Santa Fe's Partner Part 3

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 sa.s.sy 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 G.o.d-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 att.i.tudes 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 Fe CHARLEY'S KINDERGARTEN

When Bill Hart, who was a good fellow and kept the princ.i.p.al 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 h.e.l.l! 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-sc.r.a.pes 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 Fe. 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 Fe.

"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-gla.s.s 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 Fe 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 Fe 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 Fe 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 a.s.sembled around that faro-table to do that much to get Bill Hart out of his hole. Then Cherry said he wasn't n.o.body'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 Fe 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 Fe 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 a.s.sistance 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WROTE OUT A NOTICE THAT WAS TACKED UP ON THE DEEPO DOOR"]

"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 Fe 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 Fe.

(_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 Fe--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-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 Cla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Fe 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 Cla.s.s 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 Fe 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 Fe'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 Fe 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.

Hart was waiting at the deepo, on the chance his aunt would come in on the coach; and when she saw him she give a little squeal, she was so pleased, and hopped down in no time off the box--she was as brisk as a bee in her doings--and took to hugging him and half crying over him just like he was a little boy.

"Oh, William," she said, "I am _so_ happy getting to you! And I'm happier'n I expected to be, finding out how quiet and respectable Palomitas is--not a bit what your letters made me think it was--and such real good people living in it, and everything but the queer country and the queer mud houses just like it is at home. Mr. Hill has been telling me all about it, coming over, and about this new church you're building that you gave the lot for. To think you've never told me! Oh, William, I am so glad and so thankful that out here in this wild region you've kept serious-minded and are turning out such a good man!"

Hart looked so mixed up over the way his aunt was talking, and so sort of hopeless, that Hill cut in quick and give him a lift. "He's not much at blowing about himself, your nephew ain't, ma'am," Hill said.

"Why, he not only give the land for the church over there"--and Hill pointed at the freight-house, so Hart could ketch on--"but it was him got the Company to lay them temp'ry tracks, so the building stuff could be took right in. He's going to give a melodeon, too."

"Dear William!" Hart's aunt said. "It rejoices my heart you're doing all these good deeds--and all the others Mr. Hill's been telling me about. I must kiss you again."