MISS NOBODY

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 211, 5 September 1892, Page 3

MISS NOBODY

OF NOWHERE

A NOVEL by „ ARCHIBALD CLA.VERING GUNTER, Author of " Mr Barnes of New York," "Mr Potter of Texas," " That Frenchman," "Small Boys in Big Boots," etc. BOOK I. A COLLEGE COWBOY.

CHAPTER 11.

PETE, THE COWBOY.

With a rather gloomy countenance, Phil takes his way to the Parker House, where ho imagines ho will tind somo college chums, who will doubtloes give him sometiling elso than his own woes to think about. But no young man is sad vory long at tho thought of earning his own living ; it takes maturity to teach him the torrore of tho battlo of Hfo, its disappointments and despairs.

By the timo he turns down School-etreot ho is whistling a popular air; and whan he cntors the Purkcr Houso he is laughing to himself at tho thought of how ho'll astonish his father by making a million or two in somo way; for tho young Yale half-back lias got to thinking he can kick a goal as euroly in the game of fortune as ho did in tho day's football match. No collegians chancing to be in the read-ing-room, he picks up tho evening edition of one of tho day's papers, and glancing ovor it has the pleasure of seeing his name in big Icttora heading the account of tho bootball game.

Immediately bolow he notes a letter from Silver City, New Mexico, announcing wonderful discoveries of ore in the Bully Boy mine, with a long account of its lucky owners and tho fortunes that the earth has yielded to their persevering picks. One, whose credit wasn't good for a sack of flour, has, according to this highly - coloured article, jus>t refused o million for his interest. In tho fashion of all mining reports, this one runs along, mentioning rich discoveries everywhere in the district, und failuros and disappointments nowhere. This mass of exaggeration Philip, who has not yot learned the prospector's maxim that, every mine is a good one until you look at it,' believes, and when ho rises from tho perusal has mado up his mind, with tho prompt decision of youth, that Silver City, New Mexico, is the arena upon which he will run his first cour&o to win for bimsolf fortune. Fame, he' fondly thinks, has already como to him this day. This settled in his mind, ha suddenly remembers he had no dinner, and entering tho dining-room, sees his football captain, with several members of the team, taking a bovcroly Spartan meul; for the Princetown game occurs the coming week, and in matters of training this dignitary is a strict disciplinarian to himself as well as the rest of the toaru.

Ii Fhil is not to play, it is necessary that the captain bo notified at once, so that a substitute may be ready. Ho hardlyknows how to open a proposition that he feels sure will bo combated as monstrous and horrible sinco this day's successful effort. Thinking the matter over, he laughs grimly to himsolf: ' I'll break the ico with ice-cream,' and selecting a conspicuous table, whispers to his waitor directions for a generous meal. 'ByGoorge, I'm out of training now ; I'll onjoy it!' he mutters, and adds champagne to his order. He hasn't got very far in his dinner when, looking about, ho notes that his team companions are staring at his meal in horror, and his captain has a stern and terrible look upon his face, while Van Beekman, who is at an adjacent table, has turned white, for tho poor littlo follow has backed Yalo heavily for tho Princeton affair. A moment after the captain rises, and striding over to Phil's table, whispers in an awful and severe voice: ' Champagee ! My Heaven! aro you mad, Everetb ? Champagne ! Stop drinking that poison instantly !' as Phil is just punishing another glass ot wine. A second later, tb6 martinet actually screams out: 'Icecream!' for tho waiter is putting a plato of that stomach-destroyer before his half-back. Then ho gasps out: ' You are crazy !' for tho captain, hardly believing his eyes, almost thinks it an hallucination, and that either he or Everett must bo insane.

1 Not at all,' says Phil, quiebly, rinding his chance to open the matter. 'I'vegone out of training, and am taking advantage of the fact to get the first square meal I've had for two months.'

1 Out of training!' echoes the captain. Then he gives a hideous laugh, and cries out to tho other l'ale men who havo gathered aboui;: 'By the immortal Bob Cook ! he's forgotten the Princeton match.'

' Nob ab all,' remarks Everett, calmly. '.I shall nob bo able to play ia ib.'

' Nob play in it!' cry several of his surrounders, who look even more concerned than before ; for Phil Everett, full of champagne and ice-cream, and fattened for days on macaroons and syllabubs, will still be a harder man for the Princeton rush line to tackle than anysu bstitute that bhoy can put into his position ab this late day. After a moment's glum consideration, the captain mucters: ' You must havo some weighty reason for thiß?' 'I have,1 returns Phil, 'and if you'll come with me I'll tell ib to you as a confidence that is your right.'

