When Bill Hart, who was a good fellow and kept the principal 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 78 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 hell! 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-scrapes 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 79 she says the friends she’s hooked fast to may be coming to Pueblo and may be coming to Santa FÉ. 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 FÉ.

“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 80 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-glass 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 FÉ Charley if he’d let him speak 81 to the boys for a minute before the game went on. He was always polite and obliging, Santa FÉ 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 FÉ 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 82 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 83 assembled around that faro-table to do that much to get Bill Hart out of his hole. Then Cherry said he wasn’t nobody’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 FÉ 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 FÉ 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 assistance 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.

“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 FÉ 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 86 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 FÉ.

(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 FÉ––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-class ladies’ man.

Hill said he spotted Hart’s aunt the minute 87 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 88 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-class 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 passing 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, 89 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 Class 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 90 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 91 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 principal 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 92 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 FÉ 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 Class 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 FÉ 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 FÉ’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 FÉ had his eyes out straight 93 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 94 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 95 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.”

“Oh, what I’ve done ain’t nothing,” Hart said, pulling himself together while she was kissing him. “Land’s cheap, cheap as it can be, out here; and I give the Company such a lot of freight they’re more’n willing to oblige me; and as to the melodeon––”

Hart sort of gagged when he got to the melodeon, and Santa FÉ Charley––who’d come up while they all was talking away together––reached across the table and played his hand. “As to the melodeon, Mr. Hart,” Santa FÉ put in, “you said that being in business you could get it at a discount off. But that does not appreciably lessen your generosity, Mr. Hart; and your aunt”––Santa FÉ took off his hat and bowed handsome––“is justified in taking pride in your good deeds. I am glad to tell her that in her nephew our struggling church has its stanchest pillar and its strongest stay.”

“Yes, that’s the way it is about the melodeon, Aunt Maria,” Hart said, kind of weak and mournful. “Being in business, I get melodeons at such a discount off that giving ’em away ain’t nothing to me at all. 97 And now I guess we’d better be getting along home. It’s a mighty mean home to take you to, Aunt Maria; but there’s one comfort––as you’ll find out when I get the chance to talk to you––you won’t have to stay in it long.”

There was a lot of the boys standing round on the deepo platform watching the show, and they all took their hats off respectful––following the lead Santa FÉ give ’em––as Hart started away up the track, to where his store was, with his aunt on his arm. The town looked like some place East keeping Sunday: the Committee having talked strong as to what they’d do if things wasn’t quiet, and having rounded up––and coralled in a back room Denver Jones lent the use of––the few who’d got drunk as usual because they had to, and so had to be took care of that way. It was a June evening, and the sun about setting; and somehow it all was so sort of peaceful and uncommon––with everybody in sight sober, and no fighting anywhere, and that little old lady going along, believing Palomitas was like that always, instead of 98 the hell on earth it was––some of us more’n half believed we’d gone to sleep and got stuck in a dream.

Things was made dreamier by the looks and doings of the Sage-Brush Hen. She was the only lady of the town, the Hen was, who took part in the ceremonies––and likely it was just about as well, for the sake of keeping clear of surprises, the rest of ’em laid low. As Hart and his aunt went off together up the track, the Hen showed up coming along down it; and she was dressed that pretty and quiet––in the plainest sort of a white frock, and wearing a white sun-bonnet––and was looking so demure, like she could when she’d a mind to, nobody knowed at first who she was.

“Being the minister’s wife, I’ve been taking the liberty, Mr. Hart,” she said, smiling pleasant, when the three of ’em come together on the track, “of looking around a little up at your place to see that everything has been fixed for your company the way it should be.” (She hadn’t been nowheres near Hart’s place, it turned out––but Gospel 99 truth wasn’t just what there was most of that day in Palomitas.) She went right on down the track without stopping, passing on Hart’s side, and saying to him: “My husband expects you as usual at the Friendly Aid meeting to-morrow evening, Mr. Hart. We never seem half to get along, you know, when you’re not there.”

