Part 13

“Come on, there, you mangy, turtle-backed, snake-headed, bench-legged ton-and-a-half of soap-grease!” shouted the dogman, with a new note in his voice and a new hand on the leash. The dog scrambled after them, with an angry whine at such unusual language from his guardian.

At the foot of Twenty-third Street the dogman led the way through swinging doors.

“Last chance,” said he. “Speak up.”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

“I don’t know,” said the ranchman, “where I’ll find the man I want to take charge of the Little Powder outfit. I want somebody I know something about. Finest stretch of prairie and timber you ever squinted your eye over, Sam. Now if you was—”

“Speaking of hydrophobia,” said the dogman, “the other night he chewed a piece out of my leg because I knocked a fly off of Marcella’s arm. ‘It ought to be cauterized,’ says Marcella, and I was thinking so myself. I telephones for the doctor, and when he comes Marcella says to me: ‘Help me hold the poor dear while the doctor fixes his mouth. Oh, I hope he got no virus on any of his toofies when he bit you.’ Now what do you think of that?”

“Does Missis Telfair—” began Jim.

“Oh, drop it,” said the dogman. “Come again!”

“Whiskey,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” said the dogman.

They walked on to the ferry. The ranchman stepped to the ticket window.

Suddenly the swift landing of three or four heavy kicks was heard, the air was rent by piercing canine shrieks, and a pained, outraged, lubberly, bow-legged pudding of a dog ran frenziedly up the street alone.

“Ticket to Denver,” said Jim.

“Make it two,” shouted the ex-dogman, reaching for his inside pocket.

VII. THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER

If you should speak of the Kiowa Reservation to the average New Yorker he probably wouldn’t know whether you were referring to a new political dodge at Albany or a leitmotif from “Parsifal.” But out in the Kiowa Reservation advices have been received concerning the existence of New York.

A party of us were on a hunting trip in the Reservation. Bud Kingsbury, our guide, philosopher, and friend, was broiling antelope steaks in camp one night. One of the party, a pinkish-haired young man in a correct hunting costume, sauntered over to the fire to light a cigarette, and remarked carelessly to Bud:

“Nice night!”

“Why, yes,” said Bud, “as nice as any night could be that ain’t received the Broadway stamp of approval.”

Now, the young man was from New York, but the rest of us wondered how Bud guessed it. So, when the steaks were done, we besought him to lay bare his system of ratiocination. And as Bud was something of a Territorial talking machine he made oration as follows:

“How did I know he was from New York? Well, I figured it out as soon as he sprung them two words on me. I was in New York myself a couple of years ago, and I noticed some of the earmarks and hoof tracks of the Rancho Manhattan.”

“Found New York rather different from the Panhandle, didn’t you, Bud?” asked one of the hunters.

“Can’t say that I did,” answered Bud; “anyways, not more than some. The main trail in that town which they call Broadway is plenty travelled, but they’re about the same brand of bipeds that tramp around in Cheyenne and Amarillo, At first I was sort of rattled by the crowds, but I soon says to myself, ‘Here, now, Bud; they’re just plain folks like you and Geronimo and Grover Cleveland and the Watson boys, so don’t get all flustered up with consternation under your saddle blanket,’ and then I feels calm and peaceful, like I was back in the Nation again at a ghost dance or a green corn pow-wow.

“I’d been saving up for a year to give this New York a whirl. I knew a man named Summers that lived there, but I couldn’t find him; so I played a lone hand at enjoying the intoxicating pleasures of the corn-fed metropolis.

“For a while I was so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights and the noises of the phonographs and the second-story railroads that I forgot one of the crying needs of my Western system of natural requirements. I never was no hand to deny myself the pleasures of sociable vocal intercourse with friends and strangers. Out in the Territories when I meet a man I never saw before, inside of nine minutes I know his income, religion, size of collar, and his wife’s temper, and how much he pays for clothes, alimony, and chewing tobacco. It’s a gift with me not to be penurious with my conversation.

“But this here New York was inaugurated on the idea of abstemiousness in regard to the parts of speech. At the end of three weeks nobody in the city had fired even a blank syllable in my direction except the waiter in the grub emporium where I fed. And as his outpourings of syntax wasn’t nothing but plagiarisms from the bill of fare, he never satisfied my yearnings, which was to have somebody hit. If I stood next to a man at a bar he’d edge off and give a Baldwin-Ziegler look as if he suspected me of having the North Pole concealed on my person. I began to wish that I’d gone to Abilene or Waco for my paseado; for the mayor of them places will drink with you, and the first citizen you meet will tell you his middle name and ask you to take a chance in a raffle for a music box.

“Well, one day when I was particular hankering for to be gregarious with something more loquacious than a lamp post, a fellow in a caffy says to me, says he: