too fast when he was young, and then stopped too quick after he grew up, came at us fierce. He called us all kinds of twisted crooks and straight-out thieves he could think of. He had it in for me particular. Once, as he got to putting it on me, he grew excited, and began to swing an ax around. He came nigh hitting the stream one or two passes, and I told him:

“‘You jay bird, you’ll be a-sitting and a-singing on a limb if you monkey with that little squirt of water. You are perfectly safe from me during working-hours, but don’t fool with our piping lay.’

“Not one man in a million knows what a stream of water can do, and he was one of the million that didn’t. So he r’ared up and said he would splash the water over me, and he raised his ax. I had half a mind to turn the lever and squirt him over the neighboring bluff, but I had pity in my soul, so I hollers, ‘Don’t!’

“But them words was too late. He is one of the very few men who will ever tell anybody how he tried cutting a hydraulic stream in two. While he was blasting me he wandered about, sitting on his horse loose; the ax came down. I was looking right plumb at him, but just how, when and in what way he disappeared I will never tell you.

“I followed the direction of the stream until I found him. He was curled up on his back, about half the ax handle in his hand. Soon as I came in sight he hollered, ‘_Whoa!_’ I stared at him. I come a little nearer, and he yelled ‘_Whoa!_’ again, and tried to scramble to his feet. I learned afterward that he’d been a mule-skinner for a while and thought his team had turned on him.

“I grabbed him by the neck. ‘Now, you horny-headed son of toil,’ I said to him, ‘you’ve learned one thing to-day. Keep on doing that for three thousand, six hundred and seventy-five days in the year and by the end of that time you won’t put your thumb on the buzz-saw.’

“‘You don’t mean to tell me a stream of water done that!’ he gasps out.

“‘You have three shies at it,’ I said. ‘I’ll furnish the axes, and every time that stream doesn’t knock you one hundred and fifty feet you get a new cigar. Want to buy in the game?’ I shambled him off to his wagon and dumped him in.

“He laid low for his revenge, like the darned farmer he was, and meanwhile Hohankton was the cause of our undoing. Animals have a heap more sense about natural things than men has. Hank got in the way of following the boys over to the side of the creek. You know I used to undercut the bank while the boys worked the big stone out for me and loosened up the dirt here and there. They was as careless fellows as you’d see. Yet, at the same time, no man wants an eighty-foot bank of dirt on top of him, and so they’d be quite anxious in their minds for about five minutes before the slide came.

“The first day Hank went over there he threw up his head as though he smelled something, straightened his tail, grunted loud and away he went. The boys near got pinched looking at him and laughing. When they went back, Hank went back, and the next time he blew his signal everybody departed. We were not such a swell-headed crowd we couldn’t learn a thing from an animal. Hank, old boy Rocks, was just as right as he was before, and after that he took up his position as Official Notifier and he never went wrong. The boys could work right along till they heard that squeal, and then do fast time to the creek.

“We was proud enough of Hanky before, but now he had this actual stunt of his that we could prove to any or all lookers-on, our chests stuck out till the buttons popped off. Other fellows would drop in with stories of dogs that had done all the wonderful things that you have heard tell of, and cats that used to milk cows, and horses that could figure up to six times six, and all them lovely relations that gets to be natural history around the camps, and we could stand for it and say ‘Yes,’ just as if we believed it.

“Then we’d remark we had a pig in camp; and wouldn’t say anything more until Hank signaled, and the visitor would begin to open his mouth to see everybody a-running, asking why. Then down come the bank!

“Usually the stranger went and put up money that it wouldn’t happen again. After three times, though, he’d let go, scratching his head and meditating: ‘It’s so--I see it’s so, but how the blazes a pig knows more about the acts of gravitation than a white man--you tell me now?’ And we’d answer we weren’t going to tell him. Let him find out, same as we did.

“Well, he’d admit in a kind of grudging way that that pig of ours was quite a curiosity. Yes, he’d admit it, in a sort of easy, offhand style, that old Hank was quite a curiosity, and we didn’t have to say anything.

“They would go on from Placerville, working the yarn up, until fifty mile away it seemed we had a pig that could smell a pay streak, always pointing, like a pointer dog, when he smelled the gold; that he usually walked back home on the hydraulic stream, and that when it was time for a bank to fall he would make sounds that sounded so much like ‘Look out!’ that you couldn’t hardly tell the difference from a man’s yelling it, except that it had a kind of pig brogue to it, as it were, and so forth.

“We didn’t have to advertise Hank one particle; even that gol-darned farmer heard of it, and slouched around on the quiet till he see how things lay.

