Yellowstone Nights

"Howdy, fellows!" said I.

"Howdy!" said the sheriff, and closed his face.

"Odd place to meet!" gushed the Jackleg, as smily as ever. "Which way?"

"We allowed to go right on," I said.

"This is our route," said Jackleg, and moseys up the opposite draw, clucking to his bronk, like an old woman.

"What do you make of his being here?" asked Lungy.

"Hunting Swedes," I said. "And with a case against Pete for robbery and assault. I hope we see him first!"

We went on, Lungy ignorantly cheerful, I lost-like to know what was what, and feeling around with my mind's finger for the trigger of the situation. Suddenly I whoaed up, shifted around on my hip, and looked back.

"Lost anything, Bill?" asked Lungy.

"Temporarily mislaid my brains," said I. "We're going back and pick up the scent of the Jackleg."

Lungy looked up inquiringly, as we doubled back on our tracks.

"When you kick a covey of men out of this sagebrush," I explained, "they naturally ask about anything they're after. They inquire if you know a Cock-Robin married to a Jenny-Wren, or an Owl to a Pussycat, or whatever marital misdeal they're trailing. They don't mog on like it was Kansas City or Denver."

"Both parties kept still," replied Lungy. "What's the answer, Bill?"

"Both got the same guilty secret," said I, "and they've got it the worst. They know where Pete is. So will we if we follow their spoor."

We pelted on right brisk after them. The draw got to be a cañon, with grassy, sheep-nibbled bottom, and we knew we were close to somewhere. At last, rolling to us around a bend, came a tide of remarks, rising and swelling to the point of rough-house and riot.

"The widow!" said I. "She knows me. You go in, Lungy, and put up a stall to keep 'em from seeing Pete alone first!"

I crept up close. The widow was calling the Jackleg everything that a perfect lady as she was, you know, could lay her tongue to, and he trying to blast a crack in the oratory to slip a word into.

"I dislike," said Lungy, "to disturb privacy; but we want your man to show us the way."

"Who the devil are you?" said the sheriff.

"My name – " began Lungy.

"Whativer it is, sorr," said the widow, "it's a betther name nor his you shpake to – the black far-down, afther taking me man and lavin' me shtarve wid me babbies he robbed iv what the coort give! But as long as I've a tongue in me hid to hould, ye'll not know where he's hid!"

And just then down behind me comes Pete on a fair-sized cayuse branded with a double X.

"Dat bane you, Bill?" said he casual-like. "You most skar me!"

I flagged him back a piece and told him the Jackleg was there. He ran, and I had to rope him.

"You're nervous, Pete," said I, helping him up. "What's the matter?"

"Dis blame getaway biz," he said, "bane purty tough on fallar. Ay listen an' yump all tem nights!"

"How about going back for the mine?" I asked.

"Dat bane gude yoke!" he grinned. "Ay got gude flock an' planty range hare, an' Ay stay, Ay tank. Yu kill lawyer fallar, Bill, an' take half whole shooting-match!"

"Got that certificate?" I asked.

It was all worn raw at the folds, but he had it. The Jackleg had an assignment all ready on the back, and I wrote Addison's name in, and made Pete sign it.

"Now," said I. "We'll take care of Mr. Jackleg, and you'll get something for this, but I don't know what. Don't ever come belly-aching around saying we've bunked you after Lungy has put up his good money and copped the mine. These men want this paper, not you. Probably they've got no warrant. Brace up and stand pat!"

So we walked around bold as brass. The widow was dangling a Skandy-looking kid over her shoulder by one foot, and analyzing the parentage of Jackleg. Lungy was grinning, but the sheriff's face was shut down.

"Ah, Mr. Peterson!" said the lawyer. "And our old and dear friend William Snoke, too! I thought I recognized you this morning! And now, please excuse our old and dear friend Mr. Peterson for a moment's consultation."

"Dis bane gude pless," said Pete. "Crack ahead!"

"This is a private matter, gentlemen," said Jackleg.

"Shall we withdraw?" asks Lungy.

"No!" yells Pete. "You stay – be vitness!"

"I wish to remind you, dear Mr. Peterson," said he as we sort of settled in our places, "that your criminal assault and robbery of me has subjected you to a long term in prison. And I suffered great damage by interruption of business, and bodily and mental anguish from the wounds, contusions and lesions inflicted, and especially from the compound fracture of the inferior maxillary bone – "

"Dat bane lie!" said Pete. "Ay yust broke your yaw!"

