Orpheus on the Chug

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 23, 9 June 1906, Page 14

Orpheus on the Chug

THE proprieties 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 hat violinists with his sombre! <>. Therefore I accepted the usher’s suggestion, seized big John Heffren by his elbow, and escorted him up the aisle. John is a gentle giant, and did not complain. We went to our room in the hotel.

"Dang tiddlers, anyhow!" he said. “I mistrust' ’em woise ’n Injun-raised ponies. Order up a smoke and I’ll tell you." ,

He bit the end of a cigar with unusual vieiousness and sprawled on the bed. *• "Twas when I was wintering CireleDot horses on the Chug. Wintering horses is like canned soup. No variety every 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 Lueky Bottom. I’d knowed him down in the Panhandle, and he was kind o’ glad to see me again. We lied to each other in his front room till finally he propounds a inquiry, does I love jell 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. Heffren’; and with that in she- comes, laughing, bare-armed, rattled, and pinky. "I was all choked up in a minute. There wa_> half a dozen long-legged cowpunchers trailing her—old man Bailey s hand’s. He-made me acquainted, and we eat down around the platter, thick- as a invention. By and by 1 •vjguteyou ain’t eat none,’ says B-P? leyC ,‘Vqh' aiuftr. done credig ■•‘HMteen?' " ..... ... • •? ‘Maybe 1 much sugar in the yiflinity of these here tartsTo make ’em easy eating.’ ' "The old man’s daughter sort of wingtipped me with her blue eyes. “’You ean have ’eim just as you like ’em,’ Ada says, ‘next time you come.’ “ •TSa'hk you kindly, ma’am,’ says -1. ‘My observations weren’t meant to bear down on the cookery, which is sure enough Frisco.’ "Well, feo 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. Every time I called on the blue-eyed miracle I’d find some of those yearlings sitting close in the game. One night 1 talked it out with myself. ; , “ ‘Book 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 n 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 hoiv love will loeo a fellow! Honestly. I bated .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 helpi and give me the gate for good. Hands ain’t plenty on the Chugwater in snow time. Reflecting this. 1 stopped off at tire Ducky 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 my senses. It Ignatius. Ignatius! (Well, dbg my cats!

“I’d seen fgnjttjtvs in Deadwood years ago. He waS.zilte greatest num with a fiddle in the Black Hills. Imr orte. That tone was nie.-iOh. I don’t Maine you for being surprised! I’m as much shamed of it'as you arg, but I .was a big chief on u violin in them days, although I’4 never Jet on about it in Lucky Bottom. Now then, here was this Ignatius stranded ■with his fiddle-case under his arm. and asking me for to whiter liWr. He was a good-looking dago, and he snivelled the way they do. 1 unbelted for a couple

of powders at the bar, and then, sir, the idea struck and left me bands 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 nou know what happened? That troop shrunk. Them warriors faded away. Deserted. It’s a gospel fact. You lake 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’s 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 despair, continous. Then the punchers will vacate the locality, and the maid,’ says I, ‘is mine.’

“Crazy? Yes, indeedy. I was in love. Anyhow, I gets the old man to give this dago a job patching fences, and, without saying too much, I lays out his tunes for him: and then I sits back in the peep-chair and follows the run of the cards.

“Say, it was funny. I thought nothing could be mournfuller than yowling coyotes, but coyotes was a merry fandango alongside of - Ignatius. Those boys of Bailey’s would gather around that troubadour in dejected attitudes, and just look and look and look. When he tore off ‘Annie Laurie,’ I felt kind o’ like a sheep-herdermyseif. “Marden was the first of ’em to quit.' One night when Ignatius was euttifig the heart out of ‘Oh. ‘ Promise Me,’ this Marden fetches a hollow' sound from his chest and he says he’d wished a bracelet onto a girl in the IT. P. eating-house at Rawlins, and he guessed he’d pull his freight. Next evening I tipped off the dago to turn loose-on the mother music. That’s the real stuff, after all—‘Just Tell Them That Y’ou Saw Me,’ ‘Home Sweet Home,’