BY CAROLINE LOCKHART

WITH a turn of his red wrist, Porcupine Jim guided his horse in and out among the badger holes which made riding dangerous business on the Blackfoot Reservation. Perplexity and discontent rested upon Porcupine’s not too lofty brow. Though he looked at the badger holes and avoided them mechanically, he saw them not.

“Would you tank, would you tank,” he burst out finally in a voice which rasped with irritation, “dat a girl like Belle Dashiel would rudder have dat pigeon-toed, smart-Aleck breed dan me?”

Porcupine’s pinto cayuse threw back one ear and listened attentively to the naÏve conceit of his rider’s soliloquy.

“Look at me!” demanded Porcupine, changing the reins to his left hand that he might make a more emphatic gesture with his right. “A honest Swede, able to make fifteen dollars a day at my trade. Me as has sheared sheep from Montany to the Argentine Republic, gittin’ bounced for dat lazy half-breed dat can’t hold a yob two mont’!”

Porcupine’s thoughts upon any subject were not varied, and he burst forth at intervals with a reiteration of the same idea until he came to the ridge where he could look down upon the house of Dashiel, the squaw-man, who kept a sort of post office in a soapbox.

Porcupine had come twenty-five miles for his mail. Not that he expected any, but to be gibed at by Belle Dashiel had the same fascination for him that biting on a sore tooth has for a small boy. Gradually the knowledge had come to his slow-working mind that the half-breed girl’s interest in him rose solely from the fact that John Laney was his partner in the assessment work which they were doing in the mountains on a tenderfoot’s copper claim.

Laney’s father had been an Irish steamboat captain on Lake Superior, his mother, a Chippewa squaw, and the cross had produced an unusual type. The Indian blood which keeps a half-breed silent and shy before strangers had no such effect upon Laney. His prowess was his theme and his vanity was a byword on the Reservation. He obtained his fashions from the catalogue of a wholesale house in Chicago which furnishes the trusting pioneer with the latest thing in oil drills or feather boas. It was common belief that Laney’s high celluloid collar would some day cut his head off.

Laney’s waking hours were spent in planning schemes of primitive crudeness whereby he might acquire affluence without labor. In his dreams the tenderfoot tourist was generally the person who was to remove him from penury.

“Hello, Porcupine!” called Belle Dashiel, coming to the door with a pink bow pinned on a pompadour of amazing height.

“Hullo yourself!” replied Porcupine, elated at his ready wit and the cordiality in her voice.

“How’s John?”

The smile faded from his face.

“Good ’nough,” he replied shortly.

“When’s he comin’ down?”

“Dunno. Any mail for me?”

“A letter and a paper.”

“Who could be writin’ to me?”

Porcupine looked surprised. “Didn’t you expect nothin’?” Belle Dashiel’s eyes shone mischievously.

“Yass, I tank, mebby.” A deeper red spread over the Swede’s sunburned face.

He opened his letter and spelled it out laboriously, his chest heaving with the effort.

“A man over in Chicago he tank I’m in turrible need of a pianny,” he said in disgust, as he put the circular in the stove.

Porcupine lingered till the chill of the night air crept into the sunshine of the September day. Then he put spurs to his patient cayuse and hit the trail which led into the fastnesses of the Rockies.

The light was not quite gone when he happened to think of the paper he had thrust in his coat-pocket. There might be news in it! Bacon-Rind-Dick had told Two-Dog-Jack that there was a war over in Jay-pan. Porcupine removed the wrapper and the words Wedding Chimes stared him in the face.

As he read, he laid the reins on his horse’s neck and let the pinto pick his own road. The matrimonial sheet opened up a vista of romantic adventures and possibilities of which the Swede had never dreamed. His imagination, which naturally was not a winged thing, was fired until he saw himself leading to his shack up the North Fork of the Belly River the fairest and richest lady in the land. All he had to do was to send five dollars to Wedding Chimes and thus join their matrimonial club. Upon the receipt of the five dollars, the editor would send him the names and addresses of several ladies who were all young, beautiful, wealthy and anxious to be married. He could open a correspondence with one or all of them, and then choose for his bride the lady whose letter appealed to him most.

Porcupine strained his eyes reading descriptions of lily-white blondes and dashing brunettes. When he could see no longer, he folded the precious paper and buttoned it inside his coat.

