Wild Western Tales 2: 101 Classic Western Stories Vol. 2 (Civitas Library Classics)

by Various

  Then finally Amanda had a great thought. Listening to "Fatinitza" one morning, she suddenly arose and visited Herr Schwartz, the band-master. Herr Schwartz was a wise and well-educated German. They had a lengthy conference.

  "I don't pelief dot vill be very goot," said the band-master.

  But at that Amanda talked a good deal; and the worthy Teuton was soon bewildered, and at last gave a dubious consent, "since it would blease de ladies."

  The president of the Lyceum arranged the coming event after her own heart. The voice of Woman should speak in Siskiyou. The helpless victims of male prejudice and the law of the land were to be flanked with consolation and encouragement upon the eve of their ordeal in court. In their lonely cell they were to feel that there were those outside whose hearts beat with theirs. The floral tribute was to be sumptuous, and Amanda had sent to San Francisco for pound-cake. The special quality she desired could not be achieved by the Siskiyou confectioner.

  Miss Sissons was not a party to this enterprise, and she told its various details to Jim Hornbrook, half in anger, half in derision. He listened without comment, and his face frightened her a little.

  "Jim, what's the matter?" said she.

  "Are you going to be at that circus?" he inquired.

  "I thought I might just look on, you know," said Miss Sissons. "Mrs. Campbell and a brass-band--"

  "You'll stay in the house that night, Louise."

  "Why, the ring isn't on my finger yet," laughed the girl, "the fatal promise of obedience--" But she stopped, perceiving her joke was not a good one. "Of course, Jim, if you feel that way," she finished. "Only I'm grown up, and I like reasons."

  "Well--that's all right too."

  "Ho, ho! All right! Thank you, sir. Dear me!"

  "Why, it ain't to please me, Louise; indeed it ain't. I can't swear everything won't be nice and all right and what a woman could be mixed up in, but--well, how should you know what men are, anyway, when they've been a good long time getting mad, and are mad all through? That's what this town is to-day, Louise."

  "I don't know," said Miss Sissons, "and I'm sure I'd rather not know." And so she gave her promise. "But I shouldn't suppose," she added, "that the men of Siskiyou, mad or not, would forget that women are women."

  Jim laughed. "Oh no," he said, "they ain't going to forget that."

  The appointed day came; and the train came, several hours late, bearing the box of confectionery, addressed to the Ladies' Reform and Literary Lyceum. Bill, the ticket-agent, held his lantern over it on the platform.

  "That's the cake," said he.

  "What cake?" Abe inquired.

  Bill told him the rumor.

  "Cake?" repeated Abe. "Fer them?" and he tilted his head towards the jail. "Will you say that again, friend? I ain't clear about it. Cake, did ye say?"

  "Pound-cake," said Bill. "Ordered special from San Francisco."

  Now pound-cake for adults is considered harmless. But it is curious how unwholesome a harmless thing can be if administered at the wrong time. The gaunt, savage-looking Californian went up to the box slowly. Then he kicked it lightly with his big boot, seeming to listen to its reverberation. Then he read the address. Then he sat down on the box to take a think. After a time he began speaking aloud. "They hold up a stage," he said, slowly. "They lay up a passenger fer a month. And they lame Bob Griffiths fer life. And then they do up Buck. Shoot a hole through his spine. And I helped bury him; fer I liked Buck." The speaker paused, and looked at the box. Then he got up. "I hain't attended their prayer-meetin's," said he, "and I hain't smelt their flowers. Such perfume's liable to make me throw up. But I guess I'll hev a look at their cake."

  He went to the baggage-room and brought an axe. The axe descended, and a splintered slat flew across the platform. "There's a lot of cake," said Abe. The top of the packing-case crashed on the railroad track, and three new men gathered to look on. "It's fresh cake too," remarked the destroyer. The box now fell to pieces, and the tattered paper wrapping was ripped away. "Step up, boys," said Abe, for a little crowd was there now. "Soft, ain't it?" They slung the cake about and tramped it in the grime and oil, and the boards of the box were torn apart and whirled away. There was a singular and growing impulse about all this. No one said anything; they were very quiet; yet the crowd grew quickly, as if called together by something in the air. One voice said, "Don't forgit we're all relyin' on yer serenade, Mark," and this raised a strange united laugh that broke brief and loud, and stopped, leaving the silence deeper than before. Mark and three more left, and walked towards the Lyceum. They were members of the Siskiyou band, and as they went one said that the town would see an interesting trial in the morning. Soon after they had gone the crowd moved from the station, compact and swift.

  Meanwhile the Lyceum had been having disappointments. When the train was known to be late, Amanda had abandoned bestowing the cake until morning. But now a horrid thing had happened: the Siskiyou band refused its services! The rocking-chairs were plying strenuously; but Amanda strode up and down in front of Mount Shasta and Lucretia Mott.

