Red Saunders Pets and Other Critters | Page 8

No one ever saw a
biscuit suffering from soda-jaundice on Steve's table. And how, after a
night's sleep in a temperature of forty below zero, I would champ my
teeth on the path to breakfast! Eating was not an appetite in those
days--it was a passion.
Charley and I went forth after breakfast, Oscar lingering a moment,
according to his use, to pass a painful five minutes in making excuses
for staying that time, where no one needed any explanation.
"I wish to gracious Sally and Oscar would just act like people," said
Mrs. Steve once in exasperation. "They get me so nervous stammering
at each other that I drop everything I lay my hands on, and I feel as if
I'd robbed somebody for the rest of the day."
The interview over, Oscar came out, burning with his own
embarrassment, and made a sore mess of everything he did for the next
hour. A man must have his mind about him on a ranch.
Once upon a time Steve came to Charley and me, literally prancing. We
had heard oaths and yells and sounds of a battle royal previously, and
wondered what was going on. When he neared us he moved slowly, his
hands working like machinery. "I would like to know," he began, and
stopped to glare at us and grind his teeth. "I should like to know," he
continued, in a voice so weak with rage we could hardly hear it, "who
turned the red bull into number three corral."
Charley and I went right on cleaning out the shed. We weren't going to
tell on Oscar.

"So it's him again, heh?" shrieked Steve. "Well, now I propose to show
him something. I'll show him everything!" He was entirely beyond the
influence of reason and grammar. Charley had an ill-advised notion to
play the paternal.
"Now, I'd cool down if I was you, Steve," he admonished.
"You would, would you!" foamed Steve. "Well, who the devil cares
what you'd do, anyhow? And if you tell me to cool down just once
more, I'll drive you into the ground like a tent-pin."
I jumped through the window, and then laughed, while Charley
administered his reproof with appropriate gestures. His long arms flew
in the air as he delivered the inspired address, Steve looking at him, a
bit of shamefacedness and fun showing through his heat.
"An' mo' I tell you, Steven P. Hendricks!" rolled out Charley in
conclusion. "That this citizen of Texas, jus'ly and rightjus'ly called the
Lone Star State, has never yet experienced the feeling of bein' daunted
by face of man. No, su'! By God, su'!" He held the shovel aloft like a
sword. "Let 'em come as they will, male and female after their kind,
from a ninety poun' Jew peddler to Sittin' Bull himself, and from a
pigeon-toed Digger-Injun squaw to a fo'-hundred-weight Dutch lady, I
turn my back on none!"
"You win, Charley," said Steve, and walked off. All Oscar caught out
of it was the request that when he felt like reducing the stock on the
ranch he'd take a rifle.
Poor Oscar! All noble and heroic sentiments struggling within him,
with no outlet but a hesitating advancing of the theory that "if we didn't
get rain before long, the country'd be awful dry." Small wonder that he
burst out in the bull-pen one night with "I wish the Injuns would jump
this ranch!"
"You do?" said Charley. "Well, durn your hide for that wish! What's
got into you to make you wish that?"

"Aw!" said Oscar, twitching around on his stool, "I'm sick and tired of
not being able to say anything. If the Sioux got up, I could do
something."
"Oh, that's it," retorted Charles. "Well, Oscar, far's I can see, if it's
necessary to have a war-party of Injuns whoopin' an' yellin' an'
crow-hoppin' an' makin' fancywork out of people to give you the proper
start afore your gal, it'd be jes' as well for you to stay single the res' of
your days. The results wouldn't justify the trouble."
Afterward Oscar told me in private that Charley was an old stiff, and he
didn't believe he'd make a chest at a grasshopper if the latter spunked
up any. That wronged old Charley. But Oscar must be excused--he was
a singularly unhappy man.
To come back to what happened. Oscar that morning had the care of
Geronimo, a coal-black, man-eating stallion, a brute as utterly devoid
of fear as of docility. A tiger kills to eat, and occasionally for the fun of
it; that horse killed out of ferocity, and hate of every living thing.
A fearful beast is a bad horse. One really has more chance against a
tiger. Geronimo stood seventeen hands high, and weighed over sixteen
hundred