SHORT STORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2273, 23 September 1897, Page 42

SHORT STORY.

A HEROINE OF LEADYILLE.

MOTHEE GANNON AND THE ORDER

SHK KEPT IN CAMP,

" The written history of mining camps always seems to me to be made up chiefly of the gun doings of marshal? and sheriffs and the bad men they plasted ia Uie line of duty or otherwise," said Jeff Ktecaid, a Colorado mining engineer, to a group of smokers in a House comuiitfes room the other afternoon. "This is all right so far as ifc goes. The preservation o.f crder in a mining camp by means of sawed-off slug shooters with the sights filed away was hefty enough work to entitle the swift-thinking and speedy-acting men who succeeded ac it to any amount of immortality. But as peace culturists these fellows who wore theii badges with becoming modesty on the other side of their bslts were certainly not the whole tbiog. The solid, ahrewd, masterful, big-hearted women who ran the camp boarding houses during Colorado's early mining booms had every bit as much to do with the holding in aud toning down of the rough, violent-tempered fellows who flicked to the diggings as did any of the official mankillera and legal gnn-fannera. The men with the conoealed badges ruled by the right of might ; their reputations inspired fear. But the women I speak of, while there was csrtainly nothing soft or namby-pambyish about them, exercised the sort of influence that any good woman, even if her face be as homely as 'dobe fence, can command over the most turbulent of men, and it would be hard to estimate the cumber of hot-headed fellows whose lives were saved through the instrumentality or intervention of the oldtime boarding-hou«e mistresses. "I am thinking particularly of Mother Gannon, of L9advill«. Every man who spent any lime in Leadville between :70: 70 and 73 io bound to remember her. She was one of the beet women I ever met, even if her hands ware red and podgy and she wore men's brogans. Her boarding house had room for nearly 60 m«sn. It was full all the time, and plenty of fellows always had their names down for possible vacancies, and there wasn't a man in the mob of us who wasn't bettor

off for living at Mother Gannon's • reform joint,' as the boys called it. Not that any kind of Sunday school atmosphere pervaded the house, but simply because Mother Gannon saw that the boys she accommodated with rooms and board behaved themselves like whits men both at home and abroad, and it kind o1o 1 pleaeed 'em and mellowed 'em up some to feel that there was anything around in the shape of a woman who cared a continental whether they went to the devil or not.

" All the men at Mother Gannon's shack got into the habit of calling her • M*w,' just like a pack of school kids, and the toughest man in the gang wouldn't dare to give her a word of slack on pain of his life, for the others wouldn't stand for such mutiny. No matter how soundly you w«re berated by the old lady — and she never roasted one of her boya without he needed it — you bad to take it In Bilence or look out for trouble. When any of the gang would take sick, Mother Gannon would drop everything downstairs, turning her kitchen over to the Ohinamen, and do as nice and careful a stunt of nursing as could be got in any hospital. She was a big, strong woman, and could handle an average man with ease, and yet when ehe got on her carpet slippers in a sick-rdbm, the sick man couldn't tell but what he was alone. She certainly did know how to pull a man through the delirium tremena, but she would never do this for the same man twice. ' She would never forgive a man who went back on her on the rum question after giving her his promise that he was going to quit. I remember how George Mahaney found this out. George had a good claim, with plenty in sight, but he let whisky get a hold on him, and neglected his work. He was a good, square follow, and Mother Gannon liked him, although she certainly did bum him up often enough for blowing in all his .money and spending most of his time on red liquor. Finally George keeled over in a booze dispernary down town one day, and he wan carried to his room at Mother Gannon's with as bad a case of the hooters as ever made a man see pink zebras and green prairie dogs.

" The old lady tucked, up her sleeves, put ob a clean white apron and her carpet slipper?, and that was the last we saw of her downstairs for a week. She didn't say a word of reproach to Mahauoy while he was laid up with the dose. On Sunday morning early Mahaney came down, dressed up all right, but looking pretty cheap and done up. Mother Gannon followed, tying on the queerlookiog old bounet, covered with red poppies, that she always wore. " ' George,' cays she to Mahaney, • get on your hat and oome along with me.' " ' What for ? Where ? ' says Mahaney. " ' You're goin' to mass,' says the old lady, 1 and when mass is over you're goin' to the priest to ■ take the pledge. And you're goin' to Bee that you keep it, too.'

" Mahaney saw it was no use making any kick ; so be clappsd on his hat and went with the old lady. He hadn't been inside a charch for ,15 yeare, either. Mother Gannon took the big fellow around to the eacristy after the service was over, and Gsorge duly signed hig name to the pledge. Thoee among us that wanted to guy him when he got back decided that it wouldn't be wise to . do it in the old lady's hearing, and so wa kept still.

