Henry Wallace Phillips

“ On our word of honor, you shall live, if you yield the store."
"Well," whispered Pedro to us, "what do you say?"
"Tell him the fortune-teller fooled him," says I.
"Tell him to go to hell," says Gonzales.
"It is a trick," says the other man.
"So think I," says Pedro. He called aloud: "We are large healthy men. To make us live is necessary we have more than your word of honor—do not play further, cowards that you are! The store you may have when we give it to you. We will kill you all—all!" ”

“ I never yet played being big before a man who knew something. When he knows he sees your little play and despises you for it.
"Not foolish, chico," says Perez. "Only wise with a wisdom strange to me." He wheeled and looked at me. "A most strange young man you are; the strength of a giant, roaring health and no fool, and yet you will listen to an older man—you wish to listen. Receive the thanks of an older man. The hope of such service is the one poor vanity remaining to him. May time so deal with you that you shall never know the compliment you pay—listen!" ”

“ I can't give you the proper idea of how quick-witted Mary was, how easy she saw the behind-meaning of your words, or even saw things you didn't know yourself.
It's a good trait to its possessor, but, like everything else in this world, there's a price to pay for it. She sometimes saw things that weren't there. A man with extra good sight is more fooled by mirage than a man who doesn't trust his eyes so much. And it had fallen down on her, on the most important dealing of her life. She saw Saxton wrong, and couldn't see him right, for that trust in her own judgment. ”

“ You're nothing but a great bully, bullying a poor little woman, you nice boy! Who ever heard of such an argument? Because you make me listen, I must pay attention! Well, to show you what a friend I am, I will."
"Thank you, Mary," I said, holding out my hand. "Thank you, dear. You'll not be the worse for hearing the truth. It isn't like you to condemn a man unheard." ”

“ You never saw an uglier mug than Belknap's in all your days, as it appeared then. Ordinarily, although I hate to say it, he was a fine-looking man, but now his face was so twisted he looked like the devil in person. And still he said nothing. He had plenty good reason not to.
At this, Mary went at him. "I thought you a good man—a wise man," she said, with a bitter quiet that burnt, in every word. "You are a cowardly scoundrel. Attack the boy if you dare. I think I am a match for such as you." ”

“ He was born to it, and his forebears centuries before him. Yet instead of breeding out the man in him, it had only taken off the scum.
At last he spoke. "Give me more time, campañero. I shall consider this further. To meddle with other lives is always a dangerous business, just as not to meddle may be a shameful one. As it stands, if he gets not the lady for a wife, Saxton is a lost man—I know him. On his word, on your word and on my word, she is not indifferent to him. We know Belknap is a rascal, and for her unfit. And so, action—yet I am a man of peace." ”

“ Then old Bill here took hold of me, and squeezed what was left of the obsession out of me with the first hug of his arms. For the expulsion of devils, I recommend your long flippers, Bill, my boy....
"I am not going to apologize to you, Henry, nor to Bill. If I didn't feel something more than any apology could make good, I wouldn't be worth your trouble. But right here I shift."
We sat still. Seldom you see a man take out his soul: when that happens, it is usually a kind of indecent exposure. A man must shake every glimmer of vanity out.
Old Saxton stood out naked and unashamed like a statue. ”

“ Belknap. What will happen is that many poor men shall be killed, and the wolf-rascals get fat, as usual. With Belknap are the few in earnest, who think; the many who neither care nor think, but are led; those that fight for love of it; those who are hypocrites, and those who look for profit. On our side, the same. There is no advantage to either by comparison in that. In here comes the difference. Such men as Oriñez and myself know that this unhappy land must have peace, before any notion of right can grow. ”

“ Never tell me a man is this and that. A man is everything. In his right mind, nothing an Apache invented would have forced Arthur Saxton to do such a thing—no fear on earth, nor no profit on earth would have tempted him for an instant. But now he would have struck.
I grabbed his wrist.
"You fool!" I cried, "what are you doing?" He clipped me bang in the eye. Saxton was a strong man, weakened by whisky. I was twice as strong and braced with rage.
I whirled him around and slammed him on the floor.
Something cold pressed against my temple. It was a revolver in the hands of Perez. ”