Hart’s aunt give a little jump, and said: “Why, William, that must be Mrs. Charles, the minister’s wife. What a pleasant-spoken lady she is! We met her husband just as we were driving into town.”

Hart said he come pretty near saying back to her, “The hell you did!”––Hart talked that careless way, sometimes––but he said he pulled up before it got out, and all he did say was, “Oh!”

“She must be at the head of the Dorcas Society that Mr. Hill was telling me about,” Hart’s aunt went on; “and like enough she manages the kindergarten, too. I suppose, William, it’s not surprising you haven’t said anything in your letters about the Dorcas Society––for all you were so liberal in helping 100 it––but I do think you might have told me about the kindergarten, knowing what a hobby of mine kindergartens are. I want to go and see it to-morrow morning, the first thing.”

“It’s––it’s not in running order just now,” Hart said. “Most of the children was took sick with the influenza last week, and there’s whooping-cough and measles about, and so the school committee closed it down. And they had to stop, anyway, because they’re going to put a new roof on. I guess it won’t blow in again for about a month––or maybe more. In fact, I don’t know––you see, it wasn’t managed well, and got real down unpopular––if it’ll blow in again at all. I’m sorry you won’t be able to get to it, Aunt Maria. Maybe it’ll be running if you happen to come out again next year.”

“Why, how queer that is, William!” Hart’s aunt said. “Mr. Hill told me it was the best kindergarten in New Mexico. But of course you know. Anyhow, I can see the schoolroom and the school fixtures, and Mrs. Charles can tell me about it when I go to the 101 Dorcas Society––and that’ll do most as well. Of course I must get to the Dorcas Society. Mrs. Charles will take me, I’m sure. It meets, Mr. Hill says, every Thursday afternoon.”

“Did he say where it was meeting now?” Hart asked. He was getting about desperate, he told Cherry afterwards; and what he wanted most was a chance to mash Hill’s fool head for putting him in such a lot of holes.

“Of course he did, William,” said Hart’s aunt; “and I’m surprised you have to ask––seeing what an interest you take in the Society, and how you’ve helped it along. It was just lovely of you to give them all those goods out of your store to make up into clothes.”

“That––that wasn’t anything to do,” Hart said. “What’s in the store comes with a big discount––same as melodeons. Sometimes I feel as if I was saving money giving things away.”

“You can talk about your generosity just as you please, William,” she went on. “I think it’s noble of you. And Mr. Hill said that Mrs. Major Rogers––who keeps the 102 Forest Queen Hotel, he said, and lets the Society have a room to meet in for nothing––said it was noble of you, too. I want to get to know Mrs. Major Rogers right off. She must be a very fine woman. She’s an officer’s widow, Mr. Hill says, and a real lady, for all she makes her living keeping a hotel out here on the frontier. If she’s a bit like that sweet-looking Mrs. Charles I know we’ll get along. I’m surprised, William, you’ve never told me what pleasant ladies live here. It must make all the difference in the world. Don’t you think it would do for me not to be formal, but just to go to Mrs. Major Rogers’ hotel to-morrow and call?”

“I guess––well, I guess you hadn’t better go right off the first thing in the morning, Aunt Maria,” Hart said. Thinking of his aunt going calling at the Forest Queen and running up against Tenderfoot Sal, he said, gave him the regular cold shakes. “And come to think of it,” he said, “it’s no use your going to-morrow at all. Mrs.––Mrs. Major Rogers, as I happen to know, went up to Denver yesterday; and she won’t be back, 103 she told me, before some time on in the end of next week––likely as not, she said, she wouldn’t come then.”

By that time they’d got along to Hart’s store, and Hart said: “Here’s where I live, Aunt Maria. You see what sort of a place it is. But I’ve done my best to fix things for you as well as I know how. Come right along in––and when we’ve had supper we’ve got to have a talk.”

Along about ten o’clock that night Hart come down to the Forest Queen looking pale and haggard, and he was that broke up he had to get three drinks in him before he could say a word. Everybody was so interested, wanting to hear what he had to tell ’em, he didn’t need to ask to have the game stopped––it just stopped of its own accord.