" Mehaney weut to work on bib claim the nex l . day, and for a whole month he went alscg as straight as a shaft cable. Tb«n one day ho turned up ai dinner with about three paits of a jag on. Mother Gannon heard his foolish talk from the kitchen, where she was bossing the Chink oooks, and ehe oarae to the dining-room door. When she Baw^ifahaney sitting there at the table, mumbling away, she, looked at him for a moment in disgnGt. Then she turned and went back into the kivcheo. She reappeared in a 6eoond with a big horns- made rolling pin in her hand. She walked over to where George was (sitting — he wa3 a man 6ft 2in tall — yanked him out of his seat, end when she «at down in a chair she had Mahaney struggling across her knee in an attitude he hadn't been* in sinoe he was about eight years old. She certainly did drum him good, too. He was too game a man to ask for quarter or to let ont a word, but he afterwards told us that that rolling-pin hurt worse than anything he had ever been up against. When the old lady finally let him loose and he got to his feet he looked the part of the Bpanked, shame-faced boy all over; The thing was a lesson to him, and when he had stopped drinking for fair for over % year Mother Gannon made an exception in his case — a little repentant, I guens.for having made him feel so small — and let him oome back to her houee.

" The old lady had come peculiar methods of keeping her ' Injun?,' as she used to affectionately call some of them, out of the way of trouble. Oae morning before breakfast Link Sloan, a pretty quiet qu&rlz-pounder when he was let alcne, but bad and evil all the way through when lie was picked on, went into the kitchen, where the old lady was superintending the preparations for the morning meal. Link bad a queer light in his eye. " ' Maw,' cays he, ' I certainly am goin' to shoot up that rubber-neckin' Jim Worlty on sight.' " Jim Worley was then one of Leadville's night marshals. " « What's he been doin' to you, Link ? ' says the old lady. " ' I was comin' along home a little after midnight this mornin', mindin' my own business,' says Link, • when this here night shooter, drunker'n an owl, popped out of the Mountain Lion saloon, aooverin' me with both his guns, and reckoned I had better git along home and off the straeb pretty lively. He had the drop on me, and I had to git. But I never did nothin' to him, and I'm going to plug him to-day or get plugged myself.'

" Ths old lady studied for a minute. , " ' Your liable to get plugged yourself, Link,' aays she finally, 'for Jim Worley's always sober in the daytime, and he's quicker'n chain lightning on the draw when he's sober. And I'll tell you what, before you let him ehoot you up you ought to go and shave youieelf so's we can bury you decent, seem' that none of these here coyotes of Ld&dville barbers will shave dead men any more. Go on upstairs and shave yourself, Liok.'

" Sloan caw the sense of this and went upstairs to his room. Mother Gannon was right on his heels, though Link didn't know it, and ho had no Eoouer got iaiide his

room than the old lady slammed the heavy door shut and locked it on the outside. " 'You stay in there, Link, until I turn yon loose,' says Mother Gannon through the door, and it surely was a proper case of stay in for Link, the windows of his room overhanging a ravine and the door strong enough to resist a battaring-ram. "The old lady was mad. She got her funny bonnet tied on one side, of her head in a twinkling, and marched down town on a hunt for Jim Worl»y. She met up with him aB ha was coming out of a gin mill, bound for his quarters for a day* sleep. Mother Gannon walked right up. to him, knocked off his big slouch hat into the ditch with a quick sweep of her right hand, and then stepped on the hat with both feet — a point of vantage wherefrom ebe addressed the stupefied night marshal. " ' Jim Worley,' says old Maw Gannon, f hostile all the way through, ' you'ro a loafer and a coward. You're no good. You're the meanest and obeapest white man that stands in boots. What do you mean by pickin' on my boys ? ' " • Ain't pickin' on nobody,' says Worlay. " • You're a liar,' says Mother Gannon. 1 You bulldoaad my Link Sloan last night — the quietest and deoentest man in the camp.' " ' Don't remember notbin' about it,' says Worley. • Must have been loaded.' " ' It don't make any difference whether you were loaded or not,' says the old lady— • you bulldozed him, and that's enough. And he'd have killed you before this if I hadn't locked him up. You're goin' right up to my shack to apologise to him right now, too,' she fini«hed. 11 ' Not much, I ain't,' said Worley. " ' Ob, yes, you are, Jim,' cays the old lady, quiet like, and the night marshal was like to have gone under when Mother Gannon flashed on him just as bad a looking '48 as he ever saw. She had the plainest kind of a drop on him. ' Come on, Jim.' " Worley thought it over for a minute. He really didn't recall his run-in with Sloan the night before, and be wasn't a bulldozer when he was lober. 'Pat away your gun, old lady,' aays he. ' You don't need it. I don't remember doin' notbin' to this here man, but if what you nay is on the level I don't mind goin' up there with you to square it with him.' " He went up with her, and Mother Gannon took him right up to Link's room. Worley did the right thing, being a square kind of a man when he wasn't in liquor, and the two men traded guns as a sign of peace. " • Now, you go on to your work,' says the old lady to Link after the night marshal had gone, 'and hereafter if you keep from runnin' around town at all hours after midnight you won't get into auy more trouble.' " When old Mother Gannon died suddenly of heart disease in the foil of 73 work was practioally ebut down for the day in Loadr ville, and I haven't got any prouder recollection than that of having been one of her pall-bearefel" — New York Son.