"STAR" TALES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7418, 2 June 1902, Page 4

"STAR" TALES.

A BARGAIN WITH PEG-

LEG. f : tf? (By FRANK NORRIS.) " Hey, Youse !" shouted the car-boy. He brought his trundling, jolting,- loose-jointed car to a halt by the face of the drift. "Hey, youse!" he shouted again. Bunt shut off the Burly air-drill, and sodded: "Chaw," he remarked to me. We clambered into the car, and, us the boy released the brake,, rolled out into the main tunnel of the Big Dipple, and banged and bumped down the long incline that led to the mouth. "Chaw" was dinner. It was one in the morning, and the men on the night-shift were taking their midnight epeli off. Bunt was back at his old occupation of miner, and I — the one loafer of all that little world of workers — had /brought him a bottle of beer to go with the ."chaw"; for Bunt and I were ancient friends.

As we emerged from the cool, cavelike dampness of the mine and ran out into the wonderful night air of the Sierra foothills, worm, dry, redolent of witch-hazel, the carboy began to cough, and, after we had climbed out of the car and ihad sat down on the. embankment to eat and drink, Bunt

"DW-hear that bark? That kid's a one-lunger for fair. Which, it ain't no salubrious graft for him — this hiking care about in the bowels of the earth. Some day he'll sure lip an' quit. Ought to go down to Yuma a spell."

• 'T3i« engineer in the mill was starting the stamps. They got under way with broken, hiccoughing dislocations, bumping And stumbling like the hoofs of a group of bones on the cattle-deck in a gale. Then they jumped to a trot, then to a canter, •nd at last settled down to- the prolonged roaring gallop that reverberated far off over the entire canyon.

> "I knew a one-lunger once," Bunt continued, as he uncorked the bottle, "and the acquaintance was some distressful by reason of its bringing me into strained relations with, a cow-irustlin', hair/liftin', only-orie-born-in-capUvity, man-eatin' brute of a one-legged Greaser which he was named Peg-leg Smith. He was shy a leg because of a shotgun that the other man thought wasn't loaded. And this here happens, lemme tell you, 'way down in the Panamint country, where there wasn't no doctor within twenty miles, and Peg-leg outs with his b'owie and amputates that leg hisself , then later makes a wood stump outa a ole halter andi a table-leg. I guess the whola jing-bang of it turned his head, ior he goes bad and loco thereafter, and begins ehootrn' and r'arin' up an' down the hull Southwest, a-roarin' and a-bellerin' and 1 atakin' on amazin'. We dasn'tsay boo to. a yaller pup while he's round. I never sees 6uch mean blood. Jus' let the boys know that Peg-leg was anyways adjacent an' you can gamble they walked chalk. "Y'see, this Peg-leg lay it out as how he couldn't abide no cussin 1 an' swearin'. He said if there was any tall talkin' done he wanted to do it. And he sure could. I've seed him hold on for six minutes -by the watch an' never repeat hisself once. An' shoot! Say, lemme tell you he did ■lor two Greasers once in a bar-room at La Par, one in front o' him, t'other straight behind, him standing between with a gun in each hand, and'shootin' both guns at the same time. Well,' he was just a terror." declared Blunt, solemnly, "and when he was in real good form there want a man couth of Leadville dared to call his hand.

"Now, the way I met up with this ekunkin' little dewdrop was like this. It iria «t Yuma, at a time when I waS'a kid of about nineteen. It "was a Sunday morning* • Peg-leg w^s intown. He was asleep on a lounge in the back room o' Bud Overick*s Grand Transcontinental Hotel. (I used to guess Bud called it that by reason that it want grand, nor transcontinental, nor yet a. hotel — it was a bar.) This was twenty years ago, and mi those days I JmowM » one-lunger in Yuma named Clarence. (He couldn't help that — he was p good kid — but his name- was Clarence.) We got along first-rate. Yuma was a great consumptive place at that time. They used to come in on every train ; yes, and go out too — by freight. Well, findin' tliftt they couldn't'do much else than jes' sit around an' bark and keep their shawls *ight, these 'ere chaps, kinda drew to- { ether, and lay it out to meet every Sunay morning at Bud's to sorta talk it over |nd have a quiet game. One game they fatad that they played steady, an' when I lifted into Bud's that morning they was About a dozen of 'em at it— Clarence, too. When I came in, there they.be, all sittin' in a circle round a table with a cigar-box An it. They'd each, put four bits into the %ox. That was the pot. "A stranger wouldn't V made nothing "Vy excitra' out of ttoat game, nor yet »uld> ' a> caught on. to what it weTe. For \ in pore yaps jes' sat there, each with his lii je glass thermometer in his mouth, a-waitin' and a- wait-in' and never say in 1 a word. Then bime-by Bud, who's- a-holdin' of the watch on 'em, sings out 'Time!' an 'they all takes their thermometers but an' looks at 'em careful-like to see where they stand.