“ Jim knew more of men. Sax knew the wild lands of music and such; Jim had slept with an Injun or two watching out to be sure he wasn't late for the office the next morning. Either one was plenty durn good enough to make a girl fix her hair straight.
And there stood Mary, the cause of the look each man put upon the other. She'd brought down Jim in one stroke—he was a sudden sort of jigger. Well, there she stood; and if there's anything in having a subject worth fighting for, those two fellers ought to have been the happiest of men. ”

“ I caved that head with my rifle-barrel and fired into a swarm over the remains. They fired right back again; lead sung like a bees' nest. Flame and smoke spurted out all over. You couldn't see any more in the store. I snapped at the crowd until I found there was no results, my magazine being empty; and, there scarcely being time to load, I poked 'em with the muzzle. In the middle of this razzle-dazzle come another crash and a flood of light. I saw the front door down; men tumbling through the opening.
I screeched to the other boys, grabbed cans of tomatoes, and pasted the heap. ”

“ I looked at Mary, knowing her for a kind woman—one who loved all innocent play. I hit myself on the head at the dumb-foolishness of it. How in the devil's name could she bring herself to approve of this? Why is it we lay a course for somebody else we'd never think of following ourselves? ”

“ I hadn't the least feeling about killing that treacherous skunk, so far as I knew, but all the same, I could not pull that trigger. I was surprised, plenty. "Why, you damn fool!" I says to myself, "what's eating you! That lad would 'a' slaughtered your entire family, by this time!"
True, too, but it didn't make the gun go off. It's mighty queer how an unexpected "me" will jump out of you at times. There was one Bill Saunders just as anxious to do that blackguard as a man could be, and there was another—and the boss, too—who wouldn't stand for it. ”

“ Jim turned to me, perfectly serious—he was like Sax—joke as long as it was joking-time, then drop it and talk as straight as a rifle-barrel.
"I want a right-hand man of my own country," he says. "You'll have to watch gangs of men to see they work up; keep an eye on what goes out from the stores; beat the head off the first beggar you see abusing a horse; and do what I tell you, generally. For that, I'll put one hundred United States dollars in your jeans each and every month we're together, unless you prove to be worth more—or nothing. ”

“ Then, too, it had reached the limit about Miss Hitty—I sure wasn't going to stand hearing her name mishandled by tavern loafers. Yet the principal cause for my staying was my anxiety to leave. That big, bellowing Irishman, dragging a half-dozen men to get at me, blood streaming down his face, and his expression far from agreeable, put a crimp in my soul, and don't you forget it. But I understood that this was my first man's-size proposition, and if I didn't take my licking like a man I never could properly respect myself afterward. ”

“ I didn't mind one or two, or perhaps a few more men, so much, but the crowd threw a crimp into me. When you learn how much bigger a coward a crowd is, than any one man in it, you are not so troubled, but then! Well, it was the first time I'd been right down terrified in my life, and it was awful. I raked the sweat off my forehead, steadied myself the best I could, and says:
"Well, Pede, we're in for it!"
"Tiene V. razon!" says he; "but we will to do what we can. If I live, always shall I remember how Beel stay with me." ”

“ I wouldn't accuse you of being the kind of fool who'd play smart at the expense of the Almighty."
"All right—glad you understand me. Now, listen! Is it great to pull a long face? Is it right to get melancholy about religion, when the head of it always preached happiness? Is it sensible to try and make every one do your way, when you're told the nearer like little children we are, the better we are off? ”

“ One day I had to go by the tavern and I see Mick Murphy tilted back in his chair, hat over eyes, thumbs in suspenders; big neck busting his shirt open, big legs busting through the pants' legs, big feet busting through the ends of his curved-up shoes, and a week's growth of pig-bristles busting out of his red face. Mick was the bold bully of the rough crowd—fellers from twenty to twenty-five. He worked till he got money enough to buy whisky, then he got drunk and licked somebody.
The course of such lads is pretty regular. Mick was about a year from robbing hen-roosts. ”

