Roy Norton

“ And such was the dread reputation of the miner and ex-gunman that the charge melted into a withdrawal. Smith and his partner, back to back, stood in a clear space above the fallen editor. They breathed heavily from their efforts, and the younger man, grinning as if not half satisfied, exposing his fine white teeth, wiped a cut on his temple, and called:
“Next!”
“You know who that red-headed stiff you’re fightin’ for is, don’t you, Smith? That’s the pup that abused you in his newspaper.” The man who had shouted the warning restraint which had quelled the fight pointed at the fallen Ring. ”

“ One man reached around and kicked at the fallen man with a heavy boot, despite Smith’s endeavor to bring a truce, and not until then did the miner become angry. With cold malice, he knocked the man down, picked him up, battered his face again and then, exercising his enormous strength, seized him and threw him at the heads and faces of his friends. ”

“ Having succeeded in clearing out her only rivals in business worth consideration, by organizing a tar-feather-and-rail party for their benefit which she led in person, the financial losses of her reform movement didn’t exactly hit her bank account, as John Fosdike remarked when he heard of the changes.
“Now with young Horace Ring and his Weekly Star,” remarked his long-time friend “Circumlocutory” Smith, “it’s different. Most every reform he undertakes costs him something. Sometimes most of his subscribers, and many times a beating; but does he count the cost? Not he. ”

“ That boy Ring—you know—the crazy guy that runs the Star—was all beat up, hammered and kicked to a pulp, this afternoon in Placer City, because he stuck up for you and wouldn’t let that bunch of hairy-heels headed by their mayor call you names that maybe you deserve, and maybe you don’t.
“I gave the mayor what Ring wasn’t strong enough to give him,” the miner went on, “then took Ring to the hospital in Georgeville. What’s left of him! He’s there now. They don’t know whether he’s goin’ to pull through or not. ”

“ Ring was not one to spare effort.
“That’s one thing that maybe accounts for his sort of taming himself down lately,” observed Fosdike to his friend Circumlocutory Smith. “He sort of works off a lot of surplus steam by making a trip once or twice a week to Placer, and every time he does twelve hours grueling work climbing down one side and up the other, to say nothing of a few miles extra walking drumming up printing jobs after he gets there, it makes him less combative and reformative here at home. ”

“ They were side by side when they hit the outskirts of the crowd like a twin battering-ram, and men taken unawares from behind were hurled right and left as if they were but twigs in the path of a cyclone. ”

“ As John Fosdike, the blasé proprietor of the Miners’ Emporium once said: “That Pearl person just does something and then turns the talking part over to other folks. All she does is do.”
When Pearl Brown bought the Alamo Amusement Hall from the sheriff, the purchase included a small row of flimsy, one-story buildings that had the distinction of being appreciably removed from any near-by neighbors. Pearl Brown did not buy the tenants, but she sniffed when they were mentioned in the columns of Mr. Ring’s Weekly Star. ”

“ She said that if people who stuck their bills inter other folks’ business had long noses, I’d have a nose like a pelican. An’ then all the fellers that heard her laughed their fool heads off, when the Lord knows there ain’t anybody that minds his own affairs more’n I do.”
The miner soothed the saddler and left with a sense of bafflement. Smith was still endeavoring to think of other sources of information when he went to the Miners’ Emporium and was hailed by its proprietor.
“I’ve thought of a way to settle that bet,” said Fosdike. ”

“ The younger man yelled as he charged, the elder went voicelessly and with shut teeth and jaw, a hard, veteran fighting man who wasted neither breath nor motion. The younger man struck with the quick, timed precision of a trained boxer, the elder with forethought to inflict the most damage. ”

“ But I care. So does he—Ring. The trouble with a lot of us in this world is that we don’t understand what makes others do certain things, the necessities that have driven, that have made us do this or that, that have kept us from doing perhaps better. But I think there’s three of us who understand one another now—my husband, you, and I. Can we hope for that?”
“I lose a hundred because I bet old John Fosdike that you were a Cathcart,” said Smith, “and I can’t see why I never thought about Father Wyatt having a niece; but—as for a few understanding—yes—they can. We do.” ”

“ From the Placer City side, it looked clean and calm, sprawled in the sunshine, on the afternoon when Circumlocutory Smith and his partner Jim Clarke visited Placer City to inspect some secondhand mining material that they felt they could, in their increasing prosperity, afford. ”

“ He had taken a direct trail that had not necessitated a ride through his beloved camp of Murdock, and felt slightly ashamed of his solicitude, a sentiment that he felt was rather womanish, not at all what a man should really feel about anybody; but—Ring had been pretty badly manhandled, and—also, he’d taken Ring to that hospital and said he’d be responsible for all bills, and—a man ought to pay his bills when they came due and maybe hospitals wanted their money every week and⸺ Hang it all⸺ How was that boy coming along, anyhow? ”

“ It’s not me personally he objects to, so much as what I represent. He can’t get it out of his head that I’m a gunman and a danger to the community, instead of being the last man on earth to go looking for trouble. ”

“ You’ll see. She’s no Cathcart.”
“We’ll see!” The miner grinned, and made a jest of it when he departed for a two-week stay in the hills.
The next time he appeared in the Emporium, Fosdike met him with a grunt and tossed him a letter. The miner read:
If this woman is about thirty years old or younger, as you say, I’m afraid I can’t help to identify her, although she would be near my own age. ”

“ Can you beat it?”
“Does seem as if folks in this camp were sufferin’ a change of heart,” the miner agreed. “About time one of those revivalist chaps came along, I reckon. Seems too good to last. Ought to be clinched while the going is good, before anybody can backslide. Afraid something mighty bad’s about to happen.”
But nothing did. Save for its occasional brawls and squabbles, all in the natural course of events, Murdock went its peaceful way. ”

“ Almost absently, and pondering over many things, he made his way past the saddler’s and down the somnolent street to the Miners’ Emporium.
“Can’t tell whether Pearl Brown’s a Riggs or a Cathcart,” he said, and, the hour being idle and the storekeeper lounging, retailed his recent encounter.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Fosdike. “That young woman and you become friends, and young Ring is out sticking up for you! That young man⸺ What do you think of this? ”

“ It’s a hospital case, really, and—the nearest is down at Georgeville, as you probably know—a dozen miles.”
“All right! Hospital it is. Out you go, somebody, and hire the best carriage or buggy there is in the town. Quick! Never mind the price. That goes for you too, doctor. You’re coming along!” Smith snapped his orders impatiently and said to his partner: “Jim, you go with whoever knows where that rig can be hired, and see that it comes back on the run, too. Hurry up now!”
The doctor tried to protest that he could be of no assistance, but the miner silenced him with:
“Can’t tell. ”

“ This camp needs one.”
Murdock had not tired of discussing the idiosyncrasies of Pearl Brown before she started another reformation. She had all the curtains and red-plush sofas removed from the boxes in the Alamo and a new sign put over the bar:
THIS IS A TEMPERANCE HOUSE. TEMPERANCE CONSISTS IN KNOWING WHEN YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH AND THE WISE MAN MIXES NO DRINKS! ”