Bill Williams

“ To this the boys all assented and Williams looked uncomfortable.
"In fact," and Bill adopted his public tone to Hi's admiration and joy, "this here's a public institooshun" (this was Williams' own thunder) , "condoocin' to the good of the community" (Hi slapped his thigh and squirted half way across the store to signify his entire approval, "and I cherish the opinion"— (delighted chuckle from Hi) —"that public men are interested in this concern." ”

“ To Williams the thing was simplicity itself, and, after some figuring, he handed Bill a complete statement of the amount of lumber of all kinds that would be required.
“Now, what would that there come to?”
Williams named his figure, and then Bill entered upon negotiations.
“I aint no man to beat down prices. No, sir, I say give a man his figger. Of course, this here aint my funeral; besides, bein' a Gospel shop, the price naterally would be different.” To this the boys all assented and Williams looked uncomfortable. ”

“ They slept inside, and it was arranged that some one was to be constantly on guard. About one o'clock in the morning it began snowing. Shortly before three, Jack Farley, who was on guard, and sitting at the foot of the bed with his back to the prisoners, was kicked into the fire by Williams. The next instant Bevins, who had got hold of his shoes, sprang up, jumped over the fire, and started away on the run. ”

“ It was, indeed, just the sort of story the old Billy Woods could have handled. And as he walked energetically across City Hall Park, past the indigent and intoxicated on the benches, he was resolving again with all that was in him to be the old Billy Woods. As he ran up the L steps and boarded a train he swore never to drink again as long as he lived. This was where he usually swore never to drink again.
Nearly all the newspaper world—that is, men who represented the newspapers of the whole world—were buzzing around the office of the stranded firm. ”

“ Woods come up and slap them on the back!" "No wonder he can make anybody talk about everything," thought the new reporters, while the old one went on in his rapid style, "You'll soon assimilate the idea. Now, for instance, 'A dog bites a man'—that's a story; 'A man bites a dog'—that's a good story," etc., until in a lull there came the question—inevitable from very recent graduates:
"What college are you from, Mr. Woods?"
Billy always felt better when this was over. "I received my schooling abroad," he always took pains to add. "Spent most of my boyhood over there with relatives. ”

“ That is the reason Woods had been handling so many of the "hard to get" assignments of late instead of the "color" descriptions at which he had made his first hit. "In fact, there is no one in town," the suave city editor would say, "that could handle this story as you could, if you care to take it."
"Well, let me try. I'll do what I can," for Billy was only human.
Not that he spent all his days pulling words out of unwilling people; quite as many fawned upon him and tried to be hail-fellow-well-met with him as did the other thing; as many lied to get themselves in print as to stay out. ”

“ It was not interesting to Woods—not as interesting as it might be to many of you. He was sick of dead, dissipated brothers with "horrible lessons" to young men newly rich. But he considered it his business to get the news, even though he had to adopt means not dissimilar to those employed in cross-examinations by this same successful lawyer, who was now realizing what he had let out and what it would mean if made public.
"I am sorry," said Billy, shaking his head. "But the next time"—opening the door—"you'll have more respect for The Day. If you do not care to talk, you should always say so. ”

“ Some uv the most beautiful potry I ever read wuz writ by Bill when he wuz recoverin' himself out'n one uv them bats. Seemed like it kind uv exalted an' purified Bill's nachur to git drunk an' git over it. Bill cud drink more likker 'nd be sorrier for it than any other man in seven States. There never wuz a more penitent feller than he wuz when he wuz soberin'. ”

“ To keep the rest safe, he was quartered alone in a small hut which the Americans had left us. It was a poor shelter, being built of turf, and roofed with boughs and grass, but as good as any we had. There was no surgeon among us, and handing him food or drink was deemed a perilous business; but all his comrades had a sort of a liking for Bill, and, besides, he was regarded as the palladium of the party. The fever was not violent, though Bill raved at times, and all his wanderings were after gold. ”

