The Fighting Shepherdess | Page 6

with the last freight wagon from town. He removed the cover and his smile of anticipation gave place to a look of astonishment and incredulity. It was difficult to believe his eyes! Not only was there no cheese, but that chicken wing and back which had been left on the platter last night, and which he had been as sure of as though he had put them in himself, were not in the box. He felt under the paper as though hoping against hope that the box contained a false bottom where the chicken might be concealed. There was no deception. He saw all there was.
"Sinkers!" His voice expressed infinite disappointment and disgust. He prodded one of the cold soda biscuits with his finger, took it out and set the box on the ground beside him. He was hungry, therefore, insulted as he felt, he had to eat, but he looked over his shoulder in the direction from which he had come, and said aloud, "Them Scissor-bills'll know it when I stop there again!" The declaration was in the nature of a threat. While he munched the dry biscuit, which contained but a trace of butter between the two halves, he gazed off at the vista of nothing in particular that stretched out before him.
On his left the sand and sagebrush, cacti and sparse bunch-grass was bounded by the horizon; behind him, in front of him, it was the same; only on the right was the monotony broken by foothills and beyond, a range of purple snow-covered peaks. From the slight elevation or "bench" upon which he sat he looked down upon a greasewood flat where patches of alkali gleamed dazzling white under the noon-day sun. The flat was quarter-circled by a waterless creek upon whose banks grew a few misshapen and splintered cottonwoods.
The countless millions of nearly invisible gnats that breed in alkali bogs sighted the Major and promptly rose in swarms to settle upon his ears and in the edges of his hair. He fanned them away automatically and without audible comment. Perhaps they served as a counter-irritant; at any rate, the sting of the indignity put upon him by what he termed a "hobo lunch" was finally forgotten in more agreeable thoughts.
In the distance there was an interesting cloud of dust. Was it cattle, loose horses, or some one coming that way? The Major's eyesight was not all it had been and he could not make out. Since they were coming from the opposite direction he was sure to have his curiosity gratified. His roving eyes came back to the greasewood flat and rested there speculatively. Suddenly his jaw dropped and a crumb rolled out. He looked as though an apparition had risen before his bulging eyes. Involuntarily he sprang to his feet and cried, "My Gawd--what a great place to start a town!"
The idea came with such startling force that it seemed to the Major as if something broke in his brain. Other ideas followed. They came tumbling over each other in their struggle to get out all at once. A panorama of pictures passed so swiftly before his eyes that it made him dizzy. His eyes gleamed, the color rose in his weather-beaten cheeks, the hand with which he pointed to the greasewood flat below trembled as he exclaimed in an excitement that made his breath come short:
"The main street'll run up the creek and about there I'll put the Op'ry House. The hotel'll stand on the corner and we'll git a Carnegie Libery for the other end of town. The High School can be over yonder and we'll keep the saloons to one side of the street. There'll be a park where folks can set, and if I ain't got pull enough to git a fifty thousand dollar Federal Buildin'--"
Then came the inspiration which made the Major stagger back:
"I'll git the post office, and name it Prouty!"
He felt so tremulous that he had to sit down.
It seemed incredible that he had not thought of this before, for deep within him was a longing to have his name figure in the pages of the history of the big new state. Tombstones blew over, dust storms obliterated graves, photographs faded, but with a town named after him and safely on the map, nobody could forget him if he wanted to.
The Major's assertion concerning his "pull" was no idle boast. There were few men in the state with a wider acquaintance, and he was a conspicuous figure around election time. The experience he had acquired in his younger days selling Indian Herb Cough Syrup from the tailboard of a wagon, between two sputtering flambeaux, served him in good stead when, later, he was called upon to make a few patriotic remarks at a Fourth of July Celebration.