  Herr Schwartz entered. "It's all right, madam," said he. "My trombone haf come back, und--"

  "You'll play?" demanded the president.

  "We blay for de ladies."

  The rocking-chairs were abandoned; the Lyceum put on its bonnet and shawl, and marshalled down-stairs with the band.

  "Ready," said Amanda.

  "Ready," said Herr Schwartz to his musicians. "Go a leedle easy mit der Allegro, or we bust 'Fatinitza.'"

  The spirited strains were lifted in Siskiyou, and the procession was soon at the jail in excellent order. They came round the corner with the trombone going as well as possible. Two jerking bodies dangled at the end of ropes, above the flare of torches. Amanda and her flock were shrieking.

  "So!" exclaimed Herr Schwartz. "Dot was dose Healy boys we haf come to gif serenade." He signed to stop the music.

  "No you don't," said two of the masked crowd, closing in with pistols. "You'll play fer them fellers till you're told to quit."

  "Cerdainly," said the philosophical Teuton. "Only dey gif brobably very leedle attention to our Allegro."

  So "Fatinitza" trumpeted on while the two on the ropes twisted, and grew still by-and-by. Then the masked men let the band go home. The Lyceum had scattered and fled long since, and many days passed before it revived again to civic usefulness, nor did its members find comfort from their men. Herr Schwartz gave a parting look at the bodies of the lynched murderers. "My!" said he, "das Ewigweibliche haf draw them apove sure enough."

  Miss Sissons next day was walking and talking off her shock and excitement with her lover. "And oh, Jim," she concluded, after they had said a good many things, "you hadn't anything to do with it, had you?" The young man did not reply, and catching a certain expression on his face, she hastily exclaimed: "Never mind! I don't want to know--ever!"

  So James Hornbrook kissed his sweetheart for saying that, and they continued their walk among the pleasant hills.

  Contents

  TWENTY MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS

  By Owen Wister

  Upon turning over again my diary of that excursion to the Pacific, I find that I set out from Atlantic waters on the 30th day of a backward and forlorn April, which had come and done nothing towards making its share of spring, but had gone, missing its chance, leaving the trees as bare as it had received them from the winds of March. It was not bleak weather alone, but care, that I sought to escape by a change of sky; and I hoped for some fellow-traveller who might begin to interest my thoughts at once. No such person met me in the several Pullmans which I inhabited from that afternoon until the forenoon of the following Friday. Through that long distance, though I had slanted southwestward across a multitude of States and vegetations, and the Mississippi lay eleven hundred miles to my rear, the single event is my purchasing some cat's-eyes of the news-agent at Sierra Blanca. Save this, my diary contains only neat additions of daily expenses, and moral reflections o
f a delicate and restrained melancholy. They were Pecos cat's-eyes, he told me, obtained in the rocky canyons of that stream, and destined to be worth little until fashion turned from foreign jewels to become aware of these fine native stones. And I, glad to possess the jewels of my country, chose two bracelets and a necklace of them, paying but twenty dollars for fifteen or sixteen cat's-eyes, and resolved to give them a setting worthy of their beauty. The diary continues with moral reflections upon the servility of our taste before anything European, and the handwriting is clear and deliberate. It abruptly becomes hurried, and at length well- nigh illegible. It is best, I think, that you should have this portion as it comes, unpolished, unamended, unarranged--hot, so to speak, from my immediate pencil, instead of cold from my subsequent pen. I shall disguise certain names, but that is all.

  Friday forenoon, May 5.--I don't have to gaze at my cat's-eyes to kill time any more. I'm not the only passenger any more. There's a lady. She got in at El Paso. She has taken the drawing-room, but sits outside reading newspaper cuttings and writing letters. She is sixty, I should say, and has a cap and one gray curl. This comes down over her left ear as far as a purple ribbon which suspends a medallion at her throat. She came in wearing a sage-green duster of pongee silk, pretty nice, only the buttons are as big as those largest mint-drops. "You porter," she said, "brush this." He put down her many things and received it. Her dress was sage green, and pretty nice too. "You porter," said she, "open every window. Why, they are, I declare! What's the thermometer in this car?" "Ninety-five, ma'am. Folks mostly travelling--" "That will do, porter. Now you go make me a pitcher of lemonade right quick." She went into the state-room and shut the door. When she came out she was dressed in what appeared to be chintz bedroom curtains. They hang and flow loosely about her, and are covered with a pattern of pink peonies. She has slippers--Turkish--that stare up in the air, pretty handsome and comfortable. But I never before saw any one travel with fly-paper. It must be hard to pack. But it's quite an idea in this train. Fully a dozen flies have stuck to it already; and she reads her clippings, and writes away, and sips another glass of lemonade, all with the most extreme ap- pearance of leisure, not to say sloth. I can't imagine how she manages to produce this atmosphere of indolence when in reality she is steadily occupied. Possibly the way she sits. But I think it's partly the bedroom curtains.