"He admits the corpus delicti!" yelled the lawyer. "Gentlemen, bear witness!"

"I didn't hear any such thing," said Lungy.

"Neither did I," I said.

"I figure my damages," he went on, "at twelve thousand dollars."

Pete picked a thorn out of his finger.

"Now, Mr. Peterson," went on the lawyer, "I don't suppose you have the cash. But when I have stood up and fought for a man for pure friendship and a mere contingent fee, I learn to love him. I would fain save you from prison, if you would so act as to enable me to acquit you of felonious intent. A prison is a fearful place, Mr. Peterson!"

"Ay tank," said Pete, "Ay brace up an' stand pat!"

"If you would do anything," pleaded the Jackleg, "to show good intention, turn over to me any papers you may have, no matter how worthless – notes, or – or certificates!"

Pete pulled out his wallet. Lungy turned pale.

"Take dis," said Pete. "Dis bane order fer six dollar Yohn Yohnson's wages. Ay bane gude fallar!"

"Thanks!" said the Jackleg, pious-like. "And is that long document the certificate of sale in Peterson vs. Golden Fountain, etc.?"

"Dat bane marryin' papers," said Pete. "Dat spine paper bane N. G. Mae spine all tem O. K. Dat leg-yerkin' bane yust effidence. Ay take spine paper to start camp-fire!"

It was as good as a play. Lungy turned pale and trembled. The lawyer went up in the air and told the sheriff to arrest Pete, and appealed to the widow to give up the certificate, and she got sore at Pete, and called him a Norwegian fool for burning it, and cuffed the bigger kid, which was more Irish-looking. Pete dug his toe into the ground and looked ashamed and mumbled something about it not being his spine. The sheriff told Pete to come along, and I asked him to show his warrant. He made a bluff at looking in his clothes for it, and rode away with his countenance tight-closed.

Lungy and I rode off the other way.

That night Lungy smiled weakly as I started the fire with paper.

"Bill," said he, "I shall never burn paper without thinking how near I came to paradise and dropped plump – "

"Oh, I forgot," said I. "Here's that certificate."

Lungy took it, looked it over, read the assignment, and broke down and cried.

"How did it come out?" asked the Bride.

"Oh," said the Hired Man, "Lungy waited till the last minute, flashed the paper and the money, and swiped the mine. The company wanted to give a check and redeem, but the clerk stood out for currency, and it was too late to get it. He got the mine, and Lucy, and is the big Mr. Addison, now. No, me for where you can carry off things that are too big for the grand larceny statutes. This business of farming is too much like chicken-feed for me!"

CHAPTER VIII

"I came on this trip," said Colonel Baggs, "to rest my vocal organs, and not to talk. In this ambition I have been greatly aided by the willingness of Professor Boggs to assume the conversational burden in our seat. However, now that my name has been drawn from the hat, I shall have the pleasure, and honor, lady and gentlemen, to entertain you for a very few minutes – after which, thanking you for your very kind attention and liberal patronage, the hay – the hay, my friends, for me!"

At the Lake Hotel, to which they had come by boat, they found their tents pitched and their dinner awaiting them – for which they were indebted to the efficiency of Aconite and the Hired Man, who had come overland; and the latter of whom assured them that they had missed the greatest curiosity of the Park in failing to see the Natural Bridge.

"On your way, Bill!" said the Groom. "You didn't see the petrified sea serpent swimming off Gull Point, did you?"

"Dumb it all, no!" exclaimed Bill. "I never am around when anything good is pulled off!"

THE LAW AND AMELIA WHINNERY

THE TALE OF COLONEL BAGGS OF OMAHA

I was much interested (said the Colonel, beginning his story), in the tale told by my learned brother, Mr. Snoke. The story of the way Mr. Lungy Addison committed grand larceny in getting away with the Mortal Cinch mine is one that, falling from the mouth, as it does, of a person not learned in the law and its beauties, must be true. Nobody but a lawyer could have invented it – and I assure you that lawyers are too busy with the strange phases of truth to monkey – if I may use a term not yet laundered by the philologists – with fiction. The law is the perfection of human wisdom. Our courts are the God-ordained instruments by which these perfections are made manifest to the eyes of mere human beings. To be sure the courts are composed of men who were but even now lawyers – but that's neither here, there, nor yonder – when the anointment of their judicial consecration runs down their beard, as did the oil down that of Aaron, human imperfections are at end with them, and it's all off with frailty. And this brings me to the brief story which is my contribution to the Yellowstone Nights' Entertainment. I sing, my beloved, the saga of The Law and Amelia Whinnery.

