The Power of Music

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXI, Issue 12480, 17 September 1904, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Power of Music

The properties are not extinct in Spearfish. A person, for instance, who occupies a seat in the front row of the Palace Theatre is not expected to lean over the orchestra rail and bat violinists with his sombrero. Therefore I accepted the usher's suggestion, seized John Heffren by his elbow, and escorted him up the aisle. John is a gentle giant, did not complain. We went to our room in the hotel.

Dang; fiddlers, anyhow!" he said. "I mistrust 'em worse 'n Injun-raised ponies. Order up a smoke and I'll tell you." He bit the end -of acigar with unusual viciousness and sprawled on the bed. " 'Twas when I was wintering CircleDot horses on the £3hug. Wintering horses is like canned soup. No varietyevery day the same. One morning I pulls on a shirt and cuts over to old man .Bailey's, who run a little outfit nigh to the town of Lucky bottom. I'd knowed him down in the JfanhandJe, and he was kind o' glad to see me again. We lied to each' other in his front room till finally he propounds an enquiry, does I love jelly tarts? I made answer that I certainly could accommodate 'em, and he steps to the door.

' Ada, my girl!' he shouts. ' Move in the pastry for my friend Mr Heft'ien'; and with that in she comes, laughing, barearmed, rattled, and pinky. ' I was all choked up in a minute. There was half a dozen long-legged cow-pur.i hers trailing her—okl man Bailey's hand.--. He made me acquainted, and we sat down around the platter, thick as a bartenders' conventtion. By and by I shook my spurs. "'But you ain't eat none,' saye Bailey. 'You ain't done yourself no credit. John Heffren.' 1

"'Maybe not,' I remarks. ' The> f'- too much sugar in the vicinitty of thes'? here tarts to make 'em easy eating.' " The old man's daughter sort of wing-, tipped inc with her blue eyes. , : "'You can have 'em just as y< - like 'em,' Ada says, next time you come ' "'Thank you kindly, ma'am, soy's I. 'My observations weren't meant to' bear

down on the cookery> which is sure enough Frisco.'

" Well, so it went for a fortnight. .That Ada girl, sir, she had me. I was. rolling over and playing dead whenever she handled the strap; but the worst of it was, I was only, one of a herd. Those cow-punchers of Bailey's was roped, same's-me. Everytime I called on the blue-eyed miracle I'd find some of those yearlings sitting close in the game. One night I talked it out with myself. ( " ' Look a-here, you love-lorn Romeo, I said; ' that gang of suitors must be stampeded. Them half-baked wolves must be learned to distinguish betwixt a Pecos River man and Rocky Mountain goats.' "So I tied on my six-shooter and hit the breeze for Bailey's, but with misgivings. Shows how love will loco a fellow I Honestly, I hated to bend a gun. For why? If I tore things up and down at the old man's he'd have it in for me for discomposing his help, - and- give me the gate for good. Hands, ainH-'plenty on the Chngwa'ter in snow time. ; Reflecting this, I stopped off at.., Lucky Bottom Emporium, after a new cravat, for I was dressing high that winter. There I run against the fiddler; and if I'd unloaded my forty-five into him right then I'd 'a' made money. Why, his name alone would 'a' warned me off if I'd had my senses. It was Ignatius. Ignatius 1 -Well, dog my cats! .