“ During the next twenty years, in which he continued to serve as a missionary to the Wisconsin Oneidas, Williams was a well-known and picturesque character. His home was on the west bank of the river, about a mile below Little Kaukauna. Although a man of much vigor and strength of mind, he soon came to be recognized as an unscrupulous fellow by the majority of both whites and reds in the lower Fox, and his clerical brethren, East as well as West, appear to have regarded him with more or less contempt. ”

“ Newspaper men write many of them. Billy wrote one—just for fun—and the publisher asked for more, complimenting Woods on the way he did it. So with the next Billy foolishly began to take pains. He had all the time he wanted, and again the artist in him began to assert itself; he took it seriously, even though it was a burlesque, consequently became dissatisfied, began it over again in a different way, got discouraged, tore the thing up, burned the pieces and went out and borrowed a quarter. The artistic sense is very persistent, more so than the moral, it seems. ”

“ Bill served the time for which he was chosen as marshal of Abilene, and in the spring of 1872 removed to Kansas City. It was at this place the writer—then connected with the daily Journal—met him and formed an intimate acquaintance, which afforded abundant opportunity to learn his real character as a man. Bill was frequently importuned for the particulars of his marvelous adventures, and permission to write his life, but he always positively refused. ”

“ He soon became too valuable for the city editor to spare of ten, and even when an engagement was made it sometimes had to be broken, which hostesses quite naturally failed to understand. And when Billy's one "day off" in seven came around it seemed such a waste of time to spend it upon stupid conventional people who did not know what was going on in the world, and took so long to think that it made him nervous. The Southern cotillions were no longer simple and Southern, for the committee were trying to put on New York lugs, said Billy, who thought this absurd. ... ”

“ Williams came up to him as though to strike a blow; and he did, with words:
“I know what it is to be hanged! You don't. Better the cannibals. Every man of this crew shall swing. I'm taking them to the Francis Vore to give them up.”
“But you—you—Skipper! You give up yourself?”
“I give up the Heraldr.”
“But there are a thousand ways—” McGuire was painfully amazed.
“There is no way but mine. That woman—McGuire, I didn't know there were any left in the world like her. She is a woman and——”
“You know her!” ”

“ She repeated it all clearly, for she was an only daughter, and her father was a widower, and that was the reason Billy had guessed the girl would know. When in trouble, Woods generally found, a man has to talk to some woman, and Billy had reckoned on the right one. ”

“ Billy was not so very sorry.
"Little, old New York is good enough for me," he said, "even though they do make me read copy occasionally. I wonder why they do." Formerly they said he was too good for it.
He still disliked reading copy as much as he loved to fly around the town, with his glasses sliding down his nose, after big news. "It's the only way to live," he said. "I expect to die out on a story."
It might seem strange that he enjoyed it all. He had seen so much that his personal zest in seeing things had worn out long ago. ”

“ He had been, to some extent at least, a man of refinement and culture when he had passed through Bill's camp so long ago. He had been clean-shaven except for a small mustache; courteous, rather patronizing but still friendly. Now he was like a surly beast. His eyes were narrow and greedy,—weasel eyes that at once Bill mistrusted and disliked. A scowl was at his lips, no more were they in a firm, straight line. The light and glory of upright manhood, if indeed he had ever possessed it, had gone from him now. ”

“ Crouching there, short necked like a buzzard in the queer flare of light and shadow, was the figure of a man whom Bill stared at and found oddly familiar. It was not more than a fugitive sense of something wrong that stirred in him, yet it called for caution; and Bill respected the desert and its messages so greatly that he would not knowingly disregard a single one of its occult waves. Hunches, some men called them. Well, they often were right.
He abandoned his forthright stride. He bent, tying the rawhide strings which bound his right, pivoted holster, to his thigh. ”