I just got a decision over in Nebraska in the case of Whinnery vs. The C. & S. W. It shows that Providence is still looking out for the righteous man and his seed. Never heard of Whinnery vs. the Railway Company? Well, it may put you wise to a legal principle or two, and I'll tell you about it. I was ag'in' the corporations over there, as associate counsel for the plaintiff. Bob Fink, that studied in my office, was the fellow the case belonged to, and he being a little afraid of Absalom Scales, the railroad's local attorney, sent over a Macedonian wail to me, and said we'd cut up a fifty per cent, contingent fee if we won. I went.

Amelia Whinnery was the plaintiff. She was a school-teacher who had got hold of the physical culture graft, and was teaching it to teachers' institutes, making forty dollars a minute the year around.

"How much?" asked the Hired Man.

"I'm telling you what the record showed as I remember it," said the Colonel. "We proved that she was doing right well financially when the railroad put her out of business by failing to ring a bell or toot a whistle at the crossing coming into Tovala, and catching Bill Williams' bus asleep at the switch. Miss Whinnery was in the bus. When it was all over, she was in pretty fair shape – "

"Naturally," interpolated the Artist.

"Excepting that her nerves had got some kind of a shock and she was robbed permanently of the power of speech."

"How terrible!" exclaimed the Bride.

On the trial she sat in the court-room in a close-fitting dress, wearing a picture hat, and would give a dumb sort of gurgle when Scales would pitch into her case, as if to protest at being so cruelly assaulted while defenseless. It was pathetic.

Bob Fink shed tears, while he pictured to the jury in his opening, the agony of this beautiful girl set off from her kind for life, as the preponderance, the clear preponderance of the evidence showed she would be, by dumbness – "an affliction, gentlemen of the jury, which seals her lips forever as to the real facts, and stops the reply she could otherwise make to the dastardly attack of my honorable and learned friend, the attorney for this public-service corporation, which has been clothed with the power to take away your land, gentlemen of the jury, or mine, whether we want to sell it or not, and to rob us of our produce by its extortionate freight rates, and to run its trains into and through our cities, and over our busses, and to maim and injure our ladies, and bring them before juries of their peers, who, unless I mistake, will administer a stinging rebuke to this corporation without a soul to save or a body to kick, in the only way in which it can be made to feel a rebuke – in damages, out of that surplus of tainted dollars which its evil and illegal practices have wrung from the hard hands of toil as represented by the farmers and laborers who so largely compose this highly-intelligent jury."

"Good spiel," commented the Groom.

Bob was good until the other side had the reporter begin to take his speech down, so as to show appeals to passion and prejudice – and then he hugged the record close. The plaintiff sobbed convulsively. Bob stopped and swallowed, knowing that the reporter couldn't get the sobs and swallows into the record. The jurors blew their noses and glared at Scales and the claim-agent. I went over to the plaintiff and gave her a drink of water, and would have liked to take her in my arms and comfort her, but didn't.

"Too bad!" remarked the Poet.

Well, the jury found for us in about three hours for the full amount, ten thousand dollars and costs. They would have agreed earlier, only they waited so the state would have to pay for their suppers. A judgment was rendered on the verdict, and the railroad appealed. All this time Bob was getting more and more tender toward the plaintiff. I didn't think much about it until cards came for their wedding. I sent Bob an assignment of my share in the verdict for a wedding present – if we ever got it. Amelia promised to love, honor and cherish by nodding her head, and walked away from the altar with her most graceful physical culture gait, while the boys outside with their shivaree instruments ready for the evening, sang in unison, "Here comes the bride! Get on to her stride!" It was a recherché affair – but excessively quiet nuptials on the bride's side.

That evening Absalom Scales got in the finest piece of work that was ever pulled off in any lawsuit in Nebraska. The bridal party went away over the C. & S. W.Omaha Limited, and Amelia and Bob were there looking as fine as fiddles – Amelia a picture, they said, in her going-away gown. Scales had fixed up for a crowd of hoodlums to shivaree them as they went.

"Mighty mean trick, I should say," said the Hired Man, "for any one but a corporation lawyer."

