  "If these lovely little waterfalls," asserted the Bride, as she gazed upon the graceful Tower Falls, "could only have a fair chance, they would win fame—but they are overshadowed here—and they don't seem to care." Undine Falls, the Virginia Cascade, Mystic Falls, Kepler Cascade and Crystal Falls were in the mind of the Bride; but she might have mentioned many more, which in their incursion into the Park they had not seen. "This," said the Artist, "is no place to look at, and leave—it is a region for the artist to live in, to study, to make a part of his life, and finally, to understand." "I reckon," said the Hired Man, "that he'd git homesick f'r the corn country after a winter or so." Some competent judges think Tower Falls the most beautiful cascade on earth. Perhaps it is. Certainly no fault has ever been found with it as a picture. The Seven Wonderers spent a day near their pretty camp, resting, exploring, and renewing their acquaintance with the gorge of the Yellowstone, and forming that of the Needle, slender as a campanile, and three hundred feet high, marking the end of the Grand CaÑon. Junction Butte, which they crossed the New Bridge to see, standing where many roads and rivers meet, seemed to the Bride another monument placed there by the gods with manifest intention. Why otherwise, she queried, could not the Needle be anywhere else, just as well as at the lower end of the Grand CaÑon, or Junction Butte, in any other place as easily as in this cross-roads of highways and waters? "Why, indeed?" assented the Groom. "When you find a stone stuck on end at the corner of a parcel of land, you know that the stone was placed there to mark the corner, don't you?" "Reminds me of the providential way that rivers always run past cities, just where they are needed," carped the Colonel. "It isn't the same thing," said the Bride hotly. "You're getting mean, Colonel!" "Honing for the wrangle of the courts, Bride," said he. "I apologize." "Well," said Aconite, "there's a lot of bigger mysteries than them in these regions. Here's the Petrified Trees, over here in a ravine just off the road. If we don't see the petrified forest up Amethyst Crick way, maybe you'd like to look at these an' tell me how trees ever turned to stone that-a-way." There they stood, splintered by the elements, indubitably the stubs of trees, and unquestionably stone. The Professor began an explanation of the phenomenon of petrifaction, but nobody paid him any attention. "Old Jim Bridger," said Aconite, "discovered the Petrified Forest, up in the Lamar Valley; an' back in the mountains som'eres he found a place where the grass, birds an' everything else was petrified. Even a waterfall was petrified, an' stan's thar luk glass." "And the roar of it is petrified, and the songs of the birds, and the sunlight, and the birds singing their petrified songs in the petrified air, in which they are suspended for ever, by reason of the petrifaction of the force of gravity, which otherwise would bring them down!" Thus the Poet. Aconite looked at him in surprise. "Either you've been here before," said he, "or you've knowed some one that has been!" Time refused to serve for an exploration of the regions northeast of the New Bridge, though the road invited, and the Artist strongly argued for the trip. He wanted to see the Fossil Forest, and Amethyst Falls, Amethyst Creek, Amethyst Mountain and Specimen Ridge. But they turned their backs on these, on Soda Butte and its wonderful caÑon, and that of the Lamar, on the piscatorial delights of Trout Lake, the mystery of Death Gulch, and the weirdnesses of the Hoodoo Region. The Bride and Groom were due to take train from Gardiner, and on to San Francisco. At Yancey's the Bride invited them to a parting dinner when they should reach Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, and when Aconite and the Hired Man failed to recognize themselves as included, the Bride assured them that the occasion would be ruined if they did not attend—and they promised. They reached Yancey's early in the afternoon, but the Bride was so enraptured by its beauties as a camping place that they made camp for the night, and drawing from the hat the name of Aconite as the entertainer for the evening, and the Poet for the dinner at the Hotel, each found himself feeling like one who has sent his luggage to the station, and awaits the carriage to bear him from home; or like sailors who have their dunnage ready for the dock at the end of the voyage. Their relationship had grown to something very like intimacy in something more than half a month. And they were about to go their several ways, like ships that pass in the night. It was their great good fortune to have so met and acted that every member of the party felt the