When he’d had his third drink, and was beginning to feel better, he said he couldn’t thank everybody enough for the way they’d behaved; and that his aunt had gone to bed tired out; and he’d been talking with her steady for two hours getting things settled; 104 and she’d ended by agreeing she’d start back East with him the next night––he having made out he’d smash in his business if he waited a minute longer––and they was going by the Denver train. And he’d got her fixed he said, so she’d keep quiet through the morning––as she was going right at mending his stockings and things the first thing when she got up; and after that she was full of getting to work with canned peaches and making him a pie.

“But what’s going to happen in the afternoon,” he said, “the Lord only knows! That blasted fool of a Ben Hill”––Hart spoke just that bitter way about it––“hasn’t had no more sense ’n to go and tell her this town’s full of kindergartens, and she’s so worked up there’s no holding her, as kindergartens happens to be the fullest hand she holds. I’ve allowed we have one––things being as they was, I had to––but I’ve told her it’s out of order, and the children laid up with whooping-cough, and the teacher sick a-bed, and the outfit damaged by a fire we had, and––and the Lord knows what I haven’t told her 105 about the damn thing.” (Hart was that nervous he couldn’t help speaking that way.) “But all I’ve said hasn’t made no difference. She’s just dead set on getting to what’s left of that kindergarten, and I can’t budge her. See it she will, she says; and I guess the upshot of Hill’s chuckle-headed talk’ll be to waste all the trouble we’ve took by landing us in the biggest give-away that ever was!” And Hart called for another drink, and had to set down to take it––looking pale.

All the boys felt terrible bad about the hole Hart was in; and they felt worse because none of ’em hadn’t no notion what a kindergarten did––when it did anything––and that made ’em more ashamed Palomitas hadn’t one to show. Only Becker––Becker’d happened to come over from Santa Cruz that night––sized it up right; and Becker shook his head sort of dismal and said there wasn’t no use even thinking about it––and that looked like a settler, because Becker seemed to know. Nobody didn’t say nothing for a minute or two; and then Ike Williams spoke up––he was the boss carpenter on the freight-house 106 job, Ike was––and said if what was wanted could be made out of boards, and made in a hurry, he’d lay off the freight-house gang the next morning and engage to have one ready by noon.

Santa FÉ Charley’d been sitting still thinking, not saying a word. He let out a big cuss––and Charley wasn’t given to cussing––when Ike made his offer; and then he banged his hand down on the table so hard he set the chips to flying, and he said: “Mr. Hart, don’t you worry––we’re going to put this job through!”

Everybody jumped up at that––some of ’em scrambling for the dropped chips––asking Santa FÉ what he meant to do. But Charley wouldn’t answer ’em. “Just you trust to Ike and me, Bill,” he said. “We’ll fix your kindergarten all right––only you keep on telling your aunt it ain’t a good one, and how most of it got burned up in the fire. It’s luck you let on to her there’d been a fire––that makes it as easy as rolling off a log. All you’ve got to do is to bring her down here at four o’clock to-morrow afternoon––you’d 107 better till then keep her in the house, mending you up and making you all the pies she has a mind to––and when she gets here the kindergarten’ll be here, too!”

“Bring her here––to the Forest Queen?” Hart said, speaking doubtful.

“Bring her here––right here to the Forest Queen,” Santa FÉ said back to him. “You know pretty well I do things when I say I’ll do ’em––and this thing’ll be done! Come to think of it,” he said, “maybe it’ll be better if I go to your place and fetch her along myself. It’ll help if I do a little talking to her on the way down. Yes, we’ll fix it that way. You and she be ready at four o’clock, and I’ll come for you. That’ll give her an hour here, and an hour to go home and eat her supper––and that’ll get us to train-time, and then the circus’ll close down. Now you go home and go to bed, Bill. You’re all beat out. Just you leave things to Ike and me and go right home.”

Charley wouldn’t say another word––so Hart had one more drink, for luck, and then he went home. He looked real relieved.