So the two move off to a quiet corner of the cafe, where Everett briefly states that family affairs compel him to leave college at once.

And though the captain argues with him, nay, even begs and implores him to remain till after the last game of the season, neither reason nor entreaties have any effect; for this rapid young man, with the impatience of his ago, jumped co the conclusion that every day away from his Eldorado is the chatice of a lost fortune, and if he does not get to Silver City soon there will be no more mines left upon which he can pounce to mako him wealthy.

A few minutes after this interview Phil gives a sudden start. It hus just occurred to him that railroad tickets coßt money. Without funds, how shall ha get to his distant Eldorado?

This matter is made easier to him a moment afterward. Van Beekman saunters up to him and says, for the rumour has gone around : ' Had a row with papa, eh ? That don't amount to much. You should —awh—h.'indlo your paternal as I do.'

' How is thab ?' asks Everett, a little curiously.

' Why, kisa it oufc of him in public. My dad was once going to row me at Delmonico'a. I was only seventeen, and drinking B. and S., and ho was going to pitch into me for it. It would have been awfully embarrassing before a lot of raen, yer know. He had just shouted at. me across the cafe, in a fearfully savage voice : " What's that you're drinking, sir?" when I stopped him. I cried: "Oh, is that you, papa dear, you lovely old chap; come down to have fun with your little sonny ? You look so pretty, I am going to kiss your dear old face!" And up I jumped and seized him and embraced him and kissed him till I—awh—actually kissed him out of the place, for ho fled from me in horror, my boy. But I tell you it took nerve to do it. While the chaps were laughing and cheering I took two more B. & S.s to stiffen me. By the bye, Burton paid his joint bet with us that he lost on this game. Here's the bills. Tin is always .handjf when daddy turna bin back on you,'

And handing Everett a wad of greenbacks, thia juvenile philosopher saunters away. Phil gazes for a moment at the money and eneers : ' I didn't know I was playing for my bread and butter when I made that kick. Wonder if this would bar me out for professionalism?' A second after his face gets hopeful as he counts the money, and mutters: 'Two hundred dollars! That'll take me where I want to go.' Then he steps down to the Boston and Albany depot and takes tho train for Now Haven. The next week the Yale-Princeton frame is played, and without his services Yale loses to that plucky little New Jersey College, whose backers may always feel sure that the orange and black tiger stripes will never be lowered so long as desperate fighting can hold them up. Before this Philip Eaton Travers Everett had written to his mother of his quarrel with his father, and his purpose to find fortune in the West, and was on his way to New Mexico, with the most serviceable of his tine raiment packed in a valise initialled ' P.E.T.E.,' and some threo hundred dollars in his pocket, the proceeds of a forced sale of his college effects, less various claims upon him for local bills. A few days after this he is standing in tho bar-room of tho' Pot-Luck' Hotel, Silver City, and has already found the road to fortune a hard one, having dropped onehalf his cash in a poker game into which he had been beguiled by some professional gamblers, one of them a Mexican monte dealer disguised as a cattleman, another figuring as a Methodist parson, and the third as a drummer for a St. Louis dry-goods house.

Hotels in Now Mexican mining towns at that time wore made either of adobe or unseasoned lumber, their partitions always o£ the latter, and what was said aloud in one room was the property of tho person in the next.

As Phil Everett is thinking of his loss rather in sorrow than in anger, grief changes to indignation, for he hears the voice of the supposed Mexican cattledrover, in the oflico adjoining, laughingly telling in broken English how he scalped the Eastern jay. Without thought of consequences, he steps into the room, and confronting the swindler, colls him a robber and slaps his face; and is pulling off his coat to fight, and would be dead the next minute, for the gainblor is drawing his pistol, when the cold muzzle of an old-fashioned Colt's revolvor is clapped against the Mexican's forehead, and a quiet voice says in his ear : lUp with your hands, Three-Card Juan ! Quick ! or I'll blow your brains into the spitoon ! I won't have no innocents without guns murdered round heah !' This address \s very rapidly obeyed ; for it comes from Brick Garvey, the sheriff of the county, and one of the surest shots in the West.