companionship a tolerable thing to contemplate as a permanency—that should they be in any mysterious—though scarcely improbable—interposition of glass barrier, or fiery lake, or gulf filled with deadly vapor, shut into this marvelous region, they could be good friends and good fellows. And they listened respectfully as Aconite, under the trees at Yancey's, spun the yarn of his love affair with an Oberlin College girl, his connection with a Rosebud beef issue fraud, and the tragedy that resulted from the mixture thereof. THE JILTING OF MR. DRISCOLLACONITE'S SECOND TALEThis here doctrine of Mr. Witherspoon's about lettin' cattle range wide, has some arguments of a humane nature back of it. But his openin' of it up in the instructions f'r runnin' the ten thousand dogies, was the same kind of a miscue the Pawnees made when they laid fer an' roped the U.P. flyer—which Mr. Elkins described as a misapplication of sound theory to new an' unwonted conditions; as the rattler said when he swallered the lawn hose. Principles has their local habitats the same as live things; an' nothin' is worse f'r 'em than to turn 'em loose where they don't know the water-holes an' wind-breaks. Principles that'll lay on fat an' top the market in Boston, 'll queer the hull game in a country where playin' it is tangled up with Injuns, gold mines, 'r range-stuff. In the short-grass country, dogy principles are sure a source of loss, until they get hardened up so's to git out and rustle with the push. Now, this Humane-Society-Injun-Relief-Corps form of doin' good—harmless, you'd say, as we set here by the grub-wagon; but I swear to Godfrey's Gulch, the worst throw-down I ever got in a social way growed out of a combination of them two highly proper idees with a Oberlin College gal I met up to Chamberlain. This was the way of it: The "O. M." Mr. Elkins, I mean, of the J-Up-An'-Down Ranch, was called to Sioux Falls as a witness in a case of selling conversation-water to the Injuns, an' casually landed a juicy contract with Uncle Sam f'r supplyin' beef-issue cattle over on the Rosebud. The Pierre firm of politicians he outbid, havin' things framed up pretty good, as they thought, on the delivery, at once hops to him with a proposition to pay him I d'know how much money an' take it off his hands. Havin' a pongshong f'r doin' business on velvet, the O. M. snaps 'em up instantaneous, an' comes home to Wolf Nose Crick smilin' like he'd swallered the canary, an' sends me to Chamberlain to see that the contract is carried out as fer as proper. "Go up, Aconite," he says, "an' remember that while the J-Up-An'-Down outfit don't feel bound to demand any reforms, its interests must be protected. Any sort of cattle the Pierre crowd can make look like prime steers to the inspector, goes with us. But," he goes on, "our names and not theirs are on the contract. These inspectors," says he, "bein' picked out on their merits at Washington, to look after the interests of the gover'ment an' the noble red, it would be unpatriotic if not Lee's Majesty to cavil at their judgment on steers, especially if it coincides with that of Senator Whaley's men at Pierre. Therefore, far be it from us to knock. But be leery that we don't get stuck for non-performance: which we can't afford. See?" It was purty plain to a man who'd matrickelated as night-wrangler, an' graduated as it on the J-Up-An'-Down, an' I went heart-free an' conscience clear, seein' my duty perfectly plain. Now at Chamberlain was this Oberlin College lady, who had some kind of an inflamed conscience on the Injun question, an' was dead stuck on dumb animals an' their rights. She was one of the kind you don't see out here—blue eyes, you know, yellow hair, the kind of complexion that don't outlive many hot winds; an' she had lots of pitchers around her, of young folks in her classes, an' people with mortar-board hats an' black nighties, 'r striped sweaters. She was irrupting into the Injun question via Chamberlain. Her thought was that the Injuns was really livin' correct's fur as they had a chance, an' that we orto copy their ways, instid of makin' them tag along after our'n. "Maybe that's so," says I, "but I've took the Keeley cure twice now, an' please excuse me!" She looked kinder dazed f'r a minute, an' then laffed, an' said somethin' about the sardonic humor of the frontier. I had been asked to give a exhibition of broncho bustin' at the ranch where she was stayin' an' she was agitatin' herself about the bronks' feelin's. I told her that it was just friendly rivalry between the puncher an' the bronk, an' how, out on the ranch, the gentle critters 'd come up an' hang around by the hour, a-nickerin' f'r some o' the gang to go out an' bust 'em. "It reminds me," she says, "of my brother's pointers