The Jimmyjohn Boss, and Other Stories by Owen Wister (the best novels to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Owen Wister
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“Hit twice, I thought they told me,” said he; and the steward surmised that one had missed.
“Perhaps,” mused Duane. “And perhaps it went as intended, too. What's all that fuss?”
He turned sharply, having lost Augustus among his sadder thoughts; and here were the operations going briskly. Powder-smoke in three directions at once! Here were pickets far out-lying, and a double line of skirmishers deployed in extended order, and a mounted reserve, and men standing to horse—a command of near a hundred, a pudding of pompous, incompetent, callow bosh, with Augustus by his howitzer, scientifically raising and lowering it to bear on the lone white tepee that shone in the plain. Four races were assembled to look on—the mess Chinaman, two black laundresses, all the whites in the place (on horse and foot, some with their hats left behind), and several hundred Indians in blankets. Duane had a thought to go away and leave this galling farce under the eye of Starr for the officers were at hand also. But his second thought bade him remain; and looking at Augustus and the howitzer, his laugh would have returned to him; but his heart was sore for Casey.
It was an hour of strategy and cannonade, a humiliating hour, which Fort Brown tells of to this day; and the tepee lived through it all. For it stood upon fifteen slender poles, not speedily to be chopped down by shooting lead from afar. When low bullets drilled the canvas, the chief suggested to Augustus that Ute Jack had climbed up; and when the bullets flew high, then Ute Jack was doubtless in a hole. Nor did Augustus contrive to drop a shell from the howitzer upon Ute Jack and explode him—a shrewd and deadly conception; the shells went beyond, except one, that ripped through the canvas, somewhat near the ground; and Augustus, dripping, turned at length, and saying, “It won't go down,” stood vacantly wiping his white face. Then the two chiefs got his leave to stretch a rope between their horses and ride hard against the tepee. It was military neither in essence nor to see, but it prevailed. The tepee sank, a huge umbrella wreck along the earth, and there lay Ute Jack across the fire's slight hollow, his knee-cap gone with the howitzer shell. But no blood had flown from that; blood will not run, you know, when a man has been dead some time. One single other shot had struck him—one through his own heart. It had singed the flesh.
“You see, Mr. Albumblatt,” said Duane, in the whole crowd's hearing, “he killed himself directly after killing Casey. A very rare act for an Indian, as you are doubtless aware. But if your manoeuvres with his corpse have taught you anything you did not know before, we shall all be gainers.”
“Captain,” said Mrs. Starr, on a later day, “you and Ute Jack have ended our fun. Since the Court of Inquiry let Mr. Albumblatt off, he has not said Germany once—and that's three months to-morrow.”
Twenty Minutes for Refreshments
Upon turning over again my diary of that excursion to the Pacific, I find that I set out from Atlantic waters on the 30th day of a backward and forlorn April, which had come and done nothing towards making its share of spring, but had gone, missing its chance, leaving the trees as bare as it had received them from the winds of March. It was not bleak weather alone, but care, that I sought to escape by a change of sky; and I hoped for some fellow-traveller who might begin to interest my thoughts at once. No such person met me in the several Pullmans which I inhabited from that afternoon until the forenoon of the following Friday. Through that long distance, though I had slanted southwestward across a multitude of States and vegetations, and the Mississippi lay eleven hundred miles to my rear, the single event is my purchasing some cat's-eyes of the news-agent at Sierra Blanca. Save this, my diary contains only neat additions of daily expenses, and moral reflections of a delicate and restrained melancholy. They were Pecos cat's-eyes, he told me, obtained in the rocky canyons of that stream, and destined to be worth little until fashion turned from foreign jewels to become aware of these fine native stones. And I, glad to possess the jewels of my country, chose two bracelets and a necklace of them, paying but twenty dollars for fifteen or sixteen cat's-eyes, and resolved to give them a setting worthy of their beauty. The diary continues with moral reflections upon the servility of our taste before anything European, and the handwriting is clear and deliberate. It abruptly becomes hurried, and at length well-nigh illegible. It is best, I think, that you should have this portion as it comes, unpolished, unamended, unarranged—hot, so to speak, from my immediate pencil, instead of cold from my subsequent pen. I shall disguise certain names, but that is all.
Friday forenoon, May 5.—I don't have to gaze at my cat's-eyes to kill time any more. I'm not the only passenger any more. There's a lady. She got in at El Paso. She has taken the drawing-room, but sits outside reading newspaper cuttings and writing letters. She is sixty, I should say, and has a cap and one gray curl. This comes down over her left ear as far as a purple ribbon which suspends a medallion at her throat. She came in wearing a sage-green duster of pongee silk, pretty nice, only the buttons are as big as those largest mint-drops. “You porter,” she said, “brush this.” He put down her many things and received it. Her dress was sage green, and pretty nice too. “You porter,” said she, “open every window. Why, they are, I declare! What's the thermometer in this car?” “Ninety-five, ma'am. Folks mostly travelling—” “That will do, porter. Now you go make me a pitcher of lemonade right quick.” She went into the state-room and shut the door. When she came out she was dressed in what appeared to be chintz bedroom curtains. They hang and flow loosely about her, and are covered with a pattern of pink peonies. She has slippers—Turkish—that stare up in the air, pretty handsome and comfortable. But I never before saw any one travel with fly-paper. It must be hard to pack. But it's quite an idea in this train. Fully a dozen flies have stuck to it already; and she reads her clippings, and writes away, and sips another glass of lemonade, all with the most extreme appearance of leisure, not to say sloth. I can't imagine how she manages to produce this atmosphere of indolence when in reality she is steadily occupied. Possibly the way she sits. But I think it's partly the bedroom curtains.
These notes were interrupted by the entrance of the new conductor. “If you folks have chartered a private car, just say so,” he shouted instantly at the sight of us. He stood still at the extreme end and removed his hat, which was acknowledged by the lady. “Travel is surely very light, Gadsden,” she assented, and went on with her writing. But he remained standing still, and shouting like an orator: “Sprinkle the floor of this car, Julius, and let the pore passengers get a breath of cool. My lands!” He fanned himself sweepingly with his hat. He seemed but little larger than a red squirrel, and precisely that color. Sorrel hair, sorrel eyebrows, sorrel freckles, light sorrel mustache, thin aggressive nose, receding chin, and black, attentive, prominent eyes. He approached, and I gave him my ticket, which is as long as a neck-tie, and has my height, the color of my eyes and hair, and my general description, punched in the margin. “Why, you ain't middle-aged!” he shouted, and a singular croak sounded behind
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