“Well, here’s the way he come near getting even. If there’s anything I ever really did love it is to get my hands on a monitor lever and just feel that old streak of water flying across, smacking, gargling and gurgling in the earth, ripping her out, mud and suds a-flying all over, rocks going, too, and just a little touch bringing the blade in the stream and swinging her around, because, you know, four men couldn’t turn that nozzle by bull strength, where just a little blade that cut into it at each side made it turn like a delicate vine.

“Now, I liked that as well as when I used to live back East in a little old town up in New York, and it was my job to water the front street, and when there come a carriage along I always used to be absent-minded somehow, and that carriage would run right into the water, and then them good old aunts of mine used to explain it, how absent-minded I was, and the ladies that got wet wouldn’t listen to it, and the nigger coachman and I had it around the barn fast. Well, I was just the same kind of kid again when the monitor was playing, and the sun was shining, and the clouds was sailing, and the grass was growing, and everything that ought to happen was happening.

“Yes, my mind was in an A-1 condition, peace and good-will toward men, and everything else, when all of a sudden Hank gives his three locomotive whistles, and pulls for the shore, followed by twenty grown-up men, falling over bushes, jumping over boulders, galloping and waving their arms in wild excitement, Hank far in the lead.

“‘What in thunder?’ I said to myself. ‘That bank ain’t nowise loosening;’ when I happened to look down, and there, on a little bench, clapping his hands, sat that guerrilla-faced, swivel-jointed rancher, and there was coming up to him a black-and-tan dog, no bigger’n three rats. He couldn’t see me, and the boys couldn’t see him. They watched for that bank to fall, and there wasn’t any fall, and they waited, and they began cussing their good old friend Hank, that had never failed them once before.

“When I thought of Hank being thus abused, just because a cussed little dog--a kind of beast he ain’t never seen in his life before--has run him out, my fighting-blood began to run quick all around my veins and arteries, and I thinks to myself, ‘Oh, you gol-darn potato-bug assassin! You slayer of squ’sh bugs! Here’s where you get the thirty-third degree of Free and Accepted Masonry with all its tips, spurs, right-angles and variations--so mote it be!’

“It wasn’t the hour for blue checks to run in my direction. I grabbed the elevator wheel and sent the stream heavenward, started her swinging, hoping to drop it right on the back of Mr. Rancher’s neck. I didn’t intend to push him into the bank and hold him there. No, I was the slickest boy handling a stream the country contained, and I thought, perhaps, I could hit him in the neck with about seven hundred assorted tons of water, and leave his hat hanging in the air. I wanted to do something real nice to him.

“Well, it was _me_ that got it. I always told the Boss he didn’t load the tripod heavy enough. When I sent the stream up she teetered for fair. It was like a camel buck-jumping. There ain’t much give to three iron legs, and so, friends, I was sitting up and down times oftener than I could realize.

“There wasn’t a bronc’ buster that wouldn’t have yelled, ‘He’s a rider!’ if he’d seen me stick to that machine. We crow-hopped on the rocks back and forwards, and alleman’ all. We pitched forward and back, and we did the double teeter, and as for the stream--the smack when she hit things sounded just like a little small giant baby, nine hundred feet high, clapping his hands with glee. Sometimes through the whiz and howl I could hear men’s voices asking why I done so, and they no longer sounded like the voices of comrades and friends.

“I was helpless as a child; couldn’t grab lever, wheel nor nothing. Finally one leg toppled off an edge of rock and then--! Well, she shot the cook’s shanty across the stream two hundred yards first whack. It was so sudden it didn’t even put the fire out. The boys took their solemn oaths the kitchen stove went across, smoking as calm and peaceful as anything, just like it had decided to take a little fly. Nothing to interrupt business, but just the kind of exercise you would think a cook-stove would take. Yet they was astonished that I should shoot a cook-stove across the stream.

“While they was standing there astonished, the old nozzle bucked ’way back, and plowed a well in a bank ten feet away. I bet you that stream could shoot a hole right up Niagara Falls, and when she mixed it with the mess of dirt and rock in that bank, kicking it backwards at me, old Napoleon at Waterloo was a dum poor effigy for Hy Smith. I couldn’t see how it was ever going to be possible for me to breathe again, and the awful roar and swatting and smashing makes it queer how I ever got to hear or think again.

“But she passed through that bank of dirt in no time, and all the fellows that was asking, ‘Where’s he gone?’ found out. They got the last of the bank. Men could show you dents where pebbles no bigger’n buckshot had been blown into them.