begging to go hunting." "Same principle," says I. It seemed to ease her mind, an' feelin' as I did toward her, I wouldn't have her worry f'r anything. Then she found out that I was a graduate of the high school of Higgsville, Kansas, an' used to know what quadratics was, an' that my way of emitting the English language was just an acquired mannerism, like the hock-action of a string-halted hoss, an' she warmed up to me right smart, both then an' after, never askin' to see my diploma, an' begun interrogatin' me about the beef-issue, an' discussin' the Injun question like a lifelong friend. Whereat, I jumped the game. But, for all that, about this time I become subject to attacts of blue eyes an' yellow hair, accompanied by vertigo, blind-staggers, bots, ringin' in the ears—like low, confabulatin' talk, kinder interspersed with little bubbles of lafture—an' a sense o' guilt whenever I done anything under the canopy of heaven that I was used to doin'. Can yeh explain that, now? Why this Oberlin proposition should make me feel like a criminal jest because the pony grunted at the cinchin' o' the saddle, 'r because I lammed him f'r bitin' a piece out o' my thigh at the same time, goes too deep into mind science f'r Aconite Driscoll. O' course, a man under them succumstances is supposed to let up on cussin' an' not to listen to all kinds o' stories; but you understand, here I was, conscience-struck in a general an' hazy sort of way, mournin' over a dark an' bloody past, an' thinkin' joyfully of death. It was the condemnedest case I ever contracted, an' nothin' saved me to be a comfort to my friends but the distraction of the queer actions of that inspector. I never had given him a thought. Senator Whaley an' his grafters was supposed to arrange matters with him—an' I'm no corruptionist, anyway. Of course, the cattle wasn't quite up to export shippin' quality. The senator's gang had got together a collection of skips an' culls an' canners that was sure a fraud on the Injuns, who mostly uses the cattle issued to 'em the way some high-up civilized folks does hand-raised foxes—as a means of revortin' to predatory savagery, as Miss Ainsley says. Ainsley was her name—Gladys Ainsley—an' she lived som'eres around Toledo. The p'int is, that they chase 'em, with wild whoops an' yips over the undulatin' reservation until they can shoot 'em, an' I s'pose, sort of imagine, if Injuns have imaginations, that time has turned back'ard in her flight, an' the buffalo season is on ag'in. Whereas, these scandalous runts of steers an' old cow stuff was mostly too weak or too old to put up any sort of a bluff at speed. But, under my instructions, if they looked good to the inspector, they looked good to me; an' bein' sort of absent-minded with gal-stroke, I rested easy, as the feller said when the cyclone left him on top o' the church tower. The inspector was a new man, an' his queer actions consisted mostly of his showin' up ten days too soon, an' then drivin' 'r ridin' around the country lookin' at the stock before delivery. This looked suspicious; fer we s'posed it was all off but runnin' 'em through the gap once, twice 'r three times to be counted. Whaley's man comes to me one day, an' ast me what I thought of it. "I'm paid a princely salary," says I, "fer keepin' my thoughts to myself. This here's no case," I continued, "callin' f'r cerebration on my part. If thinkin's the game, it's your move. What's Senator Whaley in politics fer," says I, "if a obscure forty-a-month-an'-found puncher is to be called on to think on the doin's of a U.S. inspector? What's he in this fer at all, if we've got to think at this end of the lariat?" "He was talkin' about cavvs," said the feller, whose name was Reddy—a most ungrammatical cuss. "He was a-pokin' round with the contrack, a-speakin' about cavvs. Wun't you go an' talk to him?" "Not me!" says I, f'r the hull business disgusted me, an' my guilt come back over me shameful, with the eyes an' hair an' things plenteous. Whaley's man rode off, shakin' his head. Next day the inspector hunted me up. "Mr. Driscoll?" says he, f'r I'd been keepin' out of his way. "Correct," says I. "You represent the Elkins' interests in the matter of supplying for the issue, do you not?" says he. "In a kind of a sort of a way," says I, f'r I didn't care to admit too much till I see what he was up to. "In a kind of a sort of a way, mebbe I do. Why?" "Did you have anything to do," says he, unfoldin' a stiff piece of paper, "with procuring the cattle now in readiness for delivery?" "Hell, no!" I yells, an' then seein' my mistake, I jumped an' added: "You see, the top stuff f'r the Injun market is perduced up around Pierre. So we sub-contracted with this Pierre outfit to supply it. It's their funeral, not ours. It's