His cayuse was puffing up the steep mountain trail in the darkness of the thick pines and spruces when Porcupine suddenly let out a yell which startled the prowling lynx and made his pinto snort with fright. It was a wild whoop of exultation. There had come to Porcupine one of those rare revelations which have made men great. He fairly glowed and tingled with the inspiration which had flashed upon him as though someone had gone through his brain with a lantern.

When he rode into camp, where Laney sat before the fire eating bacon out of a frying-pan, Porcupine’s deep-set blue eyes were shining like stars on a winter’s night.

“Yass, I got de greatest ting in de mail you ever see, I tank!”

Laney’s face expressed curiosity as the Swede sat down on a log and turned his felt hat round and round upon his bullet-shaped head—a trick he had when excited. With great deliberation and impressiveness he produced the paper and handed it to Laney. Laney set the frying-pan where his wolfhound could finish the bacon and opened the paper.

“Young, beautiful, immensely rich; obj., mat.,” he read. Laney’s eyes sparkled. He read for half an hour of successful weddings brought about by the editorial Cupid. Porcupine at last roused him from his absorption.

“Laney, I got a scheme, I tank. I’ll join up with one of dem clubs and you carry out de corryspondance with one of dem ladies. You are a better scholar den me and write a pooty goot letter. Den, if it goes all right, I’ll go and see her and tell her I ain’t exactly de man dat done de writin’, but I’m just as goot.

“’Tain’t no use for you to get into de club, because you are all the same as promised to Belle Dashiel. Sure,” Porcupine went on, “Belle ain’t rich nor beautiful like dem ladies in Weddin’ Chimes, but she’s a goot little girl.

“Old Dashiel ain’t got more dan fifty head of beef cattle, and dey say he got a lot of runts in de last Govermint issue, but a ting like dat don’t cut no ice if you’re stuck on de girl.”

Laney moved uneasily and avoided Porcupine’s eyes.

“Now for me,” continued the Swede, “I can marry any millionaire I want to.”

As soon as the mails could get it there, the editor of Wedding Chimes received a neatly penciled and eloquent letter from one John Laney, setting forth his especial needs and preferences, with considerable stress laid upon the financial standing of the matrimonial candidates.

The day the list was due Laney rode down for the mail. The eagerness with which he took the letter from her hand did not escape Belle Dashiel.

“Got a new girl, John?” she asked lightly, though she watched his face with suspicious eyes.

“Perhaps,” replied Laney, and all her urging could not detain him.

By the light of the camp-fire Laney and Porcupine studied the list of names and addresses sent from the office of the matrimonial paper.

“This a-here one suits me,” said Laney. “‘Mayme Livingston, Oak Grove, Iowa.’ It’s a toney-sounding name.”

“It’s me dat’s gittin’ married,” Porcupine suggested significantly. “But Mayme’s all right, I tank. Go on ahead and write.”

So Laney, with the assistance of a sheet of ruled notepaper and a lead pencil which he moistened frequently in order to shade effectively, composed a letter which he and Porcupine regarded not only as a model of cleverness but an achievement from a literary point of view. The legal tone which gave it dignity was much admired by Porcupine. The letter read:

The days which followed the mailing of the above composition were the longest Laney and Porcupine had ever known. They discussed Miss Livingston until they felt they knew her. Porcupine thought she had black eyes, black hair, was inclined to stoutness, but with a good “figger.”

The name of Livingston to Laney conjured up a vision of blonde loveliness in red satin, slender, shapely, with several thousand dollars in a handbag which she kept always with her.

Miss Livingston’s letter came with delightful promptness. There was an angry glow in Belle Dashiel’s Indian eyes as she handed the salmon-pink envelope to Laney.

“Who you writin’ to?” she demanded.

“Business,” replied Laney bruskly, and strode out of the house.

Porcupine, who had also come down, lingered a moment to tell her she looked prettier each time that he saw her.

Miss Livingston’s letter read:

Laney’s brow was clouded as he folded the letter. “She ain’t much of a scholar,” he said. “You hardly ever see a scholar use little ‘i’s.’”

“What differunce does dat make when she’s got a stiddy income?” replied Porcupine quickly. “And den what she said about handsome presents. Sure, she’s a hairess, I tank.”

Laney brightened at these reminders, and immediately set about composing another letter calculated to impress the wealthy, if unlettered, Miss Livingston.

