Santa Fe's Partner Part 7

Daylight comes sudden in them parts. One minute it's so darkish you can't see nothing--and the next minute the sun comes up with a bounce from behind the mountains and things is all clear.

When the sun did his part of the work and give all the light was needed, we done ours--which was coming out from among the mesquite bushes and saying good-morning polite to Boston, up on the roof of the 'dobe, and then taking the hobbles off old man Gutierrez's jacka.s.s so it could walk away home.

The Hen felt she needed to have one more shot, and she took it. "My brave preserver!" says the Hen, speaking cheerful. "Come down to me--that I may bedew with tears of grat.i.tude your bones!"

VI

SHORTY SMITH'S HANGING

Some of them summer days in Palomitas was that hot they'd melt the stuffing out of a lightning-rod, and you could cook eggs in the pockets of your pants. When things was that way the town was apt to get quieted down--most being satisfied to take enough drinks early to make it pleasant spending the rest of the day sleeping 'em off somewheres in the shade. Along late in the afternoon, though, the wind always breezed down real cool and pleasant from the mountains--and then the boys would wake up and get a brace on, and whatever was going to happen would begin.

Being that sort of weather, n.o.body was paying no attention worth speaking of to nothing: and when the Denver train come in--being about three hours late, like it had a way of being, after a wash-out--the place was in such a blister that pretty much all you could hear to show anybody was alive in Palomitas was snores. Besides Wood--who had to be awake to do his work when the train got there--and the clump of Mexicans that always hung around the deepo at train-time, there wasn't half a dozen folks with their eyes open in the whole town.

Santa Fe Charley was one of the few that was awake and sober. He made a point, Santa Fe did, of being on hand when the train come in because there always was chances somebody might be aboard he could do business with; and he had to keep sober, mostly, same as I've said, or he couldn't a-done his work so it would pay. He used to square things up--when he really couldn't stand the strain no longer--by knocking off dealing and having a good one lasting about a week at a time. It was while he was on one of them tears of his, going it worse'n usual, he got cleaned out in Denver Jones's place--and him able, when he hadn't a jag on, to wipe up the floor with Denver!--and then went ahead the next day, being still jagged, and shot poor old Bill Hart.

But them is matters that happened a little later, and will be spoke of further on.

When the train pulled in alongside the deepo platform it didn't seem at first there was n.o.body on it but the usual raft of Mexicans with bundles in the day-coach--who all come a-trooping out, cluttered up with their queer duds, and went to hugging their aunts and uncles who was waiting for 'em in real Mexican style. Charley looked the lot over and seen there was nothing in it worth taking time to; and then he got his Denver paper from the messenger in the express-car and started off to go on back to his room in the Forest Queen.

Down he come along the platform--he was a-looking at his _Tribune_, and not paying no attention--and just as he got alongside the Pullman a man stepped off it and most plumped into him; and would a-plumped if he hadn't been so beat out by the hot weather he was going slow.

He was a little round friendly looking feller, with a red face and little gray side-whiskers; and he was dressed up in black same as Charley was--only he'd a shorter-tailed coat, and hadn't a white tie on, and was wearing a shiny plug hat that looked most extra unsuitable in them parts on that sort of a day.

"I beg your pardon, sir!" says the little man, as he pulled himself up just in time to keep from b.u.mping.

Charley bowed handsome--there was no ketching off Santa Fe when it come to slinging good manners, his being that gentlemanly he could a-give points to a New York bar-keep--and says back: "Sir, I beg yours! Heedlessness is my besetting sin. The fault is mine!" And then he said, keeping on talking the toney way he knowed how to: "I trust, sir, that you are not incommoded by the heat. Even for New Mexico in August, this is a phenomenally hot day."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'IT'S HOTTER THAN SAHARA!' SAID THE ENGLISHMAN"]

"Incommoded is no name for it!" says the little man, taking off his shiny hat and mopping away at himself with his pocket-handkerchief.

"I've never encountered such heat anywhere. It's hotter than Sahara!

In England we have nothing like it at all." Then he mopped himself some more, and went ahead again--seeming glad to have somebody to let out to: "My whole life long I've been finding fault with our August weather in London. I'll never find fault with it again. I'd give fifty pounds to be back there now, even in my office in the City--and I'd give a hundred willingly if I could walk out of this frying-pan into my own home in the Avenue Road! If you know London, sir, you know that St. John's Wood is the coolest part of it, and that the coolest part of St. John's Wood--up by the side of Primrose Hill--is the Avenue Road; and so you can understand why thinking about coming out from the Underground and walking homeward in the cool of the evening almost gives me a pain!"