When Santa FÉ went to Hart’s place, next afternoon, he had on his best black clothes, with a clean shirt and a fresh white tie; and he was that serious-looking you’d have sized him up for a sure-enough fire-escape anywhere on sight. Hart hadn’t had no trouble, it turned out, keeping his aunt to home––she’d been working double tides ever since she got up, he said, making him things to eat and fussing over his clothes. They was all ready when Santa FÉ come along, and the three of ’em stepped off down the track together––Hart having his aunt on his arm, and Santa FÉ walking on ahead over the ties. Most of the boys was standing about watching the procession; but the girls––the Hen, likely, having told ’em to––was keeping on keeping quiet, and got what they could of it peeping through chinks in the windows and doors.

“Why, where are all the ladies, Mr. Charles?” Hart’s aunt asked. “Except that sweet young wife of yours, it’s just the mortal truth I haven’t seen a single lady since I came into this town!”

“They usually keep in-doors at this time of day, madam,” Charley said. “They’re attending to their domestic duties––and––and most of them, about now, are wont to be enjoying the tenderest happiness of motherhood in nursing their little babes.”

“It’s very creditable they’re such good housewives, I’m sure,” said Hart’s aunt; “only I do wish I could have met some of ’em and had a good dish of talk. But we’ll be finding your wife at the kindergarten, I s’pose, and I’ll have the pleasure of a talk with her. I’ve been looking forward all day to meeting her, Mr. Charles. She has one of the very sweetest faces I ever saw.”

“I deeply regret to tell you, madam,” said Santa FÉ, “that my wife was called away suddenly last evening by a telegram. She had no choice in the matter. Her call was to minister to a sick relative in Denver, and of course she left immediately on the night train. Her disappointment at not meeting you was great. She had set her heart on showing you over our poor, half-ruined kindergarten––the fire did fearful damage––but 110 her duty was too manifest to be ignored, and she had to leave that pleasant task to me.”

“Now that is just too bad!” said Hart’s aunt. “At least, Mr. Charles, I don’t mean that exactly. It’s very kind of you to take her place, and I’m delighted to have you. But I did so like your wife’s looks, and I’ve been hoping she and I really’d have a chance to get to be friends.”

That brought ’em to the Forest Queen, and Charley was more’n glad he was let out from making more excuses why his wife had shook her kindergarten job so sudden. “Here we are,” he said. “But I must warn you again, madam, that our little kindergarten is only the ghost of what it was before the fire. We are hoping to get a new outfit shortly. On the very morning after the disaster a subscription was started––your nephew, as always, leading in the good work––and that afternoon we telegraphed East our order for fresh supplies. By the time that the epidemic of whooping-cough has abated––I am glad to say that all the children are doing well––we trust that our flock of 111 little ones again can troop gladly to receive the elementary instruction that they delight in, and that my wife delights to impart.”

“Why,” said Hart’s aunt, “the kindergarten’s in Mrs. Major Rogers’ hotel––the Forest Queen!”

“After the fire, Mrs. Major Rogers most kindly gave us the free use of one of her largest rooms,” Santa FÉ said; “and we are installed here until our own building can be repaired. I have spared you the sight, madam, of that melancholy ruin. I confess that when I look at it the tears come into my eyes.”

“I don’t wonder, I’m sure,” said Hart’s aunt. “I think I’d cry over it myself. But what a real down good woman Mrs. Major Rogers must be! Mr. Hill told me she gives the Dorcas Society the use of a room, too.”

“She is a noble, high-toned lady, madam,” Santa FÉ said. “Since her cruel bereavement she has devoted to good works all the time that she can spare from the arduous duties by which she wins her livelihood. Words fail me to say enough in her praise! 112 Come right in, madam––but be prepared for a sad surprise!”

Hart said he didn’t know how much surprised his aunt was––but he said when he got inside the Forest Queen, into the bar-room where Charley’s faro layout usually was, he was so surprised himself he felt as if he’d been kicked by a mule!