good stock, ain't it?" "I am assured by Senator Whaley's private secretary," says he, "who is a classmate of mine, that there would be great dissatisfaction among the Indians, owing to certain tribal traditions and racial peculiarities—" "You bet!" says I, f'r he seemed to be gettin' wound up an' cast in it, "that's the exact situation!" "Would be dissatisfaction," he went on, "if cattle of the type which in the great markets is considered best, were furnished here. And I have great confidence in his judgment." "So've I," I says. "He's one of the judgmentiousest fellers you ever see." "So let that phase of the question pass," says he, "for the present. But there's a clause in this contract—" "Don't let that worry you," says I. "There's claws in all of 'em if you look close." He never cracked a smile, but unfolded it, and went on. "Here's a clause," says he, "calling for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot, for the dairy herd, I presume." "Cavvs at what?" says I. "At foot," says he, p'intin' at a spot along toward the bottom. "Right there!" "It's impossible!" says I. "They don't wear 'em that way." He studied over it quite a while, at that, an' I begun to think I'd won out, but at last he says: "That's the way it reads, an' while I shall not insist upon any particular relation of juxtaposition in offspring and dam-" "Whope!" says I, "back up an' come ag'in pardner." "It seems to be my duty to insist upon the one hundred and fifty cows and calves. Now the point is, I don't find any such description of creatures among the—the bunches in seeming readiness for delivery." "O!" says I, "that's what's eating yeh, is it? W'l don't worry any more. The cow kindergarten's furder up the river. We didn't want to put the tender little devils where they'd be tramped on by them monstrous big oxen you noticed around the corrals. This caff business is all right, trust us!" Whaley's man was waitin' fer me down at the saloon, an' when I told him about the cavvs, he shrunk into himself like a collapsed foot-ball, an' wilted. "Hain't yeh got 'em?" says I. "Huh!" says he, comin' out of it. "Don't be a dum fool, Aconite. This is the first I understood of it, an' whoever heared of an inspector readin' a contrack? And there ain't them many cavvs to be got by that time in all Dakoty. Le's hit the wires f'r instructions!" The telegrams runs something like this:
I'd got about the same kind of a telegram to Mr. Elkins, addin' that the Whaley crowd was up in the air. I sent it by Western Union to Sturgis, and then up Wolf Nose Crick by the Belle Fourche and Elsewhere Telephone Line. The O. M., as usual, cuts the melon with a word. His wire was as follows.
This was sure an affliction on me, f'r I had fixed up a deal to go with Miss Ainsley an' her friends on a campin' trip, lastin' up to the day of the issue. She'd been readin' one of Hamlin Garland's books about a puncher who'd scooted through the British aristocracy, hittin' only the high places in a social way, on the strength of a gold prospect an' the diamond hitch to a mule-pack. She wanted to see the diamond hitch of all things. There orto be a law ag'inst novel-writin'. I got Reddy to learn me the diamond hitch so I could make good with Gladys, an' here was this mysterious caff expedition to the last place in the world, Chicago, a-yankin' me off by the night train. I went over to tell her about it. First, I thought I'd put on the clo'es I expected to wear to Chicago, a dandy fifteen dollar suit I got in town. An' then I saw how foolish this would be, an' brushed up my range clo'es, tied a new silk scarf in my soft roll collar, an' went. Here's my diagram of the hook-up: Any o' them mortar-board-hat, black-nightie fellers she had pitchers of, could probably afford fifteen dollar clay-worsteds; but it was a good gamblin' proposition that none of 'em could come in at the gate like a personally-conducted cyclone, bring up a-stannin' from a dead run to a dead stop's if they'd struck a stone wall, go clear from the bronk as he fetched up an' light like a centaur before her, with their sombrero in their hand. Don't light, you say? Wal, I mean as a centaur would light if he took a notion. You'd better take a hike down to see how the steed's gettin' along, Bill, 'r else subside about this Greek myth biz. It helps on with this story—not! The p'int is, that gals and fellers both like variety. To me, the "y" in her name, the floss in her hair, the kind of quivery lowness in her voice, the rustle of her dresses as she walked, the way she looked like the pitchers in the magazines an' talked like the stories in 'em, all corroborated to throw the hooks into me. An' I s'pose the nater's-nobleman gag went likewise with her. Subsekent happenin's—but I must hold that