Faro Nell and Her Friends: Wolfville Stories

"It's the day next on the hocks of the installation of the Turner person in business, an' the fooneral director is lookin' out of the front window of his coffin emporium wishin' some gent'd start somethin' with his gun an' mebby bump him off a load for his new hearse, when Enright eemerges from the post office with a iron look on his face. Peets is with him, an' the pa'r is holdin' a pow-wow.

"The rest of us might have taken more notice, only our sombreros is fittin' some tight on account of the interest we evinces the day prior in he'pin' la'nch the Turner person that a-way. As it is, we bats a lackluster eye, an' wonders in a feeble way what's done corr'gated Enright's brow.

"It don't go no further than wonder, however, ontil after a few moments talk with Nell, Enright sends across for the Turner person. As showin' how keenly sens'tive are the female faculties that a-way, Missis Rucker an' Tucson Jennie is canvassin' some infantile mal'dy of little Enright Peets in the front room of the O. K. House, an' same as if they smells the onyoosual in the air, they comes troopin' over to the Red Light to note what happens next.

"'Young man,' says Enright, when the Turner person has been brought in, 'by way of starter, let me inquire, be you preepared to surrender your destinies, of which you're plumb onfitted to have charge, into disgusted albeit kindly hands?'

"The Turner person, some oneasy at seein' Moore, who's carelessly toyin' with a lariat, edgin' 'round his way, allows in tremblin' tones he is.

"'Thar be those,' goes on Enright, 'who with the best intentions in the world, has been explorin' the ins an' outs of your Sni-a-bar troubles, an' while the clouds is measur'ble lifted the fresh light shed on your concerns leaves you in a most imbecile sityooation. Which if I thought that little Enright Peets, not yet in techin' distance of his teens, hadn't got no more sense than you, much as I dotes upon that baby I'd shore vote for his deemise. However, proceedin' with the deal, thar's this to say: Nellie thar, writes to your Peggy sweetheart, while I opens negotiations with old man Parks. I plans to read you them replies, but after advisin' with the Doc, an' collectin' the views of Nell, it's deemed s'fficient to tell you what you're goin' to do, an' then head you fo'th to its accomplishment. Our conj'int findin's, the same bein' consented to by old Parks in writin', an' tearfully deesired by your Peggy sweetheart in what she commoonicates to Nellie, is that you proceed at once to Sni-a-bar, an' get them interrupted nuptials over. After which you'll be free to return yere with your bride, an' take up the hon'rable an' useful c'reer you've marked out. As the preesidin' officer of the Stranglers, my word is that you be ready to start by next stage; which, onless Monte gets so deep in licker that he tips that conveyance over a bluff, should permit you to clasp your Peggy to your bosom an' kiss the tears from her cheeks by the middle of next week.'

"'But,' interjects the Turner person, his voice soundin' like the terrified bleatin' of a sheep, 'can't you-all give me no glimmer of what's wrong that time? I don't hanker overmuch to go back in darkened ignorance, like a lamb to the slaughter. What guarantee have I got that old Parks won't lay for me with that bootcher knife of his'n? It ain't fair to leave me to go knockin' about, in the midst of perils sech as these, like a blind dog in a meat shop.'

"'Your Peggy,' returns Enright, 'encloses a letter to you by the hand of Nellie yere, which may or may not set fo'th what insults you perp'trates upon her fam'ly. Also, said missive furnishes the only chance at this end of the trail of you findin' out the len'th an' breadth of your ignorant iniquities. For myse'f, the thought of what you-all does that time is so infooriatin' I must refuse to go over it in words. Only, if in his first reesentments old Parks had burned you at the stake, I would not have condemned him. As to your safety pers'nal, you can regyard it as asshored. Your Peggy will protect you, an' your footure parent-in-law himse'f acquits you of everything except bein' an eediot. It's, however, got down to whether he preefers to have a fool in his fam'ly or see his darter wretched for life, an' he's done nerved himse'f to take the fool.'

"'Thar's your sweetheart's letter,' an' Nell puts an envelope which smells of voylets into the Turner person's hands.

"That ondertaker reads it; an' after bein' confoosed by shame for a moment, he begins to cheer up.

"'Folks,' he says, kissin' his Peggy's letter an' stowin' it away in his coat, 'I trusts a gen'rous public will permit me, after thankin' them whose kindness has smoothed out the kinks in my affairs, to close the incident with onlimited drinks for the camp.' That's all he says; an' neither can we dig anything further out of Enright or Nell.

"We sees the Turner person aboard the stage, an' wishes him all kinds of luck. As Monte straightens out the reins over his six hosses an' cleans the lash of his whip through his fingers, Peets vouchsafes a partin' word.

"'Neither I nor Sam,' says Peets, 'wants you to go away thinkin' that you an' your bride ain't goin' to be as welcome as roses when you an' she comes ramblin' in as one on your return.'

"'That's whatever,' coincides Nell.

"'Also,' breaks in Enright, 'should old Parks go to stampin' the sod or shakin' his horns, you-all are to put up with them deemonstrations an' not make no aggrevatin' reemarks. No one knows better than you by now, how much cause you gives that proud old gent to feel harrowed.'

"Of course all of us is preyed on by anxiety to know whatever awful thing it is the Turner person does. In the end it's Missis Rucker who smokes Enright out.

"'Sam Enright,' says this yere intrepid lady, her manner plenty darklin', 'you mustn't forget that whenever the impulse moves me I can shet down utter on your grub. Likewise, as a lady, I not only knows my p'sition, but keenly feels my rights. Which I don't aim to coerce you, but onless you comes through with the trooth about this yere Turner person's felonies, some drastic steps is on their way.'

"'You will see, Missis Rucker,' says Enright, who's to be excoosed for turnin' a bit white, 'that no present reason exists for threatenin' me when I asshores you that as far back as last evenin' I fully decides to lay bar' everything. I do this, onderstand, not through fear; but lest some folks go surmisin' round to the inj'ry of the innocent. As I recollects back, too, I can see how the Turner person slumps into that mistake, him first talkin' dog to that canine party in Battle Row, an' then askin' whar does he go for the weddin' license.'

"'Sam Enright,' interrupts Missis Rucker, whose flashin' eyes shows she's growin' hysterical, 'don't harass me with no p'intless speeches. You say flat what it is he does, or take the consequences.'

"'Why, my dear Missis Rucker,' an' Enright makes haste with his reply, 'the thing is easily grasped. The paper he gives the preacher sharp is a dog license. Which that Turner person is seekin' to wed the belle of Sni-a-bar on a permit to keep a dog! The canine party he meets in Battle Row misonderstands a sityooation.'

"'All the same,' observes Texas to Boggs, as the two meets that evenin' in the Noo York store, 'thar's one feachure to a dog license, not perceivable in a marriage license, which is worth gold an' precious stones. Said docyooment runs out in a year.'"

IX

RED MIKE

"Mebby you-all recalls about that Polish artist person?" suggested the old cattleman, tentatively; "him I speaks of former?" My gray old campañero was measuring out what he called his "forty drops," and, since this ceremony necessitated keeping one eye on his glass, while he endeavored to keep the other eye on me, the contradictory effort resulted in a wavering and uncertain expression, not at all in harmony with his usual positive air. By way of helping conversation, I confessed to a clear remembrance of the "Polish artist person," and wound up by urging him to give the particulars concerning that interesting exile.

"Well," he cautiously returned, "thar ain't nothin' so mighty thrillin' in his Wolfville c'reer. You see he ain't, for the most, no pop'lar figure–him bein' a furriner, that a-way, an' a artist, an' sufferin' besides from conceit in so acoote a form as to make it no exaggeration to say he's locoed. On account of these yere divers an' sundry handicaps, he don't achieve no social success, an' while he's with us, you'd hardly call him of us.

"Not that I objects to this deescendant of Warsaw's last champion, personal. Which I'm a heap like Enright in sech reespects, an' shore tol'rant. I finds out long ago that the reason we-all goes fault-findin' about people, mostly is because we don't onderstand concernin' them folk's surroundin's. Half the things we arches our necks over, an' for which mebby we feels like killin' 'em a whole lot, they can't he'p none. If we only savvys what they're reely up ag'inst, it's four for one we pities 'em instead.

"It's like one time 'way back yonder, when me an' Steve Stevenson has a sudden an' abrupt diffukulty with a buffalo bull. We're camped out on the edge of the Rockies near the Spanish Peaks, an' me an' Steve, in the course of a little passear we're takin', is jest roundin' a bunch of plum bushes when, as onexpected as a gun play in a Bible class, that devil's son an' heir of a bull–who's been hid by the bushes–ups an charges. Which you should have seen me an' Steve scatter! We certainly do onbuckle in some hasty moves! He's bigger 'n a baggage wagon, an' as we leaves our guns ten rods away in camp, thar's nothin' for it but to dig out.

"Nigh whar I'm at is a measley pinon tree, an' the way I swarms aloft among that vegetable's boughs an' branches comes mighty clost to bein' a lesson to mountain lions. Steve, who's the onluckiest sport west of the Missouri, an' famed as sech, ain't got no tree. The best he can do is go divin' into a hole he sees in some rocks, same as if he's a jack-rabbit with a coyote in hot pursoote.

"Me an' Steve both bein' safe, an' reegyardin' that bull as baffled, I draws a breath of relief. That is, to be ackerate, I starts to draw it; but before I so much as gets it started, yere that inordinate Steve comes b'ilin' out of his hole ag'in like he ain't plumb satisfied about that bull. The bull's done give him up, too, an' switchin' his tail some thoughtful has started to go away, when, as I tells you, that fool Steve comes surgin' out upon his reetreatin' hocks.

"Nacherally, what could any se'f-respectin' bull do but wheel an' chase Steve back? It's no use, though; Steve won't have it. No sooner does the bull get him hived that a-way, an' make ready to reetire to private life ag'in, than, bing! yere Steve comes bulgin' like a cork out of a bottle. An' so it continyoos, a reg'lar see-saw between Steve an' the bull. Steve'll go into his cave of refooge, prairie-dog fashion, a foot ahead of the bull's horns, only to be a foot behind the bull's tail as that painstakin' anamile is arrangin' to deepart.

"Which sech wretched strategy arouses my contempt.

"'You dad-binged Siwash,' I yells down at Steve, 'whyever don't you-all stay in that hole, ontil the bull forgets whar you're at?'

"'Go on!' Steve shouts back, as in he dives, head-first, for mebby it's the twentieth time; 'it's as simple as suckin' aiggs, ain't it, for you up in your tree? You-all don't know nothin' about this hole; thar's a b'ar in this hole!'

"Which I allers remembers about that dilemmy of Steve's. An' now, when I beholds a gent makin' some rannikaboo break, an' everybody's scoffin' at him an' deenouncin' him for a loonatic or worse, I reeflects that mighty likely if we-all was to go examine the hole he's in, we'd find it plumb full of b'ar.

"Returnin' to the orig'nal proposition, the same bein' that Polack, let me begin by sayin' that whenever it comes to any utterances of his'n, I'm nacherally onable to quote him exact. What with him rollin' his 'Rs' ontil they sounds like one of them snare drums, an' the jiggerty-jerkety fashion wharin he chops up his English, a gent might as soon try to quote a planin' mill exact.

"That I'm able to give you-all his troo name is doo wholly to him passin' round his kyard a heap profoose, when he first comes ramblin' in, said cognomen as printed bein' 'Orloff Ivan Mitzkowanski, Artist and Painter of Portraits.' We perooses this yere fulm'nation two or three times, an' Peets even reads it out loud; but since the tongue of no ordinary gent is capable of ropin' an' throwin' it, to say nothin' of tyin' it down, we cuts the gordian knot in the usual way by re-christenin' him pro bono publico as Red Mike, which places him within the verbal reach of all.