There was the little tables for drinks, right enough; and out of the way in a corner with a cloth over it, same as usual, was the wheel. (It was used so little, the wheel was––nobody but Mexicans, now and then, caring for it––Santa FÉ owned up afterwards he’d forgot it clean!) That much of the place was just as it always was; and the big table, taking up half the room, looked so natural––with the chairs up to it, and layouts of chips at all the places––that Hart was beginning to think Santa FÉ was setting up a rig on him: ’till he seen what a lot of queer things besides chips there was on the table––and knowed they wasn’t no game layout, and so sized ’em up to be what Charley’d scrambled together when he set out to play his kindergarten 113 hand. And when he noticed the bar was curtained off by sheets he said he stopped worrying––feeling dead certain Charley’d dealt himself all the aces he needed to take him through.

“You don’t need to be told, madam, being such an authority on kindergartens,” said Santa FÉ, “how inadequate is our little outfit for educational purposes. But you must remember that the fire destroyed almost everything, and that we have merely improvised what will serve our purposes until the new supply arrives. We succeeded in saving from the conflagration our large table, and our chairs, and most of the small tables––used by individual children having backward intellects and needing especial care. But nearly all of the other appliances of the school were lost to us, and damage was done to much of what we saved. Here, you see, is a little table with only three legs left, the fourth having been burned.” And, sure enough, Hart said, Santa FÉ turned up one of the little tables for drinks and one of its legs was burnt off! “All of our slates,” he went 114 ahead, “similarly were destroyed––and how much depends on slates in a kindergarten you know, madam, better than I do. Here is all that is left of one of them”––and he showed Hart’s aunt a bit of burnt wood that looked like it had been part of a slate-frame afore it got afire.

“Dear me! Dear me!” said Hart’s aunt. “It’s just pitiful, Mr. Charles! I wonder how you can get along at all.”

“It is not easy getting along, madam,” Santa FÉ said. “But we have managed to supply ourselves with a layout––I––that is––I mean we have provided ourselves with some of the simpler articles of most importance; and with these, for the time being, we keep our little pupils’ hands and minds not unprofitably employed. For instance, the ivory disks of various colors––which you see arranged upon the table as the pupils have left them––serve very successfully to elucidate the arithmetical processes of numeration, addition, and subtraction; and the more intelligent children are taught to observe that the disks of varying colors are 115 varyingly numbered––white, 1; red, 5, and blue, 10––and so are encouraged to identify a concrete arbitrary figure with an abstract thought.”

“That’s something new in kindergartening, Mr. Charles,” said Hart’s aunt; “and it’s as good as it can be. I mean to put it right into use in our kindergarten at home. Do you get the disks at the places where they sell kindergarten supplies?”

“Really, madam, I cannot tell you,” Santa FÉ said. “You see, we ordered what would be needed through an agent East, and these came along. I must warn you, however, that they are expensive,” Hart said, remembering what them chips had cost him, one time and another, he allowed to himself Charley was right and they was about as expensive as they could be!

“Our other little appliances, madam,” Santa FÉ went on, “are just our own makeshift imitations of what you are familiar with––building-blocks, and alphabet-blocks, and dissected pictures, and that sort of 116 thing. Our local carpenter made the blocks for us, and we put on the lettering ourselves––as, indeed, its poor quality shows. The dissected pictures I am rather proud of, because Mrs. Charles may be said to have invented them.” (It really was the Hen who’d made ’em, it turned out.) “The method is simple enough when you have thought of it, of course––and no doubt I value my wife’s work unduly because I take so much pride in all that she does. You see, she just pasted pictures from the illustrated papers on boards; and then Mr. Williams––our carpenter, you know––sawed the boards into little pieces. And there you are!”

“Now that was bright of her!” said Hart’s aunt. “If you don’t mind, I’ll put one of the pictures together myself right now. I want to see how it looks, made that home-fashioned way.”