  These notes were interrupted by the entrance of the new conductor. "If you folks have chartered a private car, just say so," he shouted instantly at the sight of us. He stood still at the extreme end and removed his hat, which was acknowledged by the lady. "Travel is surely very light, Gadsden," she assented, and went on with her writing. But he remained standing still, and shouting like an orator: "Sprinkle the floor of this car, Julius, and let the pore passengers get a breath of cool. My lands!" He fanned himself sweepingly with his hat. He seemed but little larger than a red squirrel, and precisely that color. Sorrel hair, sorrel eyebrows, sorrel freckles, light sorrel mustache, thin aggressive nose, receding chin, and black, attentive, prominent eyes. He approached, and I gave him my ticket, which is as long as a neck-tie, and has my height, the color of my eyes and hair, and my general description, punched in the margin. "Why, you ain't middle-aged!" he shouted, and a singular croak sounded behind me. But the lady was writing. "I have been growing younger since I bought that ticket," I explained. "That's it, that's it," he sang; a man's always as old as he feels, and a woman--is ever young," he finished. "I see you are true to the old teachings and the old-time chivalry, Gadsden," said the lady, continuously busy. "Yes, ma'am. Jacob served seven years for Leah and seven more for Rachel." "Such men are raised today in every worthy Louisiana home, Gadsden, be it ever so humble." "Yes, ma'am. Give a fresh sprinkle to the floor, Julius, soon as it goes to get dry. Excuse me, but do you shave yourself, sir?" I told him that I did, but without excusing him. "You will see that I have a reason for asking," he consequently pursued, and took out of his coat-tails a round tin box handsomely labelled "Nat. Fly Paper Co.," so that I supposed it was thus, of course, that the lady came by her fly-paper. But this was pure coincidence, and the conductor explained: "That company's me and a man at Shreveport, but he dissatisfies me right frequently. You know what heaven a good razor is for a man, and what you feel about a bad one. Vaseline and ground shells," he said, opening the box, "and I'm not saying anything except it will last your lifetime and never hardens. Rub the size of a pea on the fine side of your strop, spread it to an inch with your thumb. May I beg a favor on so short a meeting? Join me in the gentlemen's lavatory with your razorstrop in five minutes. I have to attend to a corpse in the baggage-car, and will return at once." "Anybody's corpse I know, Gadsden?" said the lady." No, ma'am. Just a corpse."

  When I joined him, for I was now willing to do anything, he was apologetic again. "'Tis a short acquaintance," he said, "but may I also beg your razor? Quick as I get out of the National Fly I am going to register my new label. First there will be Uncle Sam embracing the world, signifying this mixture is universal, then my name, then the word Stropine, which is a novelty and carries copyright, and I shall win comfort and doubtless luxury. The post barber at Fort Bayard took a dozen off me at sight to retail to the niggers of the Twenty-fourth, and as he did not happen to have the requisite cash on his person I charged him two roosters and fifty cents, and both of us done well. He's after more Stropine, and I got Pullman prices for my roosters, the buffet-car being out of chicken a la Marengo. There is your razor, sir, and I appreciate your courtesy." It was beautifully sharpened, and I bought a box of the Stropine and asked him who the lady was. "Mrs. Porcher Brewton!" he exclaimed. "Have you never met her socially? Why she--why she is the most intellectual lady in Bee Bayou." "Indeed!" I said." Why she visits New Orleans, and Charleston, and all the principal centres of refinement, and is welcomed in Washington. She converses freely with our statesmen and is considered a queen of learning. Why she writes po'try, sir, and is strong-minded. But a man wouldn't want to pick her up for a fool, all the samey." "I shouldn't; I don't," said I. "Don't you do it, sir. She's run her plantation all alone since the Colonel was killed in sixty-two. She taught me Sunday-school when I was a lad, and she used to catch me at her pecan-trees 'most every time in Bee Bayou."