"'Yes,' he says, as he ladles out them kyards, an' all with the manner of a prince conferrin' favors–'yes, I'm a artist come to you, seekin' subjects an' color. As you probably observes by my name, I'm a gallant Pole, one whose noble ancestors shrieks when Kosciusko fell.'

"Him bein' a stranger that a-way, an' no one, onless it's Peets, ever havin' heard about Poland, or Kosciusko, or whoever does that shriekin' the time when Kosciusko finds himse'f bumped off, we lets Mike get by with this yere bluff. Besides, his name of itse'f sort o' holds us. That anyone, an' specially any furriner, could come as far as he has, flauntin' a name like that in the sensitive face of mankind, an' yet live to tell the tale, is shore plenty preepar'tory to believin' anything.

"When we lets it go that owin' to local conditions we'll be obleeged to call him 'Red Mike,' he's agree'ble.

"'As you will, my friends,' he cries, bulgin' out his breast an' thumpin' it. 'What care I, who am destined for immortality, that barbarians should hail me as Red Mike? It is enough that I am not destroyed, enough that I still move an' have my bein'!'

"'Mike,' interjecks Tutt, bristlin' a little, 'don't cut loose in no offensive flights. It's a heap onadvisable when addressin' us to overwork that word "barbarian." As you says yourself, you're lucky to be alive; which, bein' conceded, it'd be plenty proodent on your part not to go doin' nothin' to change your luck.'

"'Steady thar, Dave,' says Enright, 'don't go exhibitin' your teeth to a pore benighted furriner, an' him not onto our curves.'

"'Him bein' a furriner,' retorts Tutt, 'is but a added argyooment in favor of him takin' heed. Speakin' for myse'f, I in partic'lar don't want no furriner to step on my tail an' stand thar, same as if my feelin's ain't goin' to count.'

"'Be composed, my friend,' says Mike, tryin' to follow Enright out an' squar' himse'f with Tutt–'be composed. I reetract the "barbarians" an' suggest a drink.'

"'That's all right, Mike,' returns Tutt, who's easy mollified; 'still I onreservedly says ag'in that in Arizona thar's nothin' in becomin' too difoose. All that this time lets you out, Mike, is that havin' jest had our feed we're happ'ly lethargic. Which if you'd let fly that crack about barbarians, an' us not fed none, some gent not otherwise employed 'd have seized upon you as a mop-rag wharwith to wipe up the floor.'

"Thar's allers a dispoote as to whether or no Mike reely commits sooicide that time. Tutt an' Texas holds to the last that his light gettin' blowed out like it does is accidental. Peets, however, insists it's a shore-enough sooicide. Of course, Boggs goes with Peets. Whatever's the question at bay, Boggs never fails to string his play with the Doc's; it's Boggs's system. All you has to do to get a rise out o' Boggs is get some opinion out o' Peets. Once the Doc declar's himse'f, Boggs is right thar to back said declaration for his last dollar every time.

"As sustainin' his claim of sooicide, Peets p'ints out that thar's no gent, not a howlin' eediot complete, but knows s'fficient of giant powder to be dead on to how it's cap'ble of bein' fired by friction.

"'Why,' he says, eloocidatin' his p'sition, 'even darkened savages is posted as to that. I once sees a South Sea Islander, in a moose-yum East, who sets a bunch of shavin's in a blaze by rubbin' together two sticks. An' this yere Mike is a eddycated sharp, eddicated at a Dutch outfit called Heidelberg. Do you-all reckon a gradyooate of sech a sem'nary ever walks out on a cold collar, him not wise, an' performs in the numbskull fashions as this yere Mike?'

"'That's whatever!' chimes in Boggs.

"As I tells you, any emphatic idee laid down by Peets instantly sets Boggs to strikin' same as one of them cuckoo clocks.

