The Man on the Box | Page 3

narrative,
but as I was passively concerned, I do not see how I can avoid it.
Besides, being a public man, I am not wholly averse to publicity; first
person, singular, perpendicular, as Thackeray had it, in type looks
rather agreeable to the eye. And I rather believe that I have a moral to
point out and a parable to expound.
My appointment in Washington at that time was extraordinary; that is
to say, I was a member of one of those committees that are born

frequently and suddenly in Washington, and which almost immediately
after registration in the vital statistics of national politics. I had been
sent to Congress, a dazzling halo over my head, the pride and hope of
my little country town; I had been defeated for second term; had been
recommended to serve on the committee aforesaid; served with honor,
got my name in the great newspapers, and was sent back to Congress,
where I am still to-day, waiting patiently for a discerning president and
a vacancy in the legal department of the cabinet. That's about all I am
willing to say about myself.
As for this hero of mine, he was the handsomest, liveliest rascal you
would expect to meet in a day's ride. By handsome I do not mean
perfect features, red cheeks, Byronic eyes, and so forth. That style of
beauty belongs to the department of lady novelists. I mean that peculiar
manly beauty which attracts men almost as powerfully as it does
women. For the sake of a name I shall call him Warburton. His given
name in actual life is Robert. But I am afraid that nobody but his
mother and one other woman ever called him Robert. The world at
large dubbed him Bob, and such he will remain up to that day (and may
it be many years hence!) when recourse will be had to Robert, because
"Bob" would certainly look very silly on a marble shaft.
What a friendly sign is a nickname! It is always a good fellow who is
called Bob or Bill, Jack or Jim, Tom, Dick or Harry. Even out of
Theodore there comes a Teddy. I know in my own case the boys used
to call me Chuck, simply because I was named Charles. (I haven't the
slightest doubt that I was named Charles because my good mother
thought I looked something like Vandyke's Charles I, though at the
time of my baptism I wore no beard whatever.) And how I hated a boy
with a high-sounding, unnicknamable given name!--with his round
white collar and his long glossy curls! I dare say he hated the name, the
collar, and the curls even more than I did. Whenever you run across a
name carded in this stilted fashion, "A. Thingumy Soandso", you may
make up your mind at once that the owner is ashamed of his first name
and is trying manfully to live it down and eventually forgive his
parents.

Warburton was graduated from West Point, ticketed to a desolate
frontier post, and would have worn out his existence there but for his
guiding star, which was always making frantic efforts to bolt its
established orbit. One day he was doing scout duty, perhaps half a mile
in advance of the pay-train, as they called the picturesque caravan
which, consisting of a canopied wagon and a small troop of cavalry in
dingy blue, made progress across the desert-like plains of Arizona. The
troop was some ten miles from the post, and as there had been no sign
of Red Eagle all that day, they concluded that the rumor of his being on
a drunken rampage with half a dozen braves was only a rumor.
Warburton had just passed over a roll of earth, and for a moment the
pay-train had dropped out of sight. It was twilight; opalescent waves of
heat rolled above the blistered sands. A pale yellow sky, like an
inverted bowl rimmed with delicate blue and crimson hues,
encompassed the world. The bliss of solitude fell on him, and, being
something of a poet, he rose to the stars. The smoke of his corncob pipe
trailed lazily behind him. The horse under him was loping along easily.
Suddenly the animal lifted his head, and his brown ears went forward.
At Warburton's left, some hundred yards distant, was a clump of osage
brush. Even as he looked, there came a puff of smoke, followed by the
evil song of a bullet. My hero's hat was carried away. He wheeled, dug
his heels into his horse, and cut back over the trail. There came a
second flash, a shock, and then a terrible pain in the calf of his left leg.
He fell over the neck of his horse to escape the third bullet.