The Fighting Shepherdess | Page 6

most recent host.
Then he searched in the bottom of the wagon until he found a
monkey-wrench which he applied to the nut and twirled dextrously.
Canting the wheel, he moistened his finger tip and touched the exposed
axle.
"Red hot!"
He left it to cool and reached under the seat for a pasteboard shoe-box
and bore it to the side of the road, where he saw a convenient rock.
Both the eagerness of hunger and curiosity was depicted on his face as
he untied the twine which secured it. He was wondering if she had put
in any cheese. The Major especially liked cheese and had not failed to
mention the fact when his hostess had let drop the information that a
whole one had come in 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