Editorial Wild Oats | Page 4

third fire both gentlemen were wounded slightly,
and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said I believed I would go out and

take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a delicacy about
participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my
seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.
They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded,
and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again
with animation, and every shot took effect--but it is proper to remark
that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally
wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would
have to say good-morning now, as he had business up-town. He then
inquired the way to the undertaker's and left.
The chief turned to me and said: "I am expecting company to dinner,
and shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read
proof and attend to the customers."
I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was too
bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my ears to think of
anything to say.
He continued: "Jones will be here at three--cowhide him. Gillespie will
call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be
along about four--kill him. That is all for to-day, I believe. If you have
any odd time, you may write a blistering article on the police--give the
chief inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table; weapons in the
drawer--ammunition there in the corner--lint and bandages up there in
the pigeon-holes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon,
down-stairs. He advertises--we take it out in trade."
[Illustration: "GILLESPIE HAD CALLED"]
He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been
through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were
gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window.
Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he
took the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger, not in the
bill of fare, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger, by the name of
Thompson, left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last,

at bay in the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors,
blacklegs, politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and
flourished their weapons about my head till the air shimmered with
glancing flashes of steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the
paper when the chief arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and
enthusiastic friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no
human pen, or steel one either, could describe. People were shot,
probed, dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was
a brief tornado of murky blasphemy, with a confused and frantic
war-dance glimmering through it, and then all was over. In five
minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I sat alone and
surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around us.
He said: "You'll like this place when you get used to it."
I said: "I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I might write to
suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some practice and learned
the language I am confident I could. But, to speak the plain truth, that
sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a man is liable
to interruption. You see that yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to
elevate the public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much
attention as it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am
interrupted so much as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough,
but I don't like to be left here to wait on the customers. The experiences
are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are
not judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the
window and cripples me; a bomb-shell comes down the stove-pipe for
your gratification and sends the stove-door down my throat; a friend
drops in to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with
bullet-holes till my skin won't hold my principles; you go to dinner, and
Jones comes with his cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window,
Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my
scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance; and in less than
five minutes all the blackguards in the country arrive in