Red Saunders | Page 5

won't take from nobody.'
"'D-d-darn him!' snivels Jonesy, 'I ain't afraid o-o-of him;' and the
strange fact is that he wasn't. Well, I saw he was in such a taking that
he might do something foolish and get hurt, so I goes to Arizona and
says I, 'You ought to apologize to Jones.' What Zony replied ain't worth
repeating--'and you along with him,' he winds up.
"'Now ain't that childish?' I says. 'A six-footer like you that can shoot
straight with either hand, and yet ain't got generosity enough to ease the
feelings of a poor little devil that's fair busting with shame.'
"'Well, what did he want to tell me to shut up my mouth for?' cried Old
Dry Belt. 'Men have died of less than that.'
"'Aw, shucks, Zony,' I says, 'a great, big man like you oughtn't to come
down on a little cuss who's all thumb-hand-side and left feet.'
"'That be blowed,' says he--only he says it different. 'I'd like to know
what business such a sawed-off has to come and tell a full-grown man
like me to shut up his mouth? He'd ought to stay in a little man's place
and talk sassy to people his own size. When he comes shooting off his
bazoo to a man that could swaller him whole without loosening his
collar, it's impidence; that's what it is.'
"'Well, as a favour to me?' I says.
"'Well, if you put it in that way--I don't want to be small about it.'
"So Arizona goes up to Jones and sticks out his hand. 'There's my hand,
Jones,' he says. 'I'm mighty sorry you told me to shut up my mouth,'
says he.
"'So am I,' says Jones heartily, not taking in the sense of the words, but
feeling that it was all in good intention. So that was all right and I stood
in with the management in great shape for fixing up the fuss so pleasant.
But it didn't last. They say nothing lasts in this world. There's some
pretty solid rocks in the Coeur d'Alene, however, and I should like to
wait around and see if they don't hold out, but I'll never make it. I've

been in too much excitement.
"Well, the next thing after Jonesy got established was that his niece
must come out during vacation and pay him a visit. 'Jee-rusalem!'
thinks I, 'Jonesy's niece!' I had visions of a thin, yaller, sour little piece,
with mouse-coloured hair plastered down on her head, and an unkind
word for everybody. Jonesy told me about her being in college, and
then I stuck a pair of them nose-grabber specks on the picture. I can
stand 'most any kind of a man, but if there's anything that makes the
tears come to my eyes it's a botch of a woman. I know they may have
good qualities and all that, but I don't like 'em, and that's the whole of it.
We gave three loud groans when we got the news in the bull-pen. And I
cussed for ten minutes straight, without repeating myself once, when it
so fell out that the members of the board rolled out our way the day the
girl had to be sent for, and Jonesy couldn't break loose, and your Uncle
was elected to take the buckboard and drive twenty miles to the railroad.
I didn't mind the going out, but that twenty miles back with Jonesy's
niece! Say, I foamed like a soda-water bottle when I got into the
bull-pen and told the boys my luck.
"'Well,' says Kyle Lambert, 'that's what you might expect; your sins
have found you out.'
"'No, they ain't; they've caught me at home as usual,' says I. 'Well, I'll
give that Eastern blossom an idea of the quality of this country
anyhow.' So I togs myself up in the awfullest rig I could find; strapped
two ca'tridge belts to me, every hole filled, and a gun in every holster;
put candle-grease on my mustache and twisted the ends up to my
eye-winkers; stuck a knife in my hatband and another in my boot;
threw a shotgun and a rifle in the buckboard, and pulled out quick
through the colt-pens before Jonesy could get his peeps onto me.
"Well, sir, I was jarred witless when I laid my eyes on that young
woman. I'd had my mind made up so thorough as to what she must be
that the facts knocked me cold. She was the sweetest, handsomest,
healthiest female I ever see. It would make you believe in fairy stories
again just to look at her. She was all the things a man ever wanted in
this world rolled up in a prize package. Tall, round and soople, limber
and springy in her action as a thoroughbred,