Thomas A. Janvier

“ Had the shooting been unfair, then the case would have gone into another category––and our community promptly would have manifested the sturdy sense of justice that is inherent in it by hanging the man by whom the unfair shot had been fired. Believe me, sir”––and Santa Fé stood up straight and stuck his chest out––“Palomitas has its own high standards of morality: and it never fails to maintain those standards in its own stern way!” ”

“ Hill said he begun to shake all over with laughing; being sure––for all Charley in his black clothes and white tie looked so toney––it would be a dead give away for her. But he said she only give a little jump when Santa Fé sung out to her, and didn’t turn a hair.
“Dear Uncle Charley, I am so glad to see you!” she said easy and pleasant; and then round she come to the old gent, and said as smooth as butter to him: “This is my uncle, the Baptist minister, sir, come to take me to the parsonage to my dear aunt. It’s almost funny to have so young an uncle! ”

“ Catch cold,” the old gent said. “Pleasure’s all mine to assist such noble a woman in her unmerited distress. And now I shall have happiness, and same time sorrow, to give her fatherly kiss for farewell.”
The Hen edged away a little, Hill said, and Santa Fé shortened his grip a little on the old gent’s arm––so his fatherly kissing missed fire. But he didn’t seem to notice, and said to Santa Fé: “Never knew a minister know cards like you. Wonderful! And wonderful luck what you held. Played cards a good deal myself. Never could play like you!” ”

“ Smith!” says the Hen, laughing pleasant. “Have you so soon forgotten our hunt together last winter––when I came up and shot the grizzly in the ear just as he had you down and was beginning to claw you? And are you not ashamed of yourself, after that, to say that any lion is too big for me?”
Without stopping for Shorty to strain himself trying to remember that bear-hunt, round she cracked to Boston––giving Shorty and Santa Fé a chance to get in a corner and talk quick in a whisper––and says to him: “We just are in luck! These big old ones are the real fighters, you know. ”

“ She asked him if there was a school in Palomitas, and he told her there wasn’t, because all the folks in town was so young––except the natives, who hadn’t no use for schools––they hadn’t any children big enough to go to one. And then she said sudden, and as it seemed to him changing the subject: “Isn’t there a kindergarten?” Hill said he’d never heard tell of such a concern; but he sized it up to be some sort of a fancy German garden––like the one Becker’d fixed up for himself over to Santa Cruz––and he said he allowed, from the way she asked about it, it was what Palomitas ought to have. ”

“ She must be a very fine woman. She’s an officer’s widow, Mr. Hill says, and a real lady, for all she makes her living keeping a hotel out here on the frontier. If she’s a bit like that sweet-looking Mrs. Charles I know we’ll get along. I’m surprised, William, you’ve never told me what pleasant ladies live here. It must make all the difference in the world. Don’t you think it would do for me not to be formal, but just to go to Mrs. Major Rogers’ hotel to-morrow and call?”
“I guess––well, I guess you hadn’t better go right off the first thing in the morning, Aunt Maria,” Hart said. ”

“ But the Hen was the limit: she looking and acting like the school-ma’am she said she was, and yet tangled up in a bar-room with a lot of gamblers and such as Kerosene Kate and old Tenderfoot Sal and Carrots––and then bringing the two ends together by talking one minute like he was used to East, and the next one wanting to set up drinks for him and telling him she knowed all there was to know about gun-handling and how at lion-hunting she was just hell! ”

“ When the train pulled in alongside the deepo platform it didn’t seem at first there was nobody on it but the usual raft of Mexicans with bundles in the day-coach––who all come a-trooping out, cluttered up with their queer duds, and went to hugging their aunts and uncles who was waiting for ’em in real Mexican style. Charley looked the lot over and seen there was nothing in it worth taking time to; and then he got his Denver paper from the messenger in the express-car and started off to go on back to his room in the Forest Queen. ”

“ When Santa Fé come to see faro-banking for melodeons wasn’t money-making, he passed out word to the Hen to start up her 191 part of the circus––and in the Hen come, looking real pretty in her white frock, and put her hand on his shoulder married-like and says: “Now, my dear, it isn’t fair for you gentlemen to keep us ladies waiting another minute longer. We want our share in the evening’s amusement. Do put the cards away and let us have our dance.” ”

“ It wasn’t her fault, she always said; and, in one way, it wasn’t––she always being willing to be sociable and friendly all round. But, all the same, wherever that Sage-Brush Hen was, there was dead sure to be an all-right cyclone.
One night when the boys at the Forest Queen was rigging Hill worse’n usual, and the Hen all the time getting madder and madder, Santa Fé Charley come into the game himself. Knowing how down the Hen was on such doings he usually didn’t. I guess he and she’d been having some sort of a ruction that day, and he wanted to get even with her. ”

“ All the boys seemed to have a feeling, somehow, there was going to be happenings; and we all just sort of idled round waiting for ’em––taking more drinks ’n usual, and in spite of the drinks getting every minute lower and lower in our minds. Except the day Hart’s aunt spent with him, and Santa Fé Charley run the kindergarten, I reckon it was the quietest day we ever went 61 through––at least till we got along to the clean-up that turned Palomitas into what some of us felt was a blame sight too much of a Sunday-school town. ”

