Arizona Nights
Page 23
CHAPTER THREE
THE PAPER A YEAR OLD
Sang hurried out for a broom. Senor Johnson sat where he was, hisheavy, square brows knit. Suddenly he stooped, seized one of thenewspapers, drew near the lamp, and began to read.
It was a Kansas City paper and, by a strange coincidence, was datedexactly a year before. The sheet Senor Johnson happened to pick up wasone usually passed over by the average newspaper reader. It containedonly columns of little two- and three-line advertisements classified asHelp Wanted, Situations Wanted, Lost and Found, and Personal. Thelatter items Senor Johnson commenced to read while awaiting Sang andthe broom.
The notices were five in number. The first three were of themysterious newspaper-correspondence type, in which Birdie beseechesJack to meet her at the fountain; the fourth advertised a clairvoyant.Over the fifth Senor Johnson paused long. It reads
"WANTED.-By an intelligent and refined lady of pleasing appearance,correspondence with a gentleman of means. Object matrimony."
Just then Sang returned with the broom and began noisily to sweeptogether the debris. The rustling of papers aroused Senor Johnson fromhis reverie. At once he exploded.
"Get out of here, you debased Mongolian," he shouted; "can't you seeI'm reading?"
Sang fled, sorely puzzled, for the Senor was calm and unexcited andaloof in his everyday habit.
Soon Jed Parker, tall, wiry, hawk-nosed, deliberate, came into the roomand flung his broad hat and spurs into the corner. Then he proceededto light his pipe and threw the burned match on the floor.
"Been over to look at the Grant Pass range," he announced cheerfully."She's no good. Drier than cork legs. Th' country wouldn't supportthree horned toads."
"Jed," quoth the Senor solemnly, "I wisht you'd hang up your hat like Ihave. It don't look good there on the floor."
"Why, sure," agreed Jed, with an astonished stare.
Sang brought in supper and slung it on the red and white squares ofoilcloth. Then he moved the lamp and retired.
Senor Johnson gazed with distaste into his cup.
"This coffee would float a wedge," he commented sourly.
"She's no puling infant," agreed the cheerful Jed.
"And this!" went on the Senor, picking up what purported to be plumduff: "Bog down a few currants in dough and call her pudding!"
He ate in silence, then pushed back his chair and went to the window,gazing through its grimy panes at the mountains, ethereal in theirevening saffron.
"Blamed Chink," he growled; "why don't he wash these windows?"
Jed laid down his busy knife and idle fork to gaze on his chief withamazement. Buck Johnson, the austere, the aloof, the grimly taciturn,the dangerous, to be thus complaining like a querulous woman!
"Senor," said he, "you're off your feed."
Senor Johnson strode savagely to the table and sat down with a bang.
"I'm sick of it," he growled; "this thing will kill me off. I might aswell go be a buck nun and be done with it."
With one round-arm sweep he cleared aside the dishes.
"Give me that pen and paper behind you," he requested.
For an hour he wrote and destroyed. The floor became littered withtorn papers. Then he enveloped a meagre result. Parker had watchedhim in silence.
The Senor looked up to catch his speculative eye. His own eye twinkleda little, but the twinkle was determined and sinister, with only analloy of humour.
"Senor," ventured Parker slowly, "this event sure knocks me hell-westand crooked. If the loco you have culled hasn't paralysed yourspeaking parts, would you mind telling me what in the name of heaven,hell, and high-water is up?"
"I am going to get married," announced the Senor calmly.
"What!" shouted Parker; "who to?"
"To a lady," replied the Senor, "an intelligent and refined lady--ofpleasing appearance."