“Dear madam,” soon developed into “Dearest Mayme,” and “deer sir” as speedily became “darlig John,” and, with each salmon-pink envelope’s arrival, Laney’s coolness toward Belle Dashiel became more marked.

“Porcupine,” said Laney, who had begun to show some reluctance in reading the correspondence to his partner, “the lady is gettin’ oneasy to see me, and when we finish runnin’ that drift in the lead, I think I’ll take a trip over to Iowa and see her.”

“But where do I come in, mebby?” demanded Porcupine.

“That’s what I’m goin’ for—to fix it up for you. Reely, Porcupine,” and he looked critically at the rawboned Swede, whose hair stood up like the quills on the animal from which he had received his sobriquet, “it wouldn’t be right for you to break in on a lady without givin’ her warning of what you was like.”

“I know I ain’t pooty,” replied Porcupine unperturbed, “but I can make fifteen dollars a day at my trade.”

The tenderfoot’s assessment money went toward buying Laney a wardrobe which almost any one of Laney’s relatives or friends would have killed him in his sleep to possess.

A jeweler, advertising in Wedding Chimes, received an order for a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar scarfpin, to be paid for in instalments. Porcupine, whose nature was singularly free from envy, could not but feel a pang when he saw the large horseshoe of yellow diamonds glittering in Laney’s red cravat.

Laney had read that no gentleman should think of venturing into polite society without a “dress suit.” An order was sent for a seventy-five-dollar suit of evening clothes to the Chicago firm from whom they bought their mining tools. When the clothes arrived Laney dressed himself in them one evening in their shack up the North Fork of Belly River, and Porcupine’s face showed the admiration he felt, as Laney strutted like a pheasant drumming on a log.

Laney, who numbered among his accomplishments the ability to draw a rose or a horse so that almost anybody would know what it was, gave an original touch to his costume by purchasing at the Agency a brown broad-brimmed felt hat and painting a red rose directly in front under the stiff brim.

When the drift was run and Laney’s wardrobe was complete, he and the Swede set out across the Reservation to the railroad station.

“Pardner,” said Porcupine as he looked wistfully at the broadcloth coat with satin revers and the tail sloped away like a grasshopper’s wings, “dey ain’t a friend you got, but me, dat would trust you to do their courtin’ for them togged out like dat—sure, dat’s so!”

There was a derisive glint in Laney’s small back eyes; he held the slow-witted Swede in almost open contempt for his innocence. Porcupine shook hands with him on the platform and wished him good luck. “You’ll do your best for me, pard?” he asked anxiously.

“Trust me,” replied Laney gaily, intoxicated by the attention he was receiving from the tourists in the Pullman car.

Porcupine stopped at Dashiel’s on his return. Belle Dashiel met him at the door and her eyes were blazing. Without being able to define the process of reasoning by which he arrived at the conclusion, Porcupine felt that his brilliant plot stood an infinitely better show of success that he did not find her in tears.

“Where’s he gone at?” She stamped her moccasined foot imperiously.

“I wouldn’t like to say,” replied Porcupine in a voice which denoted a wish to shield his partner and yet a noble, if unusual, desire to tell the truth.

“Tell me!” she commanded, and she put her small hand on the big Swede’s arm as though she would shake him.

“I tank,” answered Porcupine meekly; “I dunno, but I tank he’s gone to get married.”

As Laney sat in the day coach in his evening clothes, his broad hat tilted back from his coarse, swarthy face, a constant procession filed through the aisle and every eye rested upon his smiling and complacent countenance. He passed two restless nights sleeping with his head on his patent-leather valise, and monotonous days eating peanuts and slaking his thirst at the ice-tank in the corner of the car. The farther he got from home, the more attention he attracted, which was some recompense for the inconvenience he was enduring.

He had plenty of time to decide a question which had much perplexed him: Could he immediately address the lady as “Mayme” and kiss her upon sight, or should he call her Miss Livingston and merely shake her hand? If too demonstrative, he might frighten her—capital is shy, as all men know. On the other hand, women resent coldness—now there was Belle Dashiel. Something which, if developed, might have proved to be a conscience, gave him a twinge, and he hastened to put the half-breed girl from his thoughts.