"Enright?

"The old silver tip stands nootral, not sidin' with either Peets an' Boggs or Tutt an' Texas.

"'Which this yere Mike bein' shore dead,' says Enright, 'strikes me as s'fficient. I plants my moccasins on that, an' don't go pirootin' an' projectin' about for no s'lootions which may or may not leave me out on a limb.'

"You recalls how it's Monte who, while gettin' drunk with him over to the Oriental S'loon in Tucson, deloodes Mike into p'intin' our way. Also, what Enright says to that deboshed stage driver for so doin'. Enright's shore fervent on that occasion, an' the language he uses would have killed two acres of grass. But that don't he'p none. After the dust Enright paws up has settled, thar's Mike still, all quiled up in the Wolfville lap.

"Thar's a worse feachure, the same bein' Mike's wife. She's as young, an' mighty nigh as lovely, too, as Nell; only she's blind, this yere Mike's girl wife is, blind as any midnight mole. Besides her, an' a armful of paint breshes an' pictures, about all Mike's got in the way of plunder is a ten-dollar bill. If it's only Mike, we-all might have thickened our hides a heap, an' let him go jumpin' sideways for his daily grub, same as other folks. But girls must be fed, speshully blind ones.

"Which this egreegious Mike, who calls her his 'little Joolie,' allows her bein' blind that a-way is why he marries her.

"'It inshores her innocence,' he says; 'because it inshores her ignorance of the world.'

"'Likewise,' remarks Peets, as we stands discussin' this yere reasonin' of Mike's in the Red Light, 'it inshores her ignorance of them onmitigated pictures he paints. Which if ever she was just to get one good look at 'em, he couldn't hold her with a Spanish bit. But you-all knows how it is, Sam?'–Yere Peets clinks his glass, an' all mighty sagacious, ag'inst Enright's–'The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb. On the whole, I ain't none convinced that her bein' blind, that a-way, ain't for the best.'

"To look at this little Joolie, you-all'd never know she can't see none. Her eyes is big an' soft an' deep, an nothin' queer about 'em except they has a half-blurred, baby look. Peets allows it's the nerve bein' dead which does it. But blind or not, little Joolie shore dotes on that Red Mike husband of hers, as though he's made of love an' gold. Which he's her heaven!

"While it's evident, after a ca'm an' onbiased consideration of his works, that from standp'ints of art this yere Mike's about sign-painter size, little Joolie regyards him as the top-sawyer genius of this or any other age.

"'He'll revolutionize the world of art,' she declar's to Nell, who's mighty constant about goin' to see her; 'Ivan'–she pronounces it 'Vahn'–'is ondoubted destined to become the founder of a noo school.'

"'An' her face,' goes on Nellie, as she tells us about it over to the O. K. Restauraw one evenin', after Mike an' his little Joolie wife's done pulled their freight for the night–'an' her face glows with the faith of a angel! So if any of you-all boys finds occasion to speak of this yere Mike in her presence, you be shore an' sw'ar that, as an artist, he's got nacher backed plumb off the lay-out.'

"'The wretch who fails,' adds Missis Rucker, plenty fierce, 'don't wrastle his hash with me no more! You can gamble that marplot has tackled his final plateful of slapjacks at the O. K. House, an' this yere's notice to that effect.'

"It's a cinch, of course, that none of us is that obtoose as to go sayin' anything to pain this yere blind little Joolie; at the same time no one regyards it as feas'ble to resent them threats of Missis Rucker! She's a mighty sperited matron, Missis Rucker is, sperited to the verge of bein' vindictive, an' rubbin' her fur the wrong way is the same as rubbin' a bobcat's fur the wrong way. As a exercise thar's nothin' in it. Besides, we're plumb used to it, owin' to her threatenin' us about one thing or another constant. Menaces, that a-way, is Missis Rucker's style.

"Mike an' his Joolie wife don't live at the O. K. House, but only gets their chuck thar. He allows that to do jestice to his art he's got to have what he calls a 'no'th light,' an' so he goes meanderin' out on the no'th side of town, an' jumps a empty shack.