“I fear that our time is getting a little short, madam,” said Santa FÉ, in a hurry. “I’ve got my sermon to finish this afternoon, and I must be going in a few minutes now.” The fact of the matter was he had to call her 117 off quick. It seems the Hen hadn’t had anything but Police Gazettes to work on––and while the bits looked all right jumbled up, being put together they wouldn’t have suited nohow at all.

“Of course I mustn’t keep you,” said Hart’s aunt. “You’ve been more than kind, Mr. Charles, to give me so much of your valuable time as it is. I’m just like a child myself, wanting to play with dissected pictures that way! But I must say that her making them is a thing for your wife to be proud of––and I hope you’ll tell her so for me.”

“I guess we’d better be going now, Aunt Maria,” Hart said. “Mr. Charles has his sermon to write, you know, and I want you to have time to eat your supper comfortable before we start down to the train.”

“I do suppose we must go,” said Hart’s aunt. “But I hate to, William, and that’s a fact! Just because it’s so make-shifty, this is the most interesting kindergarten I’ve ever been in. When I get home I shall really and truly enjoy telling the folks about it. 118 And I know how pleased they’ll be, the same as I am, by finding what earnest-working men and women can do––out here in this rough country––with so little to go on but their wits and their own good hearts!”

And then she faced round sudden on Santa FÉ and said: “I see you have your table covered with green, Mr. Charles. What’s that for? You’ve so many good notions about kindergartens that I’d like to know.”

“Well, you see, madam, that green cover is a––it’s a sort of––” Charley went slow for a minute, and then got a-hold of the card he wanted and put it down as smooth as you please. “That is an invention, madam,” he said, “of my good wife’s, too. Out here, where the sun is so violent, she said we must have a green cover on the table or the glare would be ruining all our dear little innocent children’s eyes. And it has worked, madam, to a charm! Some of the children who had bad eyes to start with actually have got well!”

“Well, I do declare!” said Hart’s aunt.

“That wife of yours thinks so sensible she just beats all!”

Santa FÉ give Hart a look as much as to say he’d got to get his aunt away somehow––seeing she was liable to break out a’most anywheres, and he’d stood about all he could stand. Hart allowed what Charley wanted was reasonable, and he just grabbed her by the arm and begun to lug her to the door. But she managed to give Santa FÉ one more jolt, and a bad one, before she was gone.

“I haven’t seen what this is,” she said; and she broke off from Hart and went to where the wheel was standing covered up in the corner. “I s’pose I may look at it, Mr. Charles?” she said––and before either of ’em could get a-hold of her to stop her she had off the cloth. “For the land’s sake!” she said. “Whatever part of a kindergarten have you got here?”

Hart said afterwards his heart went down into his boots, being sure they’d got to a give-away of the worst sort. Santa FÉ said he felt that way for a minute himself; then he said he ciphered on it that Hart’s aunt likely 120 wouldn’t know what she’d struck––and he braced up and went ahead on that chance.

“Ah,” he said––speaking just as cool as if he was calling the deal right among friends at his own table––“that is one of the new German kindergarten appliances that even you, madam, may not have seen. We received it as a present from a rich German merchant in Pueblo, who was grieved by our pitiable plight and wanted to do what he could to help us after the fire.”

“But what in the name of common-sense,” said Hart’s aunt, “do you do with it––with all those numbers around in circles, and that little ball?”

Charley had himself in good shape by that time, and he put down his words as sure as if they was aces––with more, if needed, up his sleeve. “It is used by our most advanced class in arithmetic, madam,” he said. “The mechanism, you will observe, is arranged to revolve”––he set it a-going––“in such a way that the small sphere also is put in motion. And as the motion ceases”––it was slowing down to a stop––“the sphere comes to rest on one of the numbers painted legibly on either a black or a red ground. The children, seated around the table, are provided with the numerating disks to which I have already called your attention; and––with a varying rapidity, regulated by their individual intelligence––they severally, as promptly as possible, arrange their disks in piles corresponding with the number indicated by the purely fortuitous resting-place of the sphere. The purpose of this ingenious contrivance, as I scarcely need to point out to you, is to combine the amusement of a species of game with the mental stimulus that the rapid computation of figures imparts. I may add that we arouse a desirable spirit of emulation among our little ones by providing that the child who first correctly arranges his disks to represent the indicated figure is given––until the game is concluded––the disks of the children whose calculation has been slow, or at fault.”