“The old monitor got real gay, and thought she was a Fourth of July pin-wheel, and after that there was nothing but water-works on the whole cussed creek. She took from one side to the other in quick swings. Billy, the cook, said he saw a block of boards take wings and sail right over Hooker’s Mountain.

“I was dumbfuzzled and geewhizzled, till my head was full of curled hair and insect powder. I hung on with all hands and feet by instinct, like an insect, until finally we steadied down and played in the same place for half a minute, and I brushed some of the water out of my eyes.

“Beside me was Hank, looking reproachful, as much as to say, ‘I _thought_ you knew your limit, Hy--but you must have stayed in town _too_ long last time.’

“Then the next thing that appeared was that darned little black-and-tan dog that had caused the whole trouble, followed by our friend, the rancher. I pined to wash his whiskers. But it was not to be. The monitor had jacked all her levers and cogs by knocking around.

“‘Come on,’ I yelped to the crowd--‘Come on, you flapjack faces! Help me hold this critter down.’

“They got a move on. We tied the monitor and sent word to shut off the water. Whilst we was all stepping on each other’s feet, I thought I heard a mixture of sounds like small roars and large ‘Ki-yi’s,’ but the farmer, he was very busy, thinking we might catch on to who did all this, and come down to his cabin some night and take his whiskers as a momentum.

“I had been pounded enough, so one of the lads took my place. I stepped out. There was a battle going on. That cussed little black-and-tan terrier was snapping and flying around poor old Hohankton, that had never received anything but kind treatment in his life, and scarcely knew what to make of this. I hate a black-and-tan dog, anyway. I like to see a dog with legs big enough and long enough to support his body, and with a body hefty enough to give the legs something to do. This yapping little devil didn’t have none of my sympathies. When I looked at the miserable beast I felt something _had_ to happen to him.

“Just then he made a quick jump and nailed old Hank by the nose, and at the very same minute somebody hollered for me to come and fix something.

“After I pounded my thumb and wrenched my wrist getting the lever back in some shape again, they stopped the water off, and the country was saved!

“Then I grabbed that farmer and began to recite facts about his career, while the boys spit on their hands and took hold of shovels. It looked like uncle farmer would lead an upright life for some time, but he begged and hollered and pled, so the fellows loosed him from the position where we could best apply shovels, and he explained that he didn’t go for to do all this when he started, and we let him up.

“He rose to his feet and apologized to us, singly and collectively, and then he says, ‘Now I’ll just get little Pettie and ride right along home,’ and he began to holler, ‘Pettie! Pettie! Pettie!’ and all that come was old Hank, who looked him straight in the face.

“‘Well, what has become of the durn little coyote?’ says everybody, and then it just occurred to me that I knew, so I went back to where I had seen little Pettie grab old Hank by the nose, and, sure enough, there was a lovely little black tail!

“I brought it down to the rancher and I said, ‘Little Pettie has departed, but he, she or it leaves this for you as a souvenir.’

“The rancher says, ‘Gosh almighty!’ as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. I held up the tail, and I asked Hank:

“‘Here, little Hanky-Panky, did it eat the rest of little Pettie?’ and Hank looked at the tail and slouched off, with a kind of long and non-complaining squeal.

“‘Well,’ says the Boss, brisk, ‘if we find any more of little Pettie we’ll send it down to you, but I guess that’s all you can collect of him now.’

“‘Well, darnation!’ said the farmer, and he brushed off the dust and dirt of his hands on his trousers’ leg. ‘Well, say,’ says he, ‘I don’t know whether to weep or to yell Hosanna! As for me, personally,’ he said, ‘that cussed little dog has nigh chewed my fingers off,’ and he showed us all kinds of bites on his fingers; ‘but,’ he says, ‘on the other hand, it’s my wife’s pet, and every time one of the children lets itself get bit by it, why, their mother raises sin with them for tormentin’ it. If I had a good lie ready I wouldn’t weep one bit. But the circumstances and hullabaloos and waterfalls and geysers I have seen in the last twenty minutes have left my mind running in streaks.’

“We all looked at one another. We couldn’t think of anything, so we shook our heads.

“‘Well,’ said he, ‘perhaps by the time I get home I will be able to explain how little Pettie separated himself from this,’ and he twirled the last remains. ‘Perhaps I can,’ he said. ‘I don’t bear you boys the slightest grudge no more. I can’t. I set this dog on your pig a-purpose, and I can’t pretend to be at all sorry that your pig et him up.’ He shook his head again, and fixed his hat on.

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘matrimony is the mother of invention. I reckon I’ll get out of it somehow. Good-by, boys!’ And he took one more look at Pettie’s tail and put it in his pocket. ‘If anything happens to me you will know who it is by that,’ said he.