"Wait, Brother Snoke," protested the Colonel, "until you are so far advised in the premises as to be able to judge whether the end didn't justify the means."

In addition to the horse-fiddles and bells and horns, Absalom had arranged some private theatricals. He had plugged up a deal by which Bill Williams, the bus man – who'd sold out and was going to Oregon anyway – came bursting into the waiting-room while they were waiting for the train – which was held at the water-tank by Scales' procurement and covin – and presented a bill for the damages to his bus by the accident which had hurt Amelia's oratorical powers. You see, he'd never been settled with, being clearly negligent. They tried to get off in Amelia's case on the doctrine of imputed negligence, but it wouldn't stick.

Well, Bill comes in with his claim against Amelia and Bob for two or three hundred dollars for his bus. They disdainfully gave him the ha-ha.

"Then," says Bill Williams, "I will tell all, woman!"

Amelia flushed, and looked inquiringly at Bob. Bob walked up to Bill and hissed: "What do you mean, you hound, by insulting my wife in this way!"

"She knows what I mean," yelled Bill, turning on Amelia. "Ask your wife what she an' I was talkin' about when we was a-crossing the track that time. Ask her if she didn't say to me that I was the perfec'ly perportioned physical man, an' whether I didn't think that men an' women of sech perportions should mate; an' if she didn't make goo-goo eyes at me, ontil I stuck back my head to kiss her, an' whether she wasn't a-kissin' me when that freight come a pirootin' down an' run over her talkin' apparatus! Ask her if she didn't say she could die a-kissin' me, an' if she didn't come danged near doin' it!"

"How perfectly horrid!" gasped the Bride.

Well, Bob Fink was, from all accounts, perfectly flabbergasted. There stood Bill Williams in his old dogskin coat and a cap that reeked of the stables, and there stood the fair plaintiff, turning redder and redder and panting louder and louder as the enormity of the thing grew upon her. And then she turned loose.

Amelia Whinnery Fink, defendant in error, and permanently dumb, turned loose.

She began doubling up her fists and stamping her feet, and finally she burst forth into oratory of the most impassioned character.

"Robert Fink!" she said, as quoted in the motion for a reopening of the case that Scales filed – "Robert Fink, will you stand by like a coward and see me insulted? That miserable tramp – a perfect – If you don't kill him, I will. I kiss him? I ask him such a thing? Bob Fink, do you expect me to go with you and leave such an insult unavenged? No, no, no, no – "

"I don't blame her!" interjected the Bride.

I guess she'd have gone on stringing negatives together as long as the depot would have held 'em, if Bob hadn't noticed Ike Witherspoon, the shorthand reporter, diligently taking down her speech and the names of those present. Then he twigged, and, hastily knocking Bill down, he boarded the train with Amelia. He wired me from Fremont that it was all off with the judgment, as they'd tormented Mrs. Fink into making a public speech. I answered, collect, bidding him be as happy as he could in view of the new-found liberty of speech and of the press, and I'd look after the judgment and the appeal.

"Well," said the Groom, "of course you got licked in the Supreme Court. It was clear proof that she'd been shamming."

"You're about as near right on that as might be expected of a layman," retorted the Colonel. "Just about. The law is the perfection of human reason. The jury had found that Amelia Whinnery couldn't speak, and never would be able to. A jury had rendered a verdict to that effect, and judgment for ten thousand dollars had been entered upon it. I merely pointed out to the Supreme Court that they could consider errors in the record only, and that it was the grossest sort of pettifogging and ignorance of the law for Absalom Scales to come in and introduce such an impertinence as evidence – after the evidence was closed – that the fair plaintiff had been shamming and was, in fact, a very free-spoken lady. The bench saw the overpowering logic of this, and read my authorities, and Bob and Amelia will henceforth live in the best house in their town, built out of the C. & S .W. surplus – and Amelia talking sixteen hours a day. It's locally regarded as a good joke on the railroad."

"But was it honest?" queried the Bride.

"Honest, me lady!" repeated the Colonel, a la Othello. "My dear young lady, the courts are not to be criticized – ever remember that!"

"That makes me think," said the Hired Man, "of the darndest thing – "

"In that case," said the Poet, "your name will be considered drawn for the next number. Save this darndest thing for its own occasion – which will be at our next camp. Oneiros beckons, and I go."

"In that case," said Aconite, "I'd go, you bet!"