  He went forward, and I went back with the Stropine in my pocket. The lady was sipping the last of the lemonade and looking haughtily over the top of her glass into (I suppose) the world of her thoughts. Her eyes met mine, however. "Has Gadsden--yes, I perceive he has been telling about me," she said, in her languid, formidable voice. She set her glass down and reclined among the folds of the bedroom curtains, considering me. "Gadsden has always been lavish," she mused, caressingly. "He seems destined to succeed in life," I hazarded. "ah n--a!" she sighed, with decision. "He will fail." As she said no more and as I began to resent the manner in which she surveyed me, I remarked, "You seem rather sure of his failure." "I am old enough to be his mother, and yours," said Mrs. Porcher Brewton among her curtains. "He is a noble-hearted fellow, and would have been a high-souled Southern gentleman if born to that station. But what should a conductor earning $103.50 a month be dispersing his attention on silly patents for? Many's the time I've told him what I think; but Gadsden will always be flighty. No further observations occurring to me, I took up my necklace and bracelets from the seat and put them in my pocket. "Will you permit a meddlesome old woman to inquire what made you buy those cat's-eyes?" said Mrs. Brewton. "Why--" I dubiously began. "Never mind," she cried, archly. "If you were thinking of some one in your Northern home, they will be prized because the thought, at any rate, was beautiful and genuine. 'Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, my heart, untravelled, fondly turns to thee.' Now don't you be embarrassed by an old woman!" I desired to inform her that I disliked her, but one can never do those things; and, anxious to learn what was the matter with the cat's-eyes, I spoke amiably and politely to her. "Twenty dollars!" she murmured. "And he told you they came from the Pecos!" She gave that single melodious croak I had
heard once before. Then she sat up with her back as straight as if she was twenty. "My dear young fellow, never do you buy trash in these trains. Here you are with your coat full of--what's Gadsden's absurd razor concoctions--strut--strop --bother! And Chinese paste buttons. Last summer, on the Northern Pacific, the man offered your cat's-eyes to me as native gems found exclusively in Dakota. But I just sat and mentioned to him that I was on my way home from a holiday in China, and he went right out of the car. The last day I was in Canton I bought a box of those cat's-eyes at eight cents a dozen." After this we spoke a little on other subjects, and now she's busy writing again. She's on business in California, but will read a paper at Los Angeles at the annual meeting of the Golden Daughters of the West. The meal station is coming, but we have agreed to--

  Later, Friday afternoon.--I have been interrupted again. Gadsden entered, removed his hat, and shouted: "Sharon. Twenty minutes for dinner." I was calling the porter to order a buffet lunch in the car when there tramped in upon us three large men of such appearance that a flash of thankfulness went through me at having so little ready-money and only a silver watch. Mrs. Brewton looked at them and said, "Well, gentlemen?" and they took off their embroidered Mexican hats. "We've got a baby show here," said one of them, slowly, looking at me, "and we'd be kind of obliged if you'd hold the box." "There's lunch put up in a basket for you to take along," said the next, "and a bottle of wine--champagne. So losing your dinner won't lose you nothing." "We're looking for somebody raised East and without local prejudice," said the third. "So we come to the Pullman." I now saw that so far from purposing to rob us they were in a great and honest distress of mind. "But I am no judge of a baby," said I; "not being mar--" "You don't have to be," broke in the first, more slowly and earnestly. "It's a fair and secret ballot we're striving for. The votes is wrote out and ready, and all we're shy of is a stranger without family ties or business interests to hold the box and do the counting." His deep tones ceased, and he wiped heavy drops from his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "We'd be kind of awful obliged to you," he urged. "The town would be liable to make it two bottles," said the second. The third brought his fist down on the back of a seat and said, "I'll make it that now." "But, gentlemen," said I, "five, six, and seven years ago I was not a stranger in Sharon. If my friend Dean Drake was still here--" "But he ain't. Now you might as well help folks, and eat later. This town will trust you. And if you quit us--" Once more he wiped the heavy drops away, while in a voice full of appeal his friend finished his thought: "If we lose you, we'll likely have to wait till this train comes in to-morrow for a man satisfactory to this town. And the show is costing us a heap." A light hand tapped my arm, and here was Mrs. Brewton saying: "For shame! Show your enterprise." "I'll hold this yere train," shouted Gadsden, "if necessary." Mrs. Brewton rose alertly, and they all hurried me out. "My slippers will stay right on when I'm down the steps," said Mrs. Brewton, and Gadsden helped her descend into the blazing dust and sun of Sharon. "Gracious!" said she, "what a place! But I make it a point to see everything as I go." Nothing had changed. There, as of old, lay the flat litter of the town--sheds, stores, and dwellings, a shapeless congregation in the desert, gaping wide everywhere to the glassy, quivering immensity; and there, above the roofs, turned the slatted wind-wheels. But close to the tracks, opposite the hotel, was an edifice, a sort of tent of bunting, from which brass music issued, while about a hundred pink and blue sun-bonnets moved and mixed near the entrance. Little black Mexicans, like charred toys, lounged and lay staring among the ungraded dunes of sand. "Gracious!" said Mrs. Brewton again. Her eye lost nothing; and as she made for the tent the chintz peo- nies flowed around her, and her step was surprisingly light. We passed through the sunbonnets and entered where the music played. "The precious blessed darlings!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands. "This will do for the Golden Daughters," she rapidly added; "yes, this will distinctly do." And she hastened away from me into the throng.