back. We sot in the hammock that night—the only time Aconite Driscoll ever was right up against the real thing in ladies' goods—an' she read me a piece about a Count Gibson a-shooting his lady-love's slanderers so full o' holes at a turnament that they wouldn't hold hazel-brush. They was one verse she hesitated over, an' skipped. I ast her if she thought she—as a supposed case—could live out in this dried-up-an'-blowed-away country; an' she said the matter had really never been placed before her in any such a way as to call for a decision on her part. Purty smooth, that! Then she read another piece that wound up with "Love is best!" from the same book, an' forgot to take her hand away when I sneaked up on it, an'—Gosh! talk about happiness: we never git anything o' quite that kind out here! I never knowed how I got to the train, 'r anything else ontil we was a-crossin' the Mississippi at North McGregor. Here the caff question ag'in unveiled its heejus front, to be mulled over till I reached the cowman's harbor in Chicago, the Exchange Building at the Yards, an' found Jim Elkins' instructions awaitin' me. They read:
Well, you may have listened to the plaintive beller of a single caff at weanin' time, 'r perhaps to the symferny that emanates from the pen of three 'r four. Furder'n this the experience of most don't go. Hence, I don't hope to give yeh any idee of the sound that eckered over northern Illinois from them two cars o' motherless waifs. The cry of the orphan smote the air in a kind of endless chain o' noise that at two blocks off sounded like a chorus of steam calliopes practicin' holts at about middle C. Nothin' like it had ever been heared of or done in Chicago, an' stockmen, an' reporters, an' sight-seers swarmed around wantin' to know what I was a-goin' to do with the foundlin's—an' I wa'nt in any position to be interviewed, with the Chicago papers due in Chamberlain before I was. I'd 'ave had a dozen scraps if it hadn't been f'r the fear of bein' arrested. But with the beef issue comin' on a-pacin', I had to pass up luxuries involvin' delay. I sot in the caboose, an object of the prurient curiosity of the train-crew ontil we got to Elgin 'r som'eres out there, where I contracted eight cases of eggs an' one of nervous prostration. Here it was I begun ministering to the wants of my travelin' orphan asylum. They was from four hours to as many days old when the accident of birth put 'em under my fosterin' care. I knowed that it was all poppy-cock givin' dairy 'r breedin' herds to them Injuns, an' that these would do as well f'r their uses, 'sif they had real mothers instid o' one as false as I felt. But to look upon 'em as they appeared in the cars, would 'ave give that consciencious but onsophisticated inspector the jimjams. Part of 'em was layin' down, an' the rest trampin' over 'em, an' every one swellin' the chorus o' blats that told o' hunger an' unhappiness. I took a basket of eggs an' went in among 'em, feelin' like a animal trainer in a circus parade as the Reubens gethered around the train, an' business houses closed f'r the show. I waited till the train pulled out, an' begun my career as nurse-maid-in-gineral. "How cruel!" said the Bride. "Thanks," said Aconite. "It shore was!" Ever try to feed a young caff? Ever notice how they faint with hunger before you begin, an' all at once develop the strength of a hoss when you stand over 'em an' try to hold their fool noses in the pail? Ever see a caff that couldn't stand alone, run gaily off with a two-hundred-an'-fifty-pound farmer, poisin' a drippin' pail on his nose, an' his countenance a geyser of milk? Well, then you can form some faint idee of the practical difficulty of inducin' a caff, all innercent o' the world an' its way o' takin' sustenance, to suck a raw egg. But nothin' but actual experience can impart any remote approach to a notion o' what it means to incorporate the fruit o' the nest with the bossy while bumpin' over the track of a northern Iowa railroad in a freight car, movin' at twenty-five miles an hour. I used up two cases of eggs before I was sure of havin' alleviated one pang of hunger, such was the scorn my kindly offers was rejected with. The result was astoundin'. Them cars swept through the country, their decks slippery with yaller gore, an' their lee scuppers runnin' bank-full, as the sailors say, with Tom-an'-Jerry an' egg shampoo. An' all the time went on that symferny of blats, risin' an' fallin' on the prairie breeze as we rolled from town to town, a thing to be gazed at an' listened to an' never forgot; to be side-tracked outside city limits f'r fear of the Board of Health and the S. P. C. A., an' me ostrichized by the very brakey in the caboose as bein' unfit f'r publication, an' forced to buy a mackintosh