"I'd seen Ignatius in Deadwood' years ago. He was the greatest man with a fiddle in the Black Hills, bar one. That one was me. Oh, I don't blame ycu for being surprised!.. I'm as much 'shamed of it as you are, but I was a big chief on a violin in them days, although I'd never let on about it at Lucky Bottom. Now then, here was this Ignatius stranded with his fiddle-case under his arm, and asking me for to winter him. He was a goodlooking dago, and he sniveled the way they do. I unbelted for a couple of powders at the bar, and' then, sir, the idea struck and left me hands up. " You see, my kid brother got so drunk once that- he enlisted in the cavalry, and was promenaded out to a little one-troop post to lost-and-'gone beyond Kootanie. The kid he smuggled his concertina with him. Do you know what happened? That , troop shrunk. Them warriors faded away. Deserted. It's a gospel fact, lou take music amongst lonely men who ain't used to it, and it makes 'em want to travel. Ask cattlemen or soldiers. I knew a nigger with a piccolo who upset labour conditions - on . the Belle Fourche one summer so we had to hire Mexicans before we spotted. the trouble. A piccolo the worst, 'cause it's kind o' melancholy, but a fiddle's mighty unsettling. "' Sure!' thinks I, slapping the barrail of the Lucky Bottom Emporium. 'l'll slide this here Ignatius into Bailey's outfit for a week, and he'll unwind melodies of despain, continuous. Then the punchers will vacate the locality, and the maid,' says I, 'is mine.' " Crazy? Yes indeed I was in love. Anyhow, I gets the old man to'i give this dago a job patching fences, and, without saving too much, 1 lays out. his tunes for him; and then I sits back in the peepchair and follows the run of the cards. " Say, it was funny. I thought nothing could "be mournfuller than yowling coyotes, but coyotes was a meryr fandango alongside fof Ignatius. Those boys o Bailey's would gather around that troubadour in dejected attitudes, and just look and look and look. When lie tore off ' Annie Laurie,' I felt kind o' like a sheap-herder-mysel f. "Marden was the first of 'em? to quit. One night when Ignatius was cutting the hreart out of ' On, Promise Me,' this Marden fetches a hollow sound from his chest, and says he'd wished a: bracelet onto a girl in' the U. P. eating-Jiouse at Rawlins, and he guessed he'd pull his frieght. Next evening I tipped; off the dago to turn loose on the mother music. That's tthe real stuff after all—' Just Tell Them That You Saw Me,' 'Home Sweet Home,' and the lullaby out of 'Erminie.' Well, sir, that cinched it. 'Twasn't two days efore Scar-nose Beaumont- waltzed up to the old man, coughing good, and ' Give me what's coming to me, Mr Bailey,' he says; 'I ain't seen my folks since Leadville was a camp.' " That's the way of it. Once you have men going silly, they're like geese; .and the tougher the men, the geesier they get. This Beaumont, he was needed by the galHows artists of three States. ! " Finally- here comes Bailey over to my shack with a face on him as long as Sundance Butte. "' Heffrenv' says lie, 'my outfit is powerful short-handed. I'm p'intedly being exterminated,' he says. " ' Too bad,' says I, chuckling side-ways. 'What do you reckon the cause of tnis here emigration movement?' "' I suspicion the dago,' says he. " ' Well,' I says, 1 get shut of him.' " Bailey looked shameful. " ' Have you heard Ignatius rip off " Heel Trovy-tory?"' says he. 'lt's everlasting soothing, and me and Ada's sort of struck on it.' " Right here I smelled Injun, and I reared up had had a secret conference with that fiddler behind Bailey's corral. " ' But where'll I go to?' he says. "' That ain't my business, Ignatius,' says I; ' but go you must before I whale the hide off'n you.' "' I ain't- got a cent,' says he. Maybe you can stake me Mr Heffren.' "I was flat broke !>:- #'f, with buying candy and diamond md such kedidoes for the blue-eye'' :nn-• Ignati.tls, he snivels. "' Don't weep,' says I, ' foi it's plumb nauseating. Me and you will pull off a. musical swarry down to the sclioolhouse, and you can pass the hat- and accumulate stage fare.' " ' Good,' says, Ignatius. ' Now it is time for me to give Miss Ada her music lesson.'