“As for the rest of us, we enjoyed ourselves figuring on just _what_ that rancher could explain. You can bring home a dog and say its tail has been cut off someway, but to bring home a tail and say the dog has been cut off someway is a hard proposition to work on the female mind that has lived on a ranch twenty years or so.”

X

THE FATAL GUM

A SERIO-COMEDY OF LIGHT FINGERS AND HEAVY BOOTS

Zeke Scraggs had been working out on the dry patch, where it was a long ways between drinks, and lukewarm water from a canteen no particular comfort. He complained, and I produced a discovery in the shape of a tin-foil-wrapped package of chewing-gum marked “Lily Sweet.”

“If you chew a piece of that when you’re dry, Scraggy,” I said, “it will stave off thirst for some time.”

Mr. Scraggs received the offering in his large palm, and poked it with the forefinger of his other hand.

“Yaas,” he said; “y-a-a-s. But it’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“Horrible. You don’t ketch me minglin’ myself with no ‘Lily Sweets.’ _I_ consider the lily of the field how she grows. You wouldn’t believe that anything that sounds so innercent could be the tee-total ruin of a large, dark-complected tin-horn, with a pair of musstaches like Injun-polished buffler horns, would you?”

Like almost anybody else would have done, I said I wouldn’t.

“Well, it was,” said Zeke. “If you could see that gam, and compare him to this here package of choon’-gum, you wouldn’t ever guess that either one could do much of anything to t’other; yet I can a tale relate of that combination that would make each particler hair stand up-ended, like the squills of the frightful porkypine.”

“Rats!” said I, being but a youth.

“You got any hairs that’s particler by nature? No? Well, then, I’ll spread this terrific osculation of the connimgulated forces of Nature befo’ you, as Charley says. My kind of narrative is the plain, unvarnished tale. Folks that tell a varnished tale is apt to sit on the varnish before it’s dry, and they’ll stick to it, come cold fact or red-hot argyment; whilst I’m always willin’ to prune, cross-harrer, revise or alter accordin’ to my victim’s feelin’s. That is, of course, if they go to corner me, which, between gentlemen, is a low-cut outrage. But this business about the gam is dead straight. I had relinquished all amusements and was livin’ quiet in order to save money, before I got acquainted with the facts.

“First place, comes a female missionary out to the ranch, and she was a corkin’ fine-lookin’ nice young woman, too, who tackled me on the subject of chewin’ terbackker. She had me all tangled up in my own rope and double left-sided front and back before the clock struck one.

“I tried to arger that nobody wouldn’t care whether I chewed terbackker or grass, so long’s I was happy and doin’ no harm. But that turned out not to be true. She said so.

“Then I tried to reach her womanly compassion by tearfully expoundin’ how I’d miss my cut of plug a day; I never touched her. Hers was a new religion. It had a different figger on the back from any I’d had dealt to me before. Seems it weren’t a sin to chew, but it was the control I’d lost over myself that put me in the hole. I had just to git command of my mind and everything would come at me, like a North Ca’lina town’s nigger’s dogs chasin’ a three-legged cat up an alley.

“‘But ma’am,’ say I, ‘I’ve knocked off before; an’, as for control over my mind, durin’ the hull spell me an’ Star Plug was separated, friends had to hold me to prevent me goin’ in an’ robbin’ my own grip. Control of my mind,’ says I, fightin’ noble, ‘why, you could ’a’ sicked a burglar on me, an’ he couldn’t have found no such thing on my person. I didn’t have no mind. I walked up an’ down, day and night, in that man’s town, like a ravin’ maniac stupefied by his halloocinashuns. All that passed beneath my shinin’ dome was: “Oh for a chew! Oh for a chew! Oh for a choo-choo-choo-choo! Whoeep! Brakes!” And when the cars went over the switch or a cayuse cantered up, they said: “Terbackker, terbackker, terbackker,” to my famished ears. All I wished was that the houses was built of plug, and all I thought of was that I could get earnest with an ax. That’s _all_ I _could_ think--all!’

“‘But you must use the control!’ says she, eager.

“‘You mean, ma’am,’ I says, ‘that I must seek out a quiet place, clench my fists, grind my teeth to a feather-edge and strain my suspenders to the bustin’ point in one calamitous effort to think I’m not thinking?’

“‘Precisely!’ says she, victorious. ‘You Western men have such a ready grip on essentials that it is a delight to be your guide.’