to wrap myself in before they'd let me lay down on their old seats to sleep. An' when my visions revorted back to the Oberlin people, I couldn't dream o' that yaller hair even, without its seemin' to float out, an' out, an' out into a sea of soft-boiled, in which her an' me was strugglin', to the howlin' of a tearin' tempest of blats. "And next when Aconite he rides," remarked the Poet, "may I be there to see!" At last we arrived at Chamberlain. An' here's where the head-end collision of principles comes in, that I mentioned a while ago. Here's where Aconite Driscoll, who for days had been givin' a mother's care to two hundred cavvs, was condemned f'r cruelty; an' when he'd been strainin' every nerve an' disturbin' the egg market to keep from bustin' a set of concealed claws in a gover'ment contract, he was banished as an eggcessory to the crime of bilkin' poor Lo. This tradegy happens out west o' the river at the Issue House. Reddy had a string of wagons with hog-racks onto 'em waitin' in the switch-yards when we whistled in, an' the way we yanked them infants off the cars and trundled 'em over the pontoon bridge, an' hit the trail f'r the Issue House, was a high-class piece o' teamin'. We powdered across the country like the first batch of sooners at a reservation openin'. Out on the prairie was Reddy an' his punchers, slowly dribblin' the last of his steers into the delivery, too anxious f'r me an' the cavvs to be ashamed of their emaciation. Out behind a butte, he had concealed a bunch of cow-stuff he'd deppytized as mothers pro tem to my waifs. The right way t've done, o' course, would've been to incorporated the two bunches in a unassumin' way at a remoter place, an' drove 'em gently in as much like cattle o' the same family circles as yeh could make 'em look. But they wan't time. The end-gates was jerked out, an' the wagons ongently emptied like upsettin' a sleigh comin' home from spellin' school. Most all the orphans could an' did walk, an' I was so tickled at this testimonial to the egg-cure f'r youthful weakness, that we had 'em half way to the place where the knives o' their owners-elect was a waitin' 'em when I looked around an' seen Miss Ainsley, an' the Chamberlain lady she was a-stayin' with, standin' where they must 'a' seen the way we mussed the cavvs hair up in gettin' of 'em on the ground. Gladys' eyes was a-blazin', an' they was a red spot in each cheek. She seemed sort o' pressin' forwards, like she wanted to mix it up, an' her lady friend was tryin' to head her off. I saw she didn't recognize me, an' I didn't thirst f'r recognition. I knew that love ain't so blind as she's been advertised, an' that I wouldn't never, no, never, be a nater's nobleman no more if she ever tumbled to the fact that the human omelette runnin' this caff business was A. Driscoll. It was only a case of sweet-gal-graduate palpitation o' the heart anyhow, an' needed the bronzed cheek, the droopin' mustache, the range clo'es, the deadly gun, the diamond hitch, and the centaur biz to keep it up to its wonted palp. An' what was it that was offered to the gaze o' this romantic piece o' calicker? Try to rearlize the truth in all its heejusness. Here was the aforementioned Driscoll arrayed in what was once an A1 fifteen-dollar suit of clay-worsteds, a good biled shirt, an' a new celluloid collar. But how changed from what had been but three short days ago the cinnersure of the eye of every sure-thing or conman on South Halsted Street? Seventy-five per cent. of eight cases of eggs had went billerin' over him. The shells of the same clung like barnacles to his apparel. His curlin' locks was matted an' mucilaged like he'd made a premature getaway from some liberal-minded shampooer; an' from under his beetlin' brows that looked like birds' nests from which broods had just hatched, glared eyes with vi'lence an' crime in every glance. Verily, Aconite was a beaut! An' here, a-comin' down upon him like the angel o' the Lord on the Assyrian host, come a starchy, lacey, filmy, ribbiny gal, that had onst let him hold her hand, by gum! her eyes burnin' with vengeance, an' that kinder corn-shucky rustlin' that emanated mysterious from her dress as she walked, a drawin' nearder an' nearder every breath. "Gladys! Gladys!" says her lady friend. An' as Gladys slowed up, she says, lower: "I wouldn't interfere in this if I were you, dear!" "I must!" says Gladys. "It's my duty! I can't permit dumb animals to be treated so without a protest. It is civic cowardice not to do disagreeable things for principle. I wish to speak to the man in charge, please!" I kep' minglin' with the herd, not carin' to have disagreeable things done to me for principle, but she cuts me out, an' says, says she, "Do you know that there's a law against