He reviewed the subject of his greeting from all possible sides, and decided that, in view of the many endearing phrases which Miss Livingston’s letters had contained and the neat border of “o’s,” labeled “kisses,” which had ornamented her last letter, he could feel reasonably safe in planting a chaste salute upon her trembling lips. Also he wondered how long it would be before he could hint at a small loan.

When they returned from their bridal tour they would take the best room in the hotel at the Agency, and he and work would be strangers ever after. He would send to Great Falls for a top buggy, and buy a mate to drive with his brown colt. He would get a long, fawn-colored overcoat and a diamond ring. He paused in the erection of his air castle to read again the letter which had reached him just before his departure.

“i will be at the Depo in a purple Satin wast with red roses in my Hat you can’t help but see me,” said the penciled lines. “i am tickled to deth that you are coming be Sure an com on the 3.37 thursday o how can i wait till then.”

Laney smiled contentedly and returned the letter to his pocket. For the hundredth time he consulted the time-table. “Jimminy Christmas!—only three hours more!” He hastened to wash his hands and face, having postponed that ceremony until he should near Oak Grove. The bosom of his pleated shirt was rumpled, and his dress clothes showed that he had slept in them; but trifles could not mar his happiness. He oiled his black hair from a small bottle containing bear grease scented with bergamot, and adjusted his cravat that the horseshoe might show to advantage.

When after a century of nervous tension the train whistled at the outskirts of Oak Grove, Laney’s knees were trembling beneath him and it seemed as though the thumping of his heart would choke him. He swallowed hard as, the solitary arrival, he descended the car steps and looked about him.

There was a flash of purple satin and an avalanche seemed to bury Laney in a moist embrace.

“Hyar yo’ is, honey!” cried a ringing, triumphant voice in his ear as he struggled to free himself. “Ah knowed you’d come!”

“Good Gawd!” cried Laney as he broke loose and jumped back. “Black! Black as a camp coffee-pot!”

“Yes, honey, I’se black, but I’se lovin’!” and Miss Livingston advanced upon him with sparkling eyes and an expanse of gleaming ivories.

“What for a game you been giving me?” demanded Laney, retreating to the edge of the platform. “You said you were the daughter of a Southern planter.”

“So I is, so I is,” replied that lady in a conciliatory tone. “Mah father planted rice foah Colonel Heywood down in South Caroliny till he died.”

“But your money, your steady income——”

“Eb’ry Sataday night Ah draws mah little ole five dollars foah cookin’ in a res-ta-rant.”

Miss Livingston’s mood suddenly changed. From a pleading, loving maiden she became an aggressive termagant; from the defensive she assumed the offensive, gripping her pearl-handled parasol in a suggestive manner.

“Say, yo’ Wil’ Man of Borneo, dressed up in them outlannish clothes, what you mean tellin’ me yo’ was an American?”

Laney made a feeble effort to explain that he was of the race of true Americans, but he might as well have tried to be heard above the roaring of a storm in the Belly River caÑon.

“Black, is I?” continued the dusky whirlwind, her voice rising to a shriek. “Maybe you think yo’ look like a snow-bank! What kin’ of a rag-time freak is yo,’ anyhow? If you think yo’ can ’gage mah ’ffections den ’spise me ’cause Ah ain’t no blonde, you’se mistaken in dis chile! Ah don’ stand for no triflin’ from no man. If yo’ scorn me, yo’ ‘What is it’ from de sideshow, Ah’ll have yo’ tuck up foah britch of promise!”

John Laney waited to hear no more. He grabbed his shining valise from the platform and ran down the nearest alley.

The Iowa Granger said editorially in its next issue:

When the coyotes howled that evening on the hill which overlooked the road, they saw a radiant Swede with his arm about a pretty half-breed’s slender waist; and Dashiel fed the pinto cayuse a pint of oats, which was the surest kind of sign that he looked upon the pinto’s owner as somewhat closer than a brother.

Equal to the Occasion

AN old darky preacher down South one Sunday found a poker chip in the collection basket. The minister knew enough of the ways of the wicked world to realize that the little ivory disk represented more money than the average contribution, and he was loath to lose the amount. Rising to his full height in the pulpit, he said:

“Ef de sportin’ gent what done put de pokah chip in de collection plate will be kind ’nuff to tell where hit kin be cashed in, de congregation will ax de Lawd to forgib him de error ob his ways.”

OUR lives are made up of selfishness and self-sacrifice. Both are much the same.