“Well, of all things in the world, Mr. Charles,” said Hart’s aunt, “to think of my finding such a good thing as this out here 122 in New Mexico––when I’ve time and again been over the best kindergarten-supply places in Boston, and have been reading all I could lay my hands on about kindergartens for twenty years!”

“Oh, we do try not to be too primitive out here, madam,” said Santa FÉ, taking a long breath over having got through all right; “and I am even vain enough to think that perhaps we manage to keep pretty well up with the times. But I must say that it is a pleasant surprise to me to find that I have been able to give more than one point to a lady like you, who knows every card––I should say, to whom kindergarten processes are so exceptionally well known.

“And now I really must beg your permission to leave you, that I may return to my sermon. I give much time to my sermons; and I am cheered by the conviction––you must not think me boastful––that it is time well employed. When I look around me and perceive the lawless, and even outrageous, conditions which obtain in so many other towns in the Territory, and contrast them 123 with the orderly rectitude of Palomitas, I rejoice that my humble toil in the vineyard has brought so rich a reward. I deeply regret, madam, that your present stay with us must be so short; and with an equal earnestness I hope that it may be my privilege soon again to welcome you to our happy little town.”

Hart’s aunt––she was just pleased all over––was beginning to make a speech back to him; but Santa FÉ looked so wore out Hart didn’t give her the chance to go on. He just grabbed her, and got her away in a hurry––and Charley went to fussing with the cover of the wheel, putting it on again, so she couldn’t get at him to shake hands for good-bye. He said afterwards he felt that weak, when he fairly was shut of her, all he could do was to flop down into a chair anyway and sing out to Blister Mike to come and get the sheets off the bar quick and give him his own bottle of Bourbon and a tumbler. And he said he never took so many drinks, one right on top of another, since he was born!

There was more’n the usual crowd down at the deepo that night when the Denver train pulled out––with Hart’s aunt in the Pullman, and Hart standing on the Pullman platform telling the boys up to the last minute how much he was obliged.

Things went that same Sunday-school way right on to the end of the game; and Hart said his aunt told him––as they was coming along down to the deepo––she never would a-believed there could be such a town as Palomitas was, out in that wild frontier country, if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. As to the ladies of the town, he said she told him they certainly was the most domestic she’d ever known!

Hart was so grateful––and he had a right to be––he left a hunderd dollars with Tenderfoot Sal and told her to blow off the town for him that night by running a free bar. Sal done it, right enough––and that turned out to be about the hottest night Palomitas ever had. Most of the trouble was in the dance-hall, where it was apt to be, and had its start, as it did generally, right around the 125 Sage-Brush Hen: who kept on being dressed up in her white frock and wearing her white sun-bonnet, and looked as demure as a cotton-tail rabbit, and cut up so reckless I reckon she about made a record for carryings on! Santa FÉ had to fix one feller because of her––shooting him like he was used to, through his pants-pocket––and more’n a dozen got hurt in the ordinary way.

Some of the shooting didn’t seem quite as if it was needed; but it was allowed afterwards––even if there hadn’t been no free bar––there was excuse for it: seeing the town was all strung up and had to work itself off. Santa FÉ, of course, had more excuse than anybody, being most strung-upest. Bluffing his way through that kindergarten game, he said, was the biggest strain he’d ever had. But he didn’t mind what trouble he’d took, he said, seeing he’d got Hart out of his hole by taking it; and he looked real pleased when Hill spoke up––just about voicing what all the rest of us was thinking––saying he was ready, after the way he’d played his kindergarten hand, to put his pile on Santa 126 FÉ Charley to make iced drinks in hell!

Of course Hill oughtn’t to have spoke like that. But allowances was to be made for Hill––owing to the ways he’d got into driving mules.