“ It give us a first-class jolt to find all the girls so quiet-looking; and they being that way braced up the whole crowd to be like a dancing-party back East. To see the boys a-bowing away to their partners, while José––he was the fiddler, José was––was a tuning up, you wouldn’t a-knowed where you was!
It was a square dance to start in with: 193 with the little man and the Hen, and Charley and Kerosene Kate, a-facing each other; and Denver Jones with Carrots––that was the only name she ever had in Palomitas––and Shorty Smith and Juanita, at the sides. ”

“ Hill went on, a’most choking, “don’t count one way or the other when you get down to the facts. It was this here dangerous devil that done that wicked deed, and he done it all alone by his dangerous self. At the risk of my life, gentlemen, I’ve got a-hold of him to bring him to justice, and here he is. And I guess the sooner we yank him up to the usual telegraph-pole, and so get shut of him, the sooner it’ll be safe for folks to travel these roads. He’s the most dangerous I ever see,” said Hill, and by that time Hill was so near busted with his laughing he was purple ”

“ When he asked her if she wouldn’t set up on the box with him, so she could see the country, she said that was just what would suit her; and up she come, he said, as spry as a queer little bird. Then he whipped up his mules––being careful not to use any language––and got the coach started, and begun right off to be agreeable by telling her he guessed he had the pleasure of knowing her nephew, and asking her if she wasn’t the aunt of Mr. William Hart. ”

“ Hill said he never knowed anybody take cards as quick as Santa Fé took the cards the Hen was giving him. “I’m very happy to meet you, sir,” he said to the old gent; “and most grateful to you for your kindness to my poor niece Rachel in her distress. We have been sorrowing over her during Captain Chiswick’s long and painful illness––”
“My dear Captain had been sick for three months, and got up out of his bed to go and be killed with his men by those dreadful Apaches,” the Hen cut in. ”

“ I’ve ever laid eyes on; and she’d run ’em in you so slick and quiet––keeping as demure as a cat after birds while she was doing it––you’d never suspicion anything was happening till you found the whole town laughing its head off at you for being so many kinds of a fool!
Things wasn’t any time what you might call too extra quiet in Palomitas; but when them two––the Hen and Santa Fé––started in together to run any racket you may bet your life there was a first-class circus from the word go! ”

“ Some of them summer days in Palomitas was that hot they’d melt the stuffing out of a lightning-rod, and you could cook eggs in the pockets of your pants. When things was that way the town was apt to get quieted down––most being satisfied to take enough drinks early to make it pleasant spending the rest of the day sleeping ’em off somewheres in the shade. Along late in the afternoon, though, the wind always breezed down real cool and pleasant from the mountains––and then the boys would wake up and get a brace on, and whatever was going to happen would begin. ”

“ Till Hill started his coach up, the only way to get across to Santa Fé from Palomitas was to go a-horseback or walk. Both ways was unhealthy; and the coach, being pretty near as liable to hold-ups, wasn’t much healthier. It had to go slow, the coach had––that was a powerful mean road after you left Pojuaque and got in among the sandhills––and you never was sure when some of them bunches of scrub-cedar wasn’t going to wake up and take to pumping lead into you. Only a nervy man, like Hill was, ever could have took the contract ”

“ You see, the Hen always thought a heap of Hill––they having got to be such friends together that first day when he brought her over to Palomitas on the coach and helped her put up her rig on the old gent from Washington; and, back of her liking Hill specially, she really was about as good-natured a woman as ever lived. Except Hart’s nephew––she did just hate Hart’s nephew, who was a chump if ever there was one––she always was as pleasant as pie with everybody; and if any of the boys was hurt––like when Denver Jones got that jag in his shoulder rumpussing with Santa Fé Charley ”

“ Santa let go of Mike’s head and got up, brushing his pants off, and says solemn: “Our poor brother has passed from us. Palomitas has lost one of its most useful citizens––there was nobody who could mix drinks as he could––and the world has lost a noble man! Take away his stricken wife, my dear,” he says, speaking to the Sage-Brush Hen. ”

“ One reason why we all was so serious was because the Sage-Brush Hen––who started most of what happened––didn’t show up as usual; and all hands got a real jolt when some of the boys went off to the Forest Queen to ask about her, and old Tenderfoot Sal told ’em she was laying down in her room and wasn’t feeling well. The Hen being always an out-and-out hustler, and hard as an Indian pony, her not being well shook us up bad. ”

“ In the Forest Queen bar-room was the biggest bank there was in town. Blister Mike––he was Irish, Blister was, and Sal’s bar-keep––had some sort of a share in it; but it was run by a feller who’d got the name of Santa Fé Charley, he having had a bank over in Santa Fé afore Sal give him the offer to come 11 across to Palomitas and take charge. He was one of the blue-eyed quiet kind, Charley was, that’s not wholesome to monkey with; the sort that’s extra particular about being polite and nice-spoken––and never makes no mistakes, when shooting-time comes, about shooting to kill. ”

“ And he said as he’d started in with the preacher racket, he thought they might keep that up too––and make such an out and out mix-up for the little man as would give cards to any tenderfoot game that ever was played. Santa Fé always was full of his pranks: and this one looked to pan out so well, and was so easy done, that he went right across to the deepo and had a talk with Wood about how things had better be managed; and Wood, who liked fun as much as anybody, caught on quick and agreed to take a hand. ”