" ' Mine's ninety- two,' says one. " An 1 another says : ■ ; "'Mine's ninety-six. ' " An Clarence- pipes up— cotighin' all the tfme: " '. Mine's ninety-eight 'n 'alf .' '•■ " An', rid one havin' a higher tempriture than thai; Clarence captures the pot. It was a queer kind o' game. " Well, on that particular Sunday morning they's some unpleasantness along o' one o' the other one-lungers kyin' it out as how Clarence bad done some monkey-busi-ness to make his 1 tempriture so (high. It iwia said as bow Clarence had took and drunk some hot tea afore coinin' into the game at Bud's. They all began to discuss that same pint. 'Naturally, they don't go at it polite, and to make their remarks p'inted they says a cuss-word occasional, and Clarence, bein>' • high-steppin' gent as takes nobody's dust, ■Hnffg it back some forceful. * Then all at once they hears Peg-leg beller from where's he< layin' on the lounge (they ain't figured on his bein-' so contiguous), and he gives it to be understood, does Peg-leg, as how the next one-lunger that indulges in whatsoever profanity will lose Ms Toice abrupt. "They all drops out at that, bar the chap who had the next highest tempriture toClarence. Him having missed the pot by only a degree or "so is considerable sore. ""Why,* says ihe 'I've tad » reg'lar fever since* yesterday afternoon, an' only just dodgefr a hem'rage by a squeak. I'm all legitimate, lam; an' if you alls misdoubts V how my tempriture ain't normal you

kin jes' ask the doctor. I don't take it J ea.«y that a strappin*, healthy gesabe whose case ain't nowheres near the hopeless point yet steps? in here with a scalded mouth and plays it low.' " Clarence he r'ars right up at that an' forgits about Peg-leg an' expresses doubts, not to say convictions,, about this- onelunger's chances of salvation. He puts it all into about three words, an' just as quick as look at it we hears ol' Peg-leg's wooden stump a-comin'. We stampedes considerable prompt, but Clarence falls over a chair, an' before^ he kin get up Peg-leg has him by ' the windpipe. " Now I ain't bulin' myself as a all-round star, hero an' general grand-stand man. But I was sure took with Clarence, an' I'd 'a' been real disappointed if Peg-leg 'ud a killed him that morning— which he sure was try in' to do when I came in for a few chips. " I don' draw on Peg-leg, him being down on this knees over Clarence, an' his back turned, but without sensin' very much what I'<m a-doin' of I grabs holt o' the first part o' Peg-leg that comes foand^. which, so help me, Bob, is 'his old wooden leg. I starts to will him off o' Clarence, but in-stead-o' that I pulls off the wooden leg an' goes a-staggerin' back agin the wall with the thing in my fist. 1 "Y'know how it is now with a- fightin' pup if you pull his tail while he's a-chawin up the other pup. Ye can bat him over the head till you're tired, or kick him till you wars your boot out, an' he'll go right on chawin' the harder. But monkey wifh his tail an' he's that sensitive an techy about it that he'll take a interest right off.

"Well, it were just so with Peg-leg — though I never knew it. Just by accident I'd laid 'holt of him where 'he was tender ; an' when he felt that leg go — £ay, lemme tell you, he was some excited. He forgets •all about Clarence, and he lines out for me, a-«lawin' the air. Lucky ihe'd'lef' his gun in the other room.

"Well, sir, y'cug-ht t6 have seen him, afaoppiri' on one foot, and banging agin the furniture, jes' naturally black in the face with rage, an' doin' his darndest to lay his •hands on me, roarin' all the whiles like a steer with a kinked 1 tail.