"Driv by a lack of money, mighty likely, Mike ain't in camp a week before he makes it plenty plain that, onless he's headed off or killed, he's goin' to paint Enright a whole lot. As a preelim'nary he loores a passel of us over to his wickeyup to show us samples.

"'That's my chef dever,' he says, bringin' for'ard a smudgy lookin' canvas, plastered all over with reds an' browns.

"We-all takes a slant at it, maintainin' ourselves meanwhile as grave as a passel of owls. An' at that the most hawk-eyed in the outfit can't make it look like nothin'. We-all hangs back in the straps, an' waits for Peets to take the lead. For thar is the pretty little blind Joolie wife, all y'ears an' lovin' int'rest, an' after what Nell an' Missis Rucker has done said the gent who lacerates her feelin's is lost. In sech a pinch Peets is our guidin' light.

"'Massive!' says Peets, after a pause.

"'Which she's shore a heap massive!' we murmurs, followin' Peets' smoke.

"'An' sech atmosphere!' Peets goes on.

"'Atmosphere to give away!' we echoes.

"At these yere encomiyums the pore pleased face of little Joolie is beamin' like the sun. As for Mike, he assoomes a easy attitoode, same as though compliments means nothin' to him.

"'What's the subject?' Peets asks.

"'That, my friend, is the Linden in October,' returns Mike, as though he's showin' us a picture of heaven's front gate. 'Yes, the Linden in October.'

"'Which if this yere Pole,' whispers Texas to Cherokee, 'is able to make anything out of that smear, he can shore see more things without the aid of licker than any sport that ever spreads his blankets in Cochise County.'

"Texas is a heap careful not to let either Mike or the little Joolie girl ketch on to what he says.

"Also, it's worth recallin' that Mike an' the little Joolie is the only wedded pa'r, of which the Southwest preeserved a record, that don't bring bilious recollections to Texas of his former Laredo wife.

"'Not but what thar's a wrong thar, Doc,' he insists, the time Peets mentions it; 'not but what this yere Red Mike-Joolie sityooation harbors a wrong. Only it's onavailable to 'llustrate the illyoosage I suffers at the hands of my Laredo wife.'

"After the Linden Mike totes out mebby it's a dozen other smeary squar's of canvas. We goes over 'em one by one, cockin' our eyes an' turnin' our heads first one way an' then another, like a bloo jay peerin' into a knothole. When Peets lets drive something about 'sky effects,' an' 'fore-grounds,' an' 'middle-distance,' we stacks in all sim'lar. Thar's nothin' to it; Mike an' the little Joolie girl puts in a mighty pleasant hour.

"Mike, feelin' hospit'ble, an' replyin' to a thirsty look which Jack Moore sort o' sheds about the room, reegrets he ain't got no whiskey.

"'My little Joolie objectin',' he explains.

"'Oh, well,' speaks up Peets, who's plumb eager to bring them art studies to a wind-up, 'when thar's famine in Canaan thar's corn in Egypt. S'ppose we-all goes romancin' over to the Red Light an' licker up. Thar's nothin' like nosepaint, took internal, for bringin' out a picture's convincin' p'ints.'

"'Right you be, Doc,' says Moore. 'It's only last week, when I myse'f cuts the trail of Monte, who, as the froote of merely the seventh drink, is sheddin' scaldin' tears over a three-sheet poster stuck onto the corral gate. This yere stampede in color deepicts the death of "Little Eva," as preesented in the Uncle Tom show ragin' over to the Bird Cage Op'ry House. Monte allows it's one of the most movin' things he's ever met up with, an' protests between sobs ag'inst takin' out the stage that day for its reg'lar trip. "Which it's a hour for mournin'," he groans; an' he's shore shocked when the company insists. As he throws free the brake he shakes the tears from his eyes, an' says, "These yere corp'rations ain't got no heart!"'