Santa Fe allowed he wasn't acquainted with that locality; but he said he hadn't no doubt--since you couldn't get a worse one--it was a better place in summer than Palomitas. And then he kind of chucked it in casual that as the little man didn't seem to take much stock in Palomitas maybe he'd a-done as well if he'd stuck at home.

Charley's talking that way brought out he wasn't there because he wanted to be, but because he was sent: coming to look things over for the English stockholders--who was about sick, he said, of dropping a.s.sessments in the slot and nothing coming out when they pushed the b.u.t.ton--before they chipped in the fresh stake they was asked for to help along with the building of the road. He said he about allowed, though, the call was a square one, what he'd seen being in the road's favor and as much as was claimed for it; but when it come to the country and the people, he said, there was no denying they both was as beastly as they could be. Then he turned round sudden on Santa Fe and says: "I infer from your dress, sir, that you are in Orders; and I therefore a.s.sume that you represent what little respectability this town has. Will you kindly tell me if it is possible in this filthy place to procure a brandy-and-soda, and a bath, and any sort of decent food?"

It always sort of tickled Santa Fe, same as I've said, when a tenderfoot took him for a fire-escape; and when it happened that way he give it back to 'em in right-enough parson talk. So he says to the little man, speaking benevolent: "In our poor way, sir, we can satisfy your requirements. At the Forest Queen Hotel, over there, you can procure the liquid refreshment that you name; and also food as good as our little community affords. As for your bath, we can provide it on a scale of truly American magnificence. We can offer you a tub, sir, very nearly two thousand miles long!"

"A tub two thousand miles long?" says the little man. "Oh, come now, you're chaffing me. There can't be a tub like that, you know. There really can't!"

"I refer, sir," says Santa Fe, "to the Rio Grande."

The little man took his time getting there, but when he did ketch up he laughed hearty. "How American that is!" says he. And then he says over again: "How American that is!"--and he laughed some more. Then he said he'd start 'em to getting his grub ready while he was bathing in that two-thousand-mile bath-tub, and he'd have his brandy-and-soda right away; and he asked Charley--speaking doubtful, and looking at his white necktie--if he'd have one too?

Charley said he just would; and it was seeing how sort of surprised the little man looked, he told the boys afterwards, set him to thinking he might as well kill time that hot day trying how much stuffing that sort of a tenderfoot would hold. He said at first he only meant to play a short lone hand for the fun of the thing; and it was the way the little man swallowed whatever was give him, he said, that made the game keep on a-growing--till it ended up by roping in the whole town. So off he went, explaining fatherly how it come that preachers and brandys-and-sodas in Palomitas got along together first cla.s.s.

"In this wildly lawless and sinful community, sir," says he, "I find that my humble efforts at moral improvement are best advanced by identifying my life as closely as may be with the lives of those whom I would lead to higher planes. At first, in my ignorance, I held aloof from partic.i.p.ating in the customs--many of them, seemingly, objectionable--of my parishioners. Naturally, in turn, they held aloof from me. I made no impression upon them. The good seed that I scattered freely fell upon barren ground. Now, as the result of experience, and of much soulful thought, I am wiser. Over a friendly gla.s.s at the bar of the Forest Queen, or at other of the various bars in our little town, I can talk to a parishioner with a kindly familiarity that brings him close to me. By taking part in the games of chance which form the main amus.e.m.e.nt of my flock, I still more closely can identify their interests with my own--and even materially improve, by such winnings as come to me in our friendly encounters, our meagre parish finances. I have as yet taken no share in the gun-fights which too frequently occur in our somewhat tempestuous little community; but I am seriously considering the advisability of still farther strengthening my hold upon the respect and the affection of my parishioners by now and then exchanging shots with them. I am confident that such energetic action on my part will tend still more to endear me to them--and, after all, I must not be too nicely fastidious as to means if I would compa.s.s my end of winning their trust and their esteem."

While Santa Fe was talking along so slick about the way he managed his parsoning, the little man's eyes was getting bulgier and bulgier; and when it come to his taking a hand in shooting-sc.r.a.pes they looked like they was going to jump out of his head. All he could say was: "Good Lord!" Then he kind of gagged, and said he'd be obliged if he could get his brandy-and-soda right off.

Charley steered him across to the Forest Queen, and when he had his drink in him, and another on top of it, he seemed to get some of his grip back. But even after his drinks he seemed like he thought he must be asleep and dreaming; and he said twice over he'd never heard tell of such doings in all his born days.