' Now,' says the old gentleman, who lias white hair, and has been one of the pioneers ot Toxas, where he has learned the trade of slaying with Samson Potter, Sam Houston, Jack Hayes, and other celebrated frontiersmen—' now '—his voice is very kindly—' now, we'll investigate affairs a leetlo.1 Then he suddenly whispers : 'Hands up, Juan !—or ye won't know what's hurt ye,' for he has caught a suspicious movement on the part of the monte dealer. ' Perhaps it'll bo safer for you if I remove your weepons,' which he doe 3 with the expertness of long practice, confiscating a revolver from the man's hip-pocket, and bowieknife from his boot.

' What kind of a show would you have had with these ag'n you, Tenderfoot ?' he remarks, with a grin, to Phil, who is standing in his shirt aleeves. ' What wore you going to do with that sharper, anyways ?' ' Hammer him !' cried Phil, and tells his story. ' Hammer him ? What with ?—a club V ' No, with my fists !' To thiß Garvey cries suddenly : ' So you shall if yon'ro able to. Stand up before him, Three-Card Juan! Stand up with nature's weapons and show if you're the best man ; stand up or I'll perforate ye!' Thus commanded, Three-Card Juan, who has had much experience in rough-and-tumble bar-room rows, draws himself together, and before Phil knows what is coming, launches himself like a wild-cat on the collegian.

As he does so Garvey cries warningly: 'Lower yer head : don't leb the Greaser git his fingers in your ha'r !' And some of the few spectators cry : ' Look out for gouging !' for the monie man is an awful expert at this cruel Mexican trick, and would have Everett's eyes out of his head in a second, had not the young man's hair been cropped shorf r football purposes, so Juan can got nc finder purchase.

The next instant Phil has torn himself from his opponent's grasp, with his eyes even now inflamed and red, for the scoundrel has already done some work upon them. Then his big fist shoots out straight from his shoulder, and Three-Card Juan goes into the corner in a bunch. But it is only to take another spring, and he is again upon Phil, biting, scratching, and kicking, though a minute after felled again; for his strength is as almost a boy's compared with the Yale rusher's trained muscles.

''Don't fight that cat scientific, you young fool 1 Use your feet; ho tfoes his. Your legs look good enough. When he kicks, you kick !'

'So I will,' mutters Phil, grimly, as his opponent, who has been circling round him, Indian fashion, thinking he sees an opening, springs for the collegian's face. As the gambler rises to his leap, Everett, taking one step forward, swings his leg with the same weight and power he put into the mighty drop kick on the Boston grounds but two short weeks before; his foot meets the little Mexican in mid-air, and eends him sailing through the open door on to the bar-room floor, where he lies writhing and would groan with agony and cry out only that he has no breath in him with which to do it.

A little gasp of surprise comes from the spectators, and Garvey cries in astonishment : ' Good Lord, whab a kick! Darn me if you didn't hoisb him as if he war a football. I'd bet on you agin a mule. Run, Bomebody, and gob a tape line and measure the distance the Greaser went.'

And they do so—and to this day the marks are on that bar-room floor—it is called the 'Tenderfoot's Kick,' and measures twelve feet seven and one-half inches.

While this is going on Garvey suddenly asks : What's your name, anyway?' And the hotel-clerk, who is anxious to have his Bay in the matter, answers promptly, ' Pets ! ' for he has read the initials 'P.E.T.E.' on Phils valise. The collegian, who has not as yet registered, being perhaps rather ashamed of his part in what has just taken place, does not contradict him, and from that time on Phil Evereb is known throughout JSew Mexico and Arizona by the humble bub expressive cognomen spelt by his initials.

Shortly after the Mexican showing signs ot revival, Mr Garvey remarks: I'll jist pub that Greaser in the lock-up; the jidge'U give him three months for card sharping.' Hasn t the scoundrel had punishment enough?' remarks Phil, looking at the man, who can hardly move. ' Younar man, I do this to save your life,' returns Garvey, shortly. 'If he stayed out, he d perforate you sure. By the timo v ... as>i? y°u musb be heeled and able to take care of yourself. And before further trouble arises I'll give you a leetle advice : Shoot your man dead in this commumty fust, and call him a liar afterward ; otherwise, you'll bo planted before you've got used to the climate. Let's liquor, boys; and give that Greaser some vjhisfcy, too. My under-sheritf runs a prohibition gaol, and it 1 be a lontr time for Jian between drinks. With this he drag? tho cardBharpsr off to gaol, leaving the tru??ft eitssd.

dering at the horrible thoughb of a temper* ance prison. (To be Continuzd.)