"' Nary lesson,' I says, collaring him ' You'll go back with me to my tepee, and I'll turn a key on you. If you ever speak to Miss Ada again, you'll be shy 1 considerable epidermis, my Norwegian nightingale !' " I brought him home with me and locked him up, and then I harnessed my i. old fiddle and went into private training. Nobody knew I was hot cakes on a violin, and this swarry was just my chance to spring it on 'em. I allowed to round up Lucky Bottom in the schoolhouse, and put it all over that Eyetalian before Ada, soV he wouldn't be in the same reservation wit! me when it came to a show-down on fidling. I calculated just to use that Ignatius for a pace-maker. "The town of Lucky Bottom wasn't more'n a wide place in the road, but it was the most d,ini>nge?t settlement ever I saw. The folks flocked to that swarry like mosquitoes to a white horse. They boiled into the schoolhouse till it bulged. Outside you couldn't have dug up a inhabitant with a steam shovel. I met old man Bailey at the door. "' Watch out Ignatius dosen't talk none to Ada,' says I. "Bailey gave a wink. 'You bet,' he says. ' I'll stick to Ada closer'n bacon rind,' he says. " Abie Kraus, that kept the emporium, he was foreman of the swarry. 'Ladies and gents,' he calls, ' before the grand march there is to be a musical mess on fiddles by Professor Ignatius of Paris, France, and Mr John Heffren, Esquire, of Lucky Bottom. Hate off 1'

" The dago hopped the platform and lit in. 'Peared to me that he was gun shy, or something. He just trotted through the 'Chickadee Polka' as wobbly as a tenderfooted pony in a cactus patch. Presently the boys begun to waft to the door, and 'twasn't long before twenty Lucky Bottomers was outside rolling cigarettes and talking cow. Even old man Bailey and Ada begun to paw and look restless. • I laughed. This was to be easy. I could make medicine with a fiddle that would hold the bunch indoors till sun-up, if I needed.

"And ditj I? You can speculate I did I'knew what them Lucky Bottomers wanted. Those short-horns didn't want no ' Chickadee Polka,' but ' The Maiden's Prayer,' and that inttermezzo what-a-pity out of 'Rusticana.' Them's the goods when you really aim to throw people. I swells out my bosom, and says to my fool self: 'Here is where none of these mavericks leaves the room till I onropes 'em;' and with that I cut in to sod down the dago. " Well, sir, I had 'em in one spin of the wheel. They packed around that platform tightern calves in a branding chute. Old man Bailey was in the front row, and the tears was on his face big as flapjacks. Me I was proud! I turned loose ' Rock of Ages. and looked up at the clock. I'd held the herd six minutes, and I swore to make it twenty; and then unblanket my ' Suwanee River' stock, which I reasoned was good for ten minutes more. ' This is the freeze-out of Signor Ignatius,' says T, bearing down till the catgut screamed murder. ' This is where I b»ry Ig so deep the prairie docs will be upstairs to him!' "You wouldn't 'a' blamed me if you'd saw the schoolroom. The whole of Lucky,

Bottom that night was dangling on the end of my fiddle bow. We'd 'a' been there yet if a string hadn't burst in the middle of ' Weep No More, My Lady.' But it was thirtv-two minutes then.

" The crowd gave a moan like cattle waking up in the morning watch. Old man Bailey came out of his trance and rubbed his eyes. "'Where's Ada?' he mumbles. " 'Anybody seen Ada Bailey ?' says Ivraus.

" I jumps up on a chair. ' Where's the dago ?' I yells. 'Where's Professor Ignatius of Paris, France?' and a tumultuous moment thereupon ensued." My friend Heffren -arose slowly from the bed, and I passed him the water-pitcher in sympathetic silence. '" "Eloped?" I ventured. John nodded. " There was a letter for me pinned onto the schoolhouse door," he continued. "It read: 'Dear FriendWould say that you sure can hold an audience. No more at present from yours till death, Ignatius. P. S. —Ada sends love.'".

He r-ep'aced the pitcher with elaborate, care, and slouched across our bedroom to the window. " They'd drove off our horses," lie said. "They must 'a' been doing that about the -time I was enchanting the old man and the rest into innocuous desuetude with ' Ihe Last Rose of Summer.' Well, they was over the Little Smoky before we catched 'em, and by that time they was married. It turned out all right. The pro' fessor got a steady job at the Orpheum in Cheyenne, and he treats her fine. If he didn't, I"d make holes in him!" The open door of the Senate Saloon shone dully on the opposite side of the street, and _out of it drifted the tremulous wailing of a voilin. Haffren grabbed his pistol from the table, but I protested. " One measly shot!" he begged. I despise 'em so!" I was obdurate. "If you could V tasted Ada s tarts 1 sighed John Heffren."—Edward Boltwood in "Munsey's." .