Santa Fe just give a wink across the bar to Blister Mike--who didn't need much winking, being a wide-awake one--and then he went ahead with some more of the same kind. "No doubt, my dear sir, in the older civilization to which you are accustomed my methods would seem irregular--perhaps even reprehensible. In England, very likely, unfavorable comment would be made upon a pastor who cordially drank with members of his flock at public bars; who also--I do not hesitate, you see, to give our little games of chance their harshest name--in a friendly way gambled with them; and I can imagine that the spectacle of a parish priest engaging with his parishioners, up and down the street of a quiet village, in a fight with six-shooters and Winchesters would be very generally disapproved."

"It is impossible, quite impossible," says the little man, sort of gaspy, "to imagine such a horrible monstrosity!"

"Very likely for you, sir," says Charley, speaking affable, "it is. But you must remember that ours is a young and a vigorous community--too young, too vigorous, to be cramped and trammelled by obsolete conventions and narrow Old-World rules. Life with us, you see, has an uncertain suddenness--owing to our energetic habit of settling our little differences promptly, and in a decisive way.

At the last meeting of our Sunshine Club, for instance--as the result of a short but heated argument--Brother Michael, here, felt called upon to shoot a fellow-member. While recognizing that the occurrence was unavoidable, we regretted it keenly--Brother Michael most of all."

"Sure I did that," said Blister, playing out quick to the lead Charley give him. "But your Reverence remembers he drew on me first--and if he'd been sober enough to shoot straight it's meself, and not him, would be by now living out in the cemetery on the mesa; and another'd be serving your drinks to you across this bar. I had the rights on my side."

"Precisely," says Charley. "You see, sir, it was a perfectly fair fight. Brother Michael and his fellow-member exchanged their shots in an honorable manner--and, while we mourn the sudden decease of our friend lost to us, our friend who survives has suffered no diminution of our affectionate regard. Had the shooting been unfair, then the case would have gone into another category--and our community promptly would have manifested the st.u.r.dy sense of justice that is inherent in it by hanging the man by whom the unfair shot had been fired. Believe me, sir"--and Santa Fe stood up straight and stuck his chest out--"Palomitas has its own high standards of morality: and it never fails to maintain those standards in its own stern way!"

The little man didn't say nothing back. He looked like he was sort of mazed. All he did was to ask for another brandy-and-soda; and when he'd took it he allowed he'd skip having his bath and get at his eating right away--saying he was feeling faintish, and maybe what he needed was food. Of course that was no time of day to get victuals: but Santa Fe was a good one at managing, and he fixed it up so he had some sort of a hash layout; and before he went at it he give him a wash-up in his own room.

It was while he was hashing, Charley said, the notion come to him how Palomitas might have some real sport with him--the same kind they had when Hart's aunt come on her visit, only twisting things round so it would be the holy terror side of the town that had the show. And he said as he'd started in with the preacher racket, he thought they might keep that up too--and make such an out and out mix-up for the little man as would give cards to any tenderfoot game that ever was played. Santa Fe always was full of his pranks: and this one looked to pan out so well, and was so easy done, that he went right across to the deepo and had a talk with Wood about how things had better be managed; and Wood, who liked fun as much as anybody, caught on quick and agreed to take a hand.

The little man seemed to get a brace when he had his grub inside of him; and over he went to the deepo and give Wood the order he had from the President to see the books--and was real intelligent, Wood said, in finding out how railroading in them parts was done. But when he'd cleaned up his railroad job, and took to asking questions about the Territory, and Palomitas, and things generally--and got the sort of answers Santa Fe had fixed should be give him, with some more throwed in--Wood said his feet showed to be that tender he allowed it would a-hurt him with thick boots on to walk on boiled beans.

Wood said he guessed he broke the lying record that afternoon; and he said he reckoned if the little man swallowed half of what was give him, and there wasn't much of anything he gagged at, he must a-thought Palomitas--with its church twice Sundays and prayer-meetings regular three times a week, and its faro-bank with the preacher for dealer, and its Sunshine Club that was all mixed in with shooting-sc.r.a.pes, and its Friendly Aid Society that attended mostly to what lynchings was needed--was something like a bit of heaven that had broke out from the corral it belonged in and gone to grazing in h.e.l.l's front yard!

When he'd stuffed him as much as was needed, Wood told him--Santa Fe having fixed it that way--there was a Mexican church about a thousand years old over in the Canada that was worth looking at; and he told him he'd take him across on his buck-board to see it if he cared to go. He bit at that, just as Santa Fe counted on; and about four o'clock off they went--it was only three mile or so down to the Canada--in good time to get him back and give him what more was coming to him before he started off North again on the night train. Wood said the ride was real enjoyable--the little man showing up as sensible as anybody when he got to the church and struck things he knowed about; and it turned out he could talk French, and that pleased the padre--he was that French one I've spoke about, who was as white as they make 'em--and so things went along well.