"Well, I'm skeered, and. l remarks that same without shame. I'm skeered. I don't want to come to no grapples with Peg-leg in his wrath, an' I knows that so long as ihe can't git 'his leg he can't take after me very fast. Bud's saloon backs right up agin the <bluff over the river. So wfiat do I do bub heave that same wooden leg through one o' the back windows, an' down she goes (as I thought) mebbe seventy feet into the canyon o' the Colorado? iAnd then, mister man, I skins out— fast. )

"I takes me 'headlong flight -by way o' the backroom and on-roofc pitches Peg-leg's gun over into the canyon, too, an' then whips around the corner of the saloon an' fetches out agin 'by the street in front. With his gun gone an' his leg gone, Pegleg — so long's y'ain't within arm's-reach — is as harmless" as ia horned toad. Sq I kind-a hangs round the neighbourhood jes' to see what all moufe turn up. "Pegrleg, after hoppin' tack to find that his gun was gone, to look for his leg comes out by; the front door., hoppin' from one chair to another, an' seem' me standin' there across the street makes remarks ; an' •be informs me that because of this came little turn-up this mornin' I ain't never goin' to live to grow hair on my face. His observations are that vigorous, an' p'inted that I sure begin to see it that way too, and I says to myself : tf ' Now you. Bunt M'Bride. you've cub it out for yoiireelf good and hard, an' ihe rest o' your life ain't goin' to be free from nervousness. "Either y'ought to 'a' let this here hell-roarin' maverick alone or else you should 'a' put him clean out o' business when you had' bolt o' his shootin'-iron. An' I ain't a bit -happy.' And then jes' as wis stage o' the proceedings occurs what yofise" 'ud call a diversion.

"It seemed that -that -wood stump didn't go clean to the Tiver as I first figured, but stuck three-fourths the way down. An' acourse there's a fool ihalf J breed kid who's 'got to chase after it. thinkm' to do Pegleg a good turn. "I don't know nothin' about this, but jes' stand there talkin' back to Peg-leg, an' pretendin' I ain't got no misgivings, when I sees this kid comin' a-cavoortin' an' acayoodlin.' down the street "with -the leg in his hamds, hollerin' out :

" ' Here's your leg, Mister Peg-leg ! I went an' got it for you, 'Mister Peg-leg !' " It- ain't so likely that Peg-leg could V caught me .even if he'd 'had 1 his leg, but I want takin' no chances. An' as Peg -leg starts for the kid I start, too — with, my heart knockin' -agin my front teeth, you can bet. ' •• "I never knew how fast a man could hop till that mornin', en', lookin' at Peg-leg with the tail of my eye as I fan, it seemed to me as how he was a-going over the ground like* a ole he-kangaroo. But somehow he gets off 'his balance and comes down all of a smash like a rickety table, an' I reaches the kid first and takes the leg away from 'him. :

"I guess Peg-leg must V begun to layit out by then that I held a straight flush to his ace hlsh ; for he site down on- the edge of the sidewalk, an', "being some winded too, he just glares. Then byme-by he says:

" ' You think you are some smart now, sonny, but I'm ai-studyin' of your face, so's I'll know who to look for when* I git a new leg; an', believe me, I'll know it, nvson — yours and your friend's too' (he meant Clarence) — 'an', I guess you'll both be kind o' sick afore I'm done with you. You!' he goes on, tremendous disgustful. 'You! an' them one-lungers aswearin' an' ai-eussinf an' bedamnin' an' bedevilin' one-a-other. Ain't ye just ashamed o' yourselves?' (he thought I was a one-lunger too);, 'ain't ye ashamed— befoulin' your mouths, and disturbin' the peace along of a quiet Sunday mornin,' an' you alls waast over in your graves? I'm fair sick o' my job,' he remarks, goin' kind o' thoughtful. 'Ten years now I've been range-ridin; all this yere ranch, a-doin' p' my little, feeble, or*nary best to clean out the mouths o' you men an' purify the atmosphere o' Gods-own-country, but I ain't made one convert. I've pounded 'em an' booted 'em, an' busted 'em an' shot 'em up; an' they go on cussin' each other out harder'n ever. I don' know wat all to do an' I sometimes gets plumb dis-couraged-like.'

"Now hearin' of him talk that-a-way an' a-knowin' of "his weakness, I gits a idea. It's a chanst and mebbee it don't pan out, but I puts it up as a bluff. I don't want, you see, to spend the rest o' my appointed time in. this yere vale o' tears a-dodgin' o' Peg-leg Smith, an' in the end, after all, to git between the wind and a forty-eight calibre do-good, sure not. So I puts up a deal. Says I : 'Peg-leg, I'll make a bargint along o\ you. You lays it rait as how you ain't never converted nobody out o' his swearin' habits. Xow if you want's 'ere's n, chansfc. You giir>me your word .is a gent and 1 a good-,man-an'-true. as how you won't never maka no play to shoot me up. in nowise whatsoever, so long as we both do live, an' promise never to bust me. or otherwise, and promise never to rustle me or interfere