“ Uncompromisingly averse to the jog-trot work of ordinary mortals. Bill was neither indolent nor timid in his own peculiar fashion of seeking riches. He would have gone up in a balloon to any height, or down in a diving-bell to depths yet unsounded, had the promise been large enough; and there was something so suitable to his inclinations in the Californian reports, that he was the prime mover of our visit to San Francisco, and the entire desertion of the ship. Strange to say, every man on board believed in Bill; from the captain to the cabin-boy, they had all listened to his tales. ”

“ It was true enough that he was a writer, also that he needed a vacation. “Is there anyone besides Mr. Ives who feels inhospitable?” he asked.
“Yes. A man whom they call Bill interviewed me, too, and warned me to mind my own affairs around here. He has a lot of people fishing for him and ships the fish. I rather think that Bill does a little rum-running, for there is much drinking in the village. Bill may ship that, too, for all I know. You may have to convince Bill that you are not employed by the government to detect rum-runners.” ”

“ He shook Billy's hand almost jovially and said, "Well, my boy," to him. They walked up Broadway together. The old gentleman was deaf and Billy shouted at him.
After spending the time between the Equitable and Maiden Lane in trying apparently to make the pleasant-mooded old gentleman admit a certain state of affairs in regard to a certain franchise, which he wouldn't, Woods employed the remainder of their walk in extracting a number of strong, emphatic statements from him to the contrary, which was exactly what Woods wanted. ”

“ The desert sun was very hot. The motionless air was oppressive with a dry, parching heat; and flies buzzed annoyingly about his bleeding cuts. Wrists and ankles ached under the cruel pressure of the manacles.
"Wish the thing would come back, and end the suspense," Brand muttered.
Bill reflected with satisfaction that he had no relatives to be saddened by his demise. He had no great fear of death. Newspaper work in the twenty-second century is not all commonplace monotony; your veteran reporter is pretty well inured to danger. ”

“ While being thus engaged seven Chicago roughs began bantering him on account of the buckskin clothes he wore and challenged him for a prize fight. Bill replied to them that he was not a fighting man, and that he was at that time still suffering from a newly healed wound. They continued their insults, and finally told him that he had to fight or acknowledge that he was a coward and his reported exploits bogus. Bill’s courage came to the surface quickly enough, and drawing his two pistols—both of which were presents to him from Vice-President Wilson—the fight began, one man against seven. ”

“ The other newspaper men along the Row who read all the papers (and seldom anything else) did not have to be told when and where Billy Woods was back at work again. They could see it in the columns of the paper, as plainly as though it were a photograph, and then, suddenly, the touch that they recognized as his had dropped out again, and they would say: "Too bad that fellow can't leave whiskey alone," for they knew that Billy had lost another job. ”

“ When the rope began to choke the horse, he reared and plunged, throwing himself over the bluff. That settled his ever hurting any one. He was hung higher than Haman. Bill never went back to the camp, but struck out for other quarters. There was a month's wages coming to him, but he would get that later or they might keep it. Life had charms for an old-timer like Bill, and he didn't hanker for any reputation as a broncho-buster. It generally takes a verdant to pine for such honors.
"Last winter when Bill was riding the chuck line, he ran up against a new experience. ”

“ So now the ex-star of The Day was doing specials. "I ought to be able to get along well as a free lance," he said. His friends thought so, too. But he did not get along very well.
Free lancing is precarious for the most industrious. Billy was not lazy, but he had for so long been writing what he was told to write, in the way he was told to write it, that he did not know how to work now without a boss over him. ”

“ But Billy declined with very sincere thanks to go home and do the prodigal-son act. Once a newspaper man, always a newspaper man. But he was going to get some quiet indoor work, writing para graphs on some mild afternoon paper, or something of that sort.
Woods came out, pronounced cured, and he hurried back to Park Row and showed himself to the first one of his friends he could find. He was very quiet and serious now, and had a good, clean look about the eyes. "I believe I am a new man," he said, gravely. "Now I want to get to work." ”