The wind had set in to blow down the valley cool and pleasant as they was getting along home; and coming down on it, when they got about half a mile from Palomitas, they begun to hear shooting--and it kept on, and more of it, the closer they come to town. Knowing what Santa Fe had set the boys up to, Wood said he pretty near laughed out when he heard it; but he held in, he said--and told the little man, when he asked what it meant, that it didn't mean nothing in particular: being only some sort of a shooting-sc.r.a.pe, like enough--the same as often happened along about that time in the afternoon.

He said the little man looked queerish, and wanted to know if the men in the town was shooting at a target; and when Wood said he guessed they was targetting at each other, and likely there'd be some occurrences, he said he looked queerisher--and said such savagery was too horrible to be true. But he wasn't worried a bit about himself, Wood said--he was as nervy a little man, Wood said, as he'd ever got up to--and all he wanted was to have Wood whip the mules up, so he'd get there quick and see what was going on. Wood whipped up, right enough, and the mules took 'em a-kiting--going at a full run the last half-mile or so, and not coming down to a walk till they'd crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande and was most to the top of the hill. At the top of the hill they stopped--and that was a good place to stop at, for the circus was a-going on right there.

Things really did look serious; and Wood said--for all he'd been told what was coming--he more'n half thought the boys had got to rump.u.s.s.ing in dead earnest. Three or four was setting on the ground with their sleeves and pants rolled up tying up their arms and legs with their pocket-handkerchiefs; there was a feller--Nosey Green, it turned out to be--laying on one side in a sort of mixed-up heap like as if he'd dropped sudden; right in the middle of the road Blister Mike was sprawled out, with Santa Fe--his black clothes all over dust and his hat off--holding his head with one hand and feeling at his heart with the other; and just as the buck-board stopped, right in the thick of it, Kerosene Kate come a-tearing along, with the Sage-Brush Hen close after her, and plumped down on Mike and yelled out: "Oh, my husband!

My poor husband! He is foully slain!"

It was all so natural, Wood said, that seeing it sudden that way give him a first-cla.s.s jolt. For a minute, he said, he couldn't help thinking it was the real thing. As for the little man--and he likely would have took matters just the same, and no blame to him, if his feet had been as hard as anybody's--he swallowed the show whole. "Good Heavens!" says he, getting real palish. "What a dreadful thing this is!"

Santa let go of Mike's head and got up, brushing his pants off, and says solemn: "Our poor brother has pa.s.sed from us. Palomitas has lost one of its most useful citizens--there was n.o.body who could mix drinks as he could--and the world has lost a n.o.ble man! Take away his stricken wife, my dear," he says, speaking to the Sage-Brush Hen.

"Take poor Sister Rebecca home with you to the parsonage--my duties lie elsewhere at present--and pour out to her from your tender heart the balm of comfort that you so well know how to give."

Then he come along to the buck-board, and says to the little man: "I greatly regret that this unfortunate incident should have occurred while you are with us. From every point of view the event is lamentable. Brother Green, known familiarly among us because of his facial peculiarity as Nosey Green--the gentleman piled up over there on the other side of the road--was as n.o.ble-hearted a man as ever lived; so was Brother Michael, whom you met in all the pride of his manly strength only this morning at the Forest Queen bar. Both were corner-stones of our Sunshine Club, and among the most faithful of my parishioners. In deep despondency we mourn their loss!"

"It is dreadful--dreadful!" says the little man. And then he wanted to know how the shooting begun.

"The dispute that has come to this doubly fatal ending," says Santa Fe, shaking his head sorrowful, "related to c.o.c.k-tails. In what I am persuaded was a purely jesting spirit, Brother Green cast aspersions upon Brother Michael's skill as a drink-mixer. The injustice of his remarks, even in jest, aroused Brother Michael's hot Celtic nature and led to a retort, harshly personal, that excited Brother Green's anger--and from words they pa.s.sed quickly to a settlement of the matter with their guns. However, as the fight was conducted by both of them in an honorable manner, and was creditable equally to their courage and to their proficiency in the use of arms, it is now a back number and we may discharge it from our minds. Moreover, my dear sir, our little domestic difficulties must not be suffered to interfere with the duties of hospitality. It is high time that you should have your supper; and I even venture to ask that you will hurry your meal a little--to the end that you may have opportunity, before the departure of your train this evening, to see something of the brighter side of our little town. After this sombre scene, you will find, I trust, agreeable mental refreshment in witnessing--perhaps even in partic.i.p.ating in--our friendly card-playing, and in taking part with us in our usual cheerful evening dance. By your leave, Brother Wood, I will seat myself on the rear of your buck-board and drive along with you into town."

The little man was too jolted to say anything--and up Charley hiked on the back of the buck-board, and away they went down the road.