Part 10 (1/2)
”Ain't I right, Joe?”
”Betcher dam life,” says Joe, sort of over-stepping the conventions.
”Then tell me where her claim is. It's quite rich, and you must know it,” says she, appealing to him.
Up against it? Say! I seen the whites of his eyes show like he was drownding, and he grinned joyful as a man kicked in the stummick.
”Er--er--I just bought in here, and ain't acquainted much,” says he.
”Have a drink,” and, in his confusions, he sets out the bottle of alkalies that he dignifies by the alias of booze. Then he continues with reg'lar human intelligence.
”Bill, here, he can tell you where the ground is,” and the whelp indicates me.
Lord knows my finish, but for Ole Lund. He sits up in his bunk, swaddled in Annie Black's bandages, and through slits between his frost bites, he moults the follering rhetoric:
”Aye tole you vere de claim iss. She own de Nomber Twenty fraction on Buster Creek, 'longside may and may broder. She's dam good fraction, too.”
I consider that a blamed white stunt for Swedes; paying for their lives with the mine they swindled her out of.
Anyhow, it knocked us galley-west.
I'd formulated a swell climax, involving the discovery of the mother, when the mail man spoke up, him that had been her particular abomination, a queer kind of a break in his voice:
”Come out of that.”
Mrs. Bradshaw moved out into the light, and, if I'm any judge, the joy that showed in her face rubbed away the bitterness of the past years. With an aching little cry the girl ran to her, and hid in her arms like a quail.
We men-folks got acc.u.mulated up into a dark corner where we shook hands and swore soft and insincere, and let our throats hurt, for all the world like it was Christmas or we'd got mail from home.
BITTER ROOT BILLINGS, ARBITER
Billings rode in from the Junction about dusk, and ate his supper in silence. He'd been East for sixty days, and, although there lurked about him the hint of unwonted ventures, etiquette forbade its mention. You see, in our country, that which a man gives voluntarily is ofttimes later dissected in smoky bunk-houses, or roughly handled round flickering camp fires, but the privacies he guards are inviolate. Curiosity isn't exactly a lost art, but its practice isn't popular nor hygenic.
Later, I found him meditatively whittling out on the porch, and, as the moment seemed propitious, I inquired adroitly:--”Did you have a good time in Chicago, 'Bitter Root'?”
”Bully,” said he, relapsing into weighty absorption.
”What'd you do?” I inquired with almost the certainty of appearing insistent.
”Don't you never read the papers?” he inquired, with such evident compa.s.sion that Kink Martin and the other boys snickered. This from ”Bitter Root,” who scorns literature outside of the ”Arkansas Printing,” as he terms the ill.u.s.trations!
”Guess I'll have to show you my press notices,” and from a hip pocket he produced a fat bundle of clippings in a rubber band. These he displayed jealously, and I stared agape, for they were front pages of great metropolitan dailies, marred with red and black scare heads, in which I glimpsed the words, ”Billings, of Montana,” ”'Bitter Root' on Arbitration,” ”A Lochinvar Out of the West,” and other things as puzzling.
”Press Notices!” echoed Kink scornfully. ”Wouldn't that rope ye? He talks like Big Ike that went with the Wild West Show. When a puncher gets so lazy he can't earn a livin' by the sweat of his pony, he grows his hair, goes on the stage bustin' gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s with shot ca'tridges and talks about 'press notices.' Let's see 'em, Billings.
You pinch 'em as close to your stummick as though you held cards in a strange poker game.”
”Well, I _have_ set in a strange game, amongst aliens,” said Billings, disregarding the request, ”and I've held the high cards, also I've drawed out with honours. I've sailed the medium high seas with mutiny in the stoke-hold; I've changed the laws of labour, politics and munic.i.p.al economies. I went out of G.o.d's country right into the heart of the decayin' East, and by the application of a runnin' noose in a hemp rope I strangled oppression and put eight thousand men to work.” He paused ponderously. ”I'm an Arbitrator!”
”The deuce you are,” indignantly cried ”Reddy” the cook. ”Who says so?”