“‘Well, Uncle Tom and the dogs a-bitin’ him!’ says I to myself. ‘Lead on!’ I took off my hat aloud and bowed to within two of my noses to the ground. ‘To be able to foller so gentle and able a guide straight to perdition is a joy,’ says I. ‘I quit the class of roominants for two weeks. I will not use terbackker. No!’ says little Zekey Scraggs. ‘There’s my hand on it, ma’am.’

“And she just turned pink with joy. She was an awful nice little gal. Only she was so jam-full of knowledge that it was hard for her to understand things.

“Having put up this job on myself, I went to our storekeep’ and called for my time. I knew I’d need bright lights and excitement for a while. I begun to feel already that a chew wouldn’t go bad.

“There was the storekeep’ gazin’ fixedly at a book; his lips was movin’, but he seemed in a kind of rapture. When I hollered to him, he jumped all over and barked at me like a dog. At the same time he grabbed up a cigareet, stuck it in his mouth, took it out, looked at it and fired it down again.

“A light broke on me. ‘So she got you, too?’ says I.

“‘Hooppitty Hoppitty Hippitty Yer-hoop!’ says he. ‘That’s just what she’s done! I’m three days out. Not a smell of smoke in three days! My soul has gone away and won’t have any more truck with me. I don’t know who I am, nor why. I’ve been trying for an hour to find out how much three and two make. Take your money and leave me to my fate.’

“With this picture in my mind I broke for town. Half-way there I was chawin’ a latigo-strap like a wolf. When I hit the street, I jumped through the drug-store door.

“‘What you got for a man that’s quit chewin’?’ I gasps to the boss.

“‘Franky Frenchman’s Fool-Killer,’ says he--and with that he turns his head and expectorates satisfactorily into the spittoon.

“Seeing him, I near died of a broken heart.

“‘The next crack will be at your expense,’ I told him. ‘You hike out somethin’ for my case,’ I says. He shoved me out a package, just like that.”

Mr. Scraggs poked my gift.

“Just like that. I put the whole bizzee in my trap and chomped on it like a lion. I walked around the town, chompin’ on it. I waved my jaws till my face ached. Seemed to me like I’d never done anythin’ in all my life but bite Injy-rubber. And then I pushed madly for the first stud-poker game.

“When I got there, nothin’ was movin’. This here tin-horn I mention was polishing his muss-tache with both hands, whilst he talked to a few hangers-on.

“I became ashamed of that choon’-gum and I stuck it under the table, very sly and surreptishus. I felt like a man again.

“‘Fire the engine up!’ says I. ‘Gimme five stacks to practise on.’

“The gam hopped gleeful toward the table and give the drawer a yank. She stuck. He cussed and pulled harder. She came open with a jerk and a kind of a long, sticky s-m-aaa-ack, followed the strings of gray.

“The gam arose from where he’d sot on his backbone and looked at the drawer.

“‘We’re not doin’ any business to-day,’ says he, showing me my little eagle-bird.

“‘What’s happened to the trade?’ says I.

“He simply p’inted to the hunk of gum (which I had most unforchinit jammed ag’in’ the drawer).

“‘My wildest fancies have got exceeded,’ says he. ‘Do you want to hear a weird and wilful tale of woe?’

“‘Of course not,’ I says.

“‘All right,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you.’

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘here’s the way she come up. I’m a lost one in the wilderness out at a telegraph station. I see where I get my talents buried in a napkin made of sole-leather, hence I get handy with a deck of cards in front of the lookin’-glass. My work is so good after a while that I lose my whole salary to myself, and yet watchin’ careful all the time in the lookin’-glass. I’m fit to handle the steamboat trade, but I aims higher: I buy me a ticket to Noo York and hunt up a place where they hew to the line, let the chips fall where they will.

“‘“What’s your noo box o’ tricks?” says the Murphy that run the joint.

“‘“Well,” says I, “nothin’ new, but the good old reliable line. The world is my oyster, as Hamlet says, and I’ve got openers.”

“‘“H’m,” says he, makin’ a fat man’s shift in his chair and pushin’ his seegar into the other corner of his face. “I want you to understand this is a dead-straight game run here, my bucko--yet you look good--s’pose I’ve come in an’ laid thirty cents or so on the king, coppered. Lift the joker out of that deck an’ le’s see what happens.”

“‘He threw me a pack and I riffled and boxed ’em.

“‘“Why, you lose,” says I, much surprised as the king came out open on the turn.

“‘“And not so worse,” says he. “Play on!”