CHAPTER IX

Coming in from the right as they took the open trail again, the Cody Road beckoned them eastward, as a side road always beckons to the true wanderer.

"What does it run to?" asked the Groom.

"Wyoming," responded Aconite. "It's nothing but scenery and curiosities."

"Let's follow it a little way," suggested the Bride, "and see how we like it"

Three miles or so on the way, the surrey halted at a beautiful little lake, which lay like a fragment broken off Yellowstone Lake, the shore of which lay only a stone's throw to the right. They walked over to the big lake to bid it farewell. A score of miles to the south lay Frank Island, and still farther away, shut off by the fringe of rain from a thunder shower, the South Arm seemed to run in behind Chicken Ridge and take to the woods. To the southwest stood Mount Sheridan, and peeping over his shoulder the towering Tetons solemnly refused even to glimmer a good-by.

"For all that," said the Bride, "au revoir! We'll come back one of these days, won't we, Billy?"

"Sure!" said Billy. "I'm coming up to put in a power plant in the Grand Cañon, one of these days. This scenery lacks the refining touch of the spillway and the penstock!"

Fifteen minutes' driving brought them to the second halt, a big basin of water, from which steam issued in a myriad of vents. Aconite suggested that they stroll down to the beach and take a look at the water. They found it in a slow turmoil, the mud rising from the bottom in little fountains of turbidity, the whole effect being that which might be expected if some mud-eating giant were watching his evening porridge, expecting it momentarily to boil.

"I don't care much for this," said the Bride.

"I'm not crazy about it myself," assented the Artist.

"What's the next marvel?" asked the Colonel.

"Wedded trees," said Aconite.

"Getting sated with 'em," said the Poet.

"Apollinaris Springs, Sylvan Lake, fine views of Yellowstone Lake and the mountains, bully rocks and things clear to Cody."

"And on the other hand," said the Professor, "what are the features on the regular road from which we have diverged?"

"Everything you come to see," responded Aconite. "Mud Volcano, with a clear spring in the grotto right by it; Mud Geyser, off watch for a year or more; Trout Creek, doubled around into the N.P. trade-mark; Sulphur Mountain – we can camp right near there, and see it in the morning, when we ought to see it – and on beyond, the Grand Cañon and everything. Besides – unless we go that-a-way, we'll never git back unless we come by the Burlington around by Toluca and Billings. Of course, it's all the same to me – I don't keer if we never go back or git anywhere. I'm havin' a good time."

"Turn the plugs around," said the Colonel.

In half an hour or so they were back on the great north road again. The horses seemed to feel the pull of the stable – still days ahead, for they trotted briskly along, while the tourists gazed with sated eyes on the beautiful Yellowstone River on the right hand, its pools splashing with the plunges of the great trout; and on their left the charming mountain scenery. Even the grotesque Mud Volcano, with its suggestions of the horrible and uncouth, failed to elicit the screams from the Bride, or the ejaculations of amazement from the men which characterized their deliverances earlier in the journey. Entering Hayden Valley, they were delighted at the sight in the middle distance of a dozen or more buffaloes, which held up their heads for a long look, and disappeared into the bushes. Not ten minutes later, fifty or sixty elk walked down to the Yellowstone to drink, crossing the road within a minute of the tourists' passage. Aconite pulled up in the shadow of Sulphur Mountain, the Hired Man, with the assistance of the party, soon had a fine fire blazing, and presently a pan of trout, hooked by the Bride, the Groom, the Artist and the Poet, and dressed by the skilful Aconite, were doing to a turn on the skillet.

The Hired Man, realizing that he was under obligation to tell his version of the "darndest thing" in his experience, was solemn, as befits a public performer. When the psychological moment was proclaimed by the falling down into a roseate pile of coals of the last log for the night, he discharged his duty and told this unimportant tale:

HENRY PETERS'S SIGNATURE

THE HIRED MAN'S SECOND TALE

The Colonel's story of how the law and the courts work, reminded me of what happened to old Hen Peters and his forty-second nephew, Hank. It all arose from a debate at the literary at the Bollinger school-house back in Iowa.

You see, old Hen's girl Fanny come home from the State Normal at Cedar Falls as full of social uplift as a yeast-cake, and framed up this literary. It was a lulu of a society, and nights when the sledding was good, the teams just surrounded the lot, and the bells jingled as uplifting as you could ask.