cruelty to dumb animals?" "They ain't dumb," says I, trying to change my voice, an' officin' up to Reddy to shove 'em along to their fate while I held the foe in play. "When you've associated with these cute little cusses as long an' intermately as I have, ma'am, you'll know that they have a language an' an ellerquence all their own, that takes 'em out of the pervisions o' that law you speak of, an'—" Here's where I overplays my hand, an' lets her get onto the genuyne tones of my voice. I ortn't to done this, f'r she'd heared it at close range. An' to make a dead cinch out of a good gamblin' proposition, I looked her in the eyes. It was all off in a breath. She give a sort of gasp as if somethin' cold had hit her, an' went petrified, sort o' slow like. "Oh!" says she, turnin' her head to her friend. "I understand now what it was your husband was laughing about, and his odious jokes about fooling the inspector; and the bearing of the article he showed us in the Chicago paper! O, Mr. Driscoll, you to be so cruel; and to impose these poor motherless creatures upon those ignorant Indians, who are depending upon their living and becoming the nucleus of their pastoral industry; and the first step to a higher civilization! I don't wonder that you look guilty, or try—" "I don't!" says I, f'r I didn't, as fer as the stock was concerned. "It's these here eight cases of eggs that make me look so. It's a matter o' clo's. An' the reds'll never raise cattle," says I, "or anything but trouble, in God's world. An' if these cavvs had as many mothers as a Mormon kid," I went on, "they'd be no better f'r stew!" "Mr. Driscoll," says she, "don't ever speak to me again. I shall expose this matter to the inspector!" I tried to lift my hat, but it was stuck to my hair; an' the sight of me pullin' desperately at my own head had some effect on her, f'r she flees to her friend, actin' queer, but whuther laffin' 'r cryin' I couldn't say, an' I don't s'pose she could. It's immaterial anyway, the main p'int bein' that her friend's husband, a friend of the senator's, persuaded her from havin' us all pinched, when she found that Reddy'd beat her to it with the cavvs, the last one of which was expirin' under the squaws' hatchets as she hove in sight of the issue, an' the soup-kittles was all a-steamin. It reely was too late to do anything, I guess. That night I slep' in Oacoma jail. You naturally gravitate that way when fate has ground you about so fine, an' you begin to drift with the blizzard. I could 'a' stood the throw-down, but to be throwed down in a heap with eggs an' dirty clo'es, was too much. I took that suit an' made a bundle of it, an' out on the pontoon bridge I poked it into the Missouri with a pole. They're usin' the water to settle coffee with, I'm told, as fur down as Saint Joe, to this day—'s good as the whites of eggs, the cooks say. Then, havin' wired my resignation to Elkins, feelin' that the world held no vocation f'r me but the whoop-er-up business, I returned to the west side of the river as the only place suited to my talons, an' went forth to expel the eggs an' tender memories from my system with wetness. I broke jail in the mornin' but in a week I come to myself ag'in on the same ol' cot in the same prehistoric calaboose, an' Mr. Elkins was keepin' the flies off me with one o' them brushes made of a fringed newspaper tacked to a stick. "I've come," says he, "to take you home, Aconite." "All right," says I, "but can you fix it up with the authorities?" "I'm just going over to get your discharge," replies he. "They seem quite willing to part with you, now that they discover that none of your victims have anything deeper than flesh wounds. I've give bonds not to let you have your guns this side of the Stanley County line. I'll be back in half-an-hour with the horses." An' here's where I had a narrow escape. I wouldn't have faced her, the girl, you know, f'r no money; but as Jim went away, right at the door I seen through a little winder a shimmerin' of white and blue. It was her, herself! She must have met Jim before, f'r I heared her speak his name an' mine. He seemed to be perlitely arguin' with her; an' then she went away with him. I breathed easier to see her go; an' then set down an' cried like a baby. A feller'll do that easy, when he's been on a tear, you know. Jim an' I rode all that day sayin' never a word. But when we'd turned in that night I mentioned the matter. "Mr. Elkins," says I, "she sure has got it in f'r me pretty strong, to foller me to jail to jump on me!" "Aconite," says he, "I'll not deceive you. She has. Forget it!" "Good night, Aconite," said the Bride. "I forgive you—and I think I know just how that girl felt toward you!" |
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