“‘I slid ’em out of the box to the last card. “You only lost your footin’ once,” says he. “The way you beat my corner play was a little obvious. Exercise your little finger till it’s soopler. You can handle a roll to-night. But mind this,” says he as he grunted himself on his feet, “this is a dead-straight house. If anybuddy _ketches_ you bein’ technical, we jump you, from me to the cop on watch. You get five per cent.”

“‘Well, sir, that was the loveliest little bower of rosebuds you ever smelt! Checks was joolry. We didn’t have change for nothin’ below a fifty-dollar bill. Our line of customers was these tur’ble knowin’ young men of the world, who’d stood the terrific experience of a college careerin’. They was a darin’ outfit. They was so fast they couldn’t help talk about the pace they was hittin’, and what they didn’t know about the game of faro was my business. It was like bein’ knocked down in the street by a strong man and have money pushed into your clothes. I did things at that table that never happened before in a civilized community. I was so youthful, you know, and it was a constant problem to me whether they’d stand for biting off the corner of a card to make things come my way.

“‘I run in rhinecaboos that ’ud make a heathen Scandahonian farmer fall off his hay-wagon, but them men of the world simply contributed yallerbacks--oh, good old yallerbacks!--beautiful to the eye; soft to the touch; _so_ encouragin’ to the feelin’s! I reckoned I’d buy the durned old Western Union an’ get even with the cuss who used to pound it to me from up the line--Ouch! vanished dream! Sweet vision stuck to earth by that con-cussed, snappy, stringy, bouncy, mud-colored foolish food fer flighty females you see before you!’

“At this p’int,” said Mr. Scraggs, “he shot his finger at my gum, breathin’ hard an’ glitterin’ his eyes.

“‘Yes, sir!’ says he. ‘There lies the cause of my roon! And such a fiddlin’, triflin’ stuff to wreck a man!’ He got some of his breath back. ‘You orter ask “How?”’ says he, ‘and I reply, “By contractin’ the habit”’--‘Not of gnawin’ it’--he adds hasty, ‘but steppin’ on it. Here was I sittin’ on sunset clouds and floatin’ over beautiful scenery, till there comes a cold blast of the winds of chance, and from that moment my path in life was strewed with the discard from rosy lips. For two solid weeks I did nothin’ but scuff my feet or flag a shine-stand to get rid of the day’s gatherin’ of gum. Them Eye-talians used to grin in a way that made me want an open season on furriners, as I cantered up to ’em, smicky-smacky, smicky-smacky, trailin’ soft gray hairs behind me like a retired minister’s whiskers.

“‘They’d look up at the sky and make dago remarks, whilst they curried my feet with a brick, till the cold sweat of mortification melted my b’iled collar. And once a flap-doodle actor goat, with a red, white and blue hatband, got gay and told me not to use such naughty words about these tributes from the mouth of beauty. I swatted the air where he’d been when I started to hit him an’ he took me by most of my trousers and turned me ten somersaults. How was I to know he was Honest Mike, the Deck Hand, who chucked the villain over Brooklyn Bridge every night and Saturday matinée?

“‘Well, I’ll cut it short. No matter where I fled, the fiend pursued me. I went to the opery one night, to get my frazzled nerves soothed by the champion yelpers of the pack. For two solid hours I lived untroubled, not even worried by the show, as I couldn’t understand a word of it and nobuddy on the stage had complaints too deep to sing about; but comin’ out, me enemy waited on the edge of a step for me and I landed astride of a stout lady’s neck, beggin’ her pardon and fightin’ a half-dozen men for five minutes. When I explained, even the stout lady laughed.

“‘The boss at my joint cussed himself into asthma, wondering what the sticky stuff, tracked all over his new seven-dollar-a-yard carpet, was.

“‘But I ain’t goin’ to weary you with trifles. One day the boss tipped me off that there was a bunch of alum-eyes due that evenin’; he said they was fellers that had took the college course, but recovered, and that the bowlegged elephant song and dance that extracted money from our regulars would be looked upon with reproach by the new-comers. I got nervous. Playin’ ag’in’ them little first-crow roosters had been bad practice. I soaked my hands in warm water and prepared as best I could, but when I saw that gang before me I knew why they was called alum-eyes. They puckered my soul up, my hands got too wet with sweat for business--you know your fingers has got to be not too dry, to slip, and not too wet, to stick, if you’re turnin’ out high-grade work.

“‘Well, I was excited, yet it was a reel pleasure to be up against reel men.

“‘I had a habit of running my fingers over the rung of my chair, to keep ’em in right shape. ’Twas a thing nobuddy could complain of, and the game just held on to its hat and flew. How much money you had was the limit, and to put my little bank on the other side of the river, quick, was the idea of the alum-eyes.