“ Mary explained to me, aside. There was apology in the explanation; I heard with glad ears. "Is it possible they know no games?"
"Why, I suppose they do, of a kind," I answered; "but it seems to me the chief lack of these kids is real play; they're all little old men and women; the kid spring is knocked out of 'em; they've lived in war and slaughter so much they don't believe in anything else."
"Well," said she promptly, "that's a poor state of affairs."
"The worst," said I. "What kind of nation can you grow out of children who have no fun? Their God will look like a first cousin of our devil. ”

“ Plain Mary Smith told of what was beneath her loveliness,—and, I'm forced to admit, her side-stepping and buck-jumping, once in a while. Oh, she could cut loose for fair, if stirred, but you could always remember with perfect faith Mary Smith.
It wasn't five minutes after we started talking that Arthur Saxton came along. The girl knew him, and said good morning in that civil, hold-off fashion a good woman uses to a man she thinks may come to liking her too well, or that she may come to like too well, when the facts are against any happy result. ”

“ I had no experience to guide me, yet I knew Saxton needed humoring.
I've heard people say that things—like liquor, for instance—couldn't get the best of such and such a man, because he was strong-willed. What kind of argument is that? Suppose he wants to drink. Ain't his strong will going to make him drink just that much harder, and be that much harder to turn back, than a man with a putty spine? The only backbone some men has is what their neighbors think. Them you can handle. But the man that rules himself generally finds it quite different from being the lady boss of an old woman's home. ”

“ I never see such a man to stamp himself on anything he put his hand to. And when he was working, if you said the least thing against the job, he wanted trouble with you; but the next day he'd smoke his pipe and tear it apart worse than you possibly could. That was Saxy: first crack, spoiled kid; second thought, clear-headed man.
The three of us, Mary and him and me, walked the deck day after day, talking of everything, from what fine weather it was to religion. Once Saxton called our attention to the wind in the rigging. ”

“ He said, because nature was sad. Mary said, no such a thing; nature wasn't sad—there were the flowers and green fields, also natural, and pleasant and cheerful to the eye; there was more blue sky than gray, and as for the savage being sad, why, that might be, but it wasn't sad to think that men were working out of savagery into civilization.
So then Saxton gave civilization one for its Ma, and talk brisked up. Civilization stood for Dutchmen that ran orchestras to Saxton, and he didn't spare her feelings none. ”

“ Our friend, Belknap, has a great work to do, converting these heathen Catholics to the Protestant faith, for which he has schools and missions, and for which also he needs teachers, and later, a wife, so Mary leaves home for here. Of course, he hasn't breathed a word of anything but the Great Work, and his lonely struggle, and queer as it is, and scoundrel that he is, I know he partly believes in himself. Sentimental advances would frighten her off. He bides his time, does Mr. Spider, and lets habit of mind crush out all the girl's natural instincts until she has no resource but him. ”

“ And the devil take my soul if I forget the horse-sense and kindness that girl used in teaching a foot-loose boy what a different place this world is, from what he'd been like to think it, without her. ”

“ It appeared to me then, and it appears to me still, that I had a right to interfere in Mary's affair. At times, of course, you're a plain meddlesome Pete, if you cut in, and you deserve all you probably will get,—as many kicks as the parties can land on you before you escape; on the other hand, Perez was right when he said it sometimes was shameful not to interfere. And while marriage is the most private of all things, it's the most binding, too: you can lose money, get experience, and make more ”

“ I envy the man who's sure he's right, but the Lord have mercy on his friends. Well, that's what Perez and I arrived at; that we were stacked against a blooming mystery and we'd shoot at the one glimmer of light we had. Mary did care for Sax. Good. Belknap was a fraud. Good. To the devil with the rest of the argument.
However, I didn't reveal my full plan regarding Belknap to my kinsman. I had a hunch that even my likeness to Grandpa De La Tour wouldn't convince him. You see, like most kids, savages, and people not grown up in general, I believed in playing the game as it was played on me. ”