“‘I forgot everythin’. I was fair hollerin’ inside for joy. My buckers had a good square chance to catch me at it, if they could, and I was haulin’ money when--well, Fortune had patted me on the back with one hand, while she got ready with a black-jack in the other. In my state of feelin’ I put a heel, a chewin’-gum-covered-heel, on the rung of that chair and took it off again, without noticin’. As the play stood, the outfit had me whipsawed. I drug my fingers over the rung of that chair, that chewin’-gum-covered-rung, without noticing; then I wiggled my fingers in a Chinee ketch-as-ketch-can over the box and raised ’em with a playin’-card firmly stuck to each finger. _Then_ I noticed, yes; and everybody noticed. Silence fell six foot deep. One of them alum-eyes says:

“‘“That may be magnifercent, but it ain’t Hoyle.”

“‘And I excused myself by ducking under the table and jumping over the banisters.

“‘Once on the street, I hoopled her for the corner. My play was to wait till the crowd went out, and then see the old man, who had a rubber-band on my roll.

“‘I thought I’d peek around the corner until all was clear, then rush the boss with my hard-luck game of talk, extract a little of the juice of the root of evil from him, then fold up my legs like a jack-rabbit and silently lift myself through the breeze, back to the sagebush--back to where the prairie-dog and the owl and the rattlesnake live in harmony together--never excepting the rattlesnake, so long’s there’s plenty of young dogs and owls.

“‘The game must have busted when I took the fence, for here come the bunch of alum-eyes right up the street. I had the curiosity to wait and hear what they was talkin’ about, as I had a corner to duck behind when they come close. Well, I waited, and didn’t hear nothin’ I’d care to write home to mother. They made me so cussed mad, I overstayed my time. Just when they got within range, I started to hop swiftly backwards. But I didn’t. No. My feet had grew fast to that sidewalk. Seems the city had been mending the block pavement, as usual, and some horney-souled son of toil had spilt a square yard of coal-tar on the sidewalk. Me to the middle of the coal-tar district, of course--you can chew coal-tar, you know; I’ve done it.

“‘So, as I remarked, I didn’t gracefully side-step. Exactly not. I gave one yank and landed with my knees up in the air. Them feet was riveted fast, you bet, and my joints just had to yield accordin’.

“‘“What is this we have?” said one alum-eye.

“‘There was a gas lamp on the corner. They knew me by my face.

“‘“Are you going to deal flagstones with your feet?” asks one of them.

“‘Let’s pull down the blinds. It was their whirl at the bat. They brought all the folks, includin’ the old man and Tommy the cop.

“‘They yee-hooed on my feet till I had to holler for mercy. Then they sat on the curb and rocked and hollered like the pack of fools they were. They tried to lift my shoulders up, but found that my coat had took a violent affection for the sidewalk, too. Some of ’em didn’t even try for the curbstone then. They rolled around on the sidewalk and kicked their legs, whilst I frayed my vocal chords readin’ their customs and habits to ’em.

“‘But I was in a runnin’ noose; the harder I cussed at ’em, the worse they laughed.

“‘“Ain’t he the slick one, though!” says the old man, holdin’ on to his stummick with both hands. “Don’t do nothin’ more to him for a minute, boys, or the coroner’ll be sittin’ on me.”

“‘Every time I gee-nashed my teeth an’ tried to reach ’em they waltzed on one leg and shrieked. There must ’a’ been nigh three hundred fools watchin’ and havin’ the time of their lives. Little messenger-boys was there, the night-watchmen took a peep, ladies with a past improved a shinin’ present, the dago shoeblacks heard the racket and come runnin’ up and hollered, “Choon-gum extract! Ten a cent!”

“‘And there I lay, flat on my back, with my knees in the air, scart to move, because I couldn’t wiggle a finger without the crowd throwin’ a fit. Oh, murder! Le’s cut it! They unlaced my shoes and snaked me out of my coat, and instead of bein’ sad at them pathetical shoes and coat lying in the coal-tar, the boss fell over sideways and the rest was too feeble to stop me as I broke away. I made that block in two stocking-footed leps.

“‘I had a hundred or two in my pants. I bought three dollars’ worth of coat and shoes from a second-hand store for fifteen dollars and a promise that if anything happened I wouldn’t mention the shop to the police. Then I come here, far from the gadding crowds, far from the lady with the developed jaw-swing, and I get--that.’

“Here,” said Mr. Scraggs, “he p’inted to my chewin’-gum and wiped his white brow off with his white handkercher, and he says: ‘Have we come to this?’

“I swallered hard and looked at him.

“‘Have you such a thing as a plug of terbackker in your possession?’

“‘Yes,’ says he, surprised. ‘I have.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘ruther than to further add to your troubles, I’ll break my word to a lady--gimme that plug! We haven’t come to this--this has come to us.’

“So I explained, and he opened his stock exchange. I reckon he was right about the bad effects of chewin’-gum, too, or maybe what’s a medal winner in N’ York ain’t art west of the Missouri. Anyhow, you don’t hear me kickin’ about that nice missionary young lady. If I cared for joolry, I’d be wearin’ that tin-horn’s diamon’ chest protector right now. Gum has different effects on different people. ’Twas fatal to his constitooshun.”

XI

BLESSED BE THE PEACEMAKERS

THE QUEST FOR QUIET ON THE PART OF THE HUMAN CONCERTINA

“The peaceful season has come around again,” said Mr. Scraggs. “It does that every year. It is a good thing to have a certain date to be peaceful on; you prepare for it, put all troublesome things away, and wind up, as I usually do, with four friends trying to hold me down because I feel so light in the head.

“Peace is one of the finest things on earth, but the makin’ of it will never be confined to one of these here monopolies. Listen! What better could a man do than go into a home being tore wide open by the dissensions and discussions of one husband and one wife, using such domestic articles as flat-irons, coal-scuttles, brooms and the like of that, upon each other, and extract from the dust one large, smooth, round, white hunk of peace? It is nice to think of.

“I remember Long John. He was a feller built on the concertina plan. When he sat down in a chair he didn’t look like a man more’n seven feet high, but when he got up, and up, and more up, he was that kind of build that made little Bill holler, the first time he saw the ack, ‘How much more of you is there down cellar?’ And Bill said to me on the quiet: ‘Old Gabe will have to play an oncore if he expects John to get up before the resurrection is all over.’

“But John had a disposition that couldn’t be beat. He was for peace all the time. Bits of men that wouldn’t more’n come up to his waist used to talk to him as rough as they liked and John wouldn’t give them one word back. He simply hit them a slam, and then there was peace, you bet your life.

“But it was done out of pure good-natur. ‘They got no business to talk like that to nobody,’ says John, ‘and I can correc’ them without it looking anything like a fight. Ain’t you noticed that that stops ’em from being sassy?’ It sure did, but I lived in fear and tremblin’ some feller would be an inch nearer than John cal’lated and would remain quiet for several million years. That would have broke his heart.

“Well, John put in a solid eight months without ever pinting a foot toward town. Then he collected and went off for a little quiet trip on his own hook. He said that nobody could ask for a better people than we were, yet we was kind of rough in our ways, and he wanted to see domestic felicity, and the soothing inflooence of Woman. That there was a strain in his ideas that made him need kind and gentle treatment oncet in so often.

“It ain’t, perhaps, necessary for me to say that I have been exposed to the inflooence of seventy or eighty Mrs. Scraggs for enough number of years to heave a sigh on what was comin’ to John; but I never guessed how complete his whole idea of the way this universe runs would be ruined.

“Off goes Johnny Boy, dressed up in his best black suit, that looked as if it had been made for a statue of a life-sized giant. The sleeves hung down to the middle of his fingers, the pants rolled up six inches at the bottom, and, as he was a ga’nt critter, there was enough stuff in them clothes to make it look as if he could turn right around inside them without attracting attention.

“And he come back.

“This is what happened. He come into the bull-pen slower than usual. He sat down on the bunk, with his face completely surrounded by hands, and he never opened his yorp till long after we’d et our supper. Then he took me by the arm, and says, ‘Scraggsy, you been my friend for a long time. Come out till I tell you something.’

“I went out and he smoked his cigareet for another half-hour until I had to say: ‘If you have got anything real to tell me, John, why don’t you do it to-night, while we’re sitting out here so comfortable in the frost?’

“Says he: ‘I got up there all right. It was a nice town. There was swimming. There was peace. There was sidewalks, and fellers wearing strange hats. Everything was there, and I think,’ he says, ‘I was more scared of the things I didn’t know whether they could happen or not than I was of the things I knew could happen.

“‘My soul had all the fuz roped off of it. I was positive I would never more take two wraps around a cayuse with them legs of mine, and chase a skitty steer some more. “No,” says I, “cow-punching is a lost art.” A feller gets all broke up and tackled with rheumatism before he’s--he’s--well, I ain’t sixty yet, by a durn sight. Anyhow, a feller gets broke up any time, and I think of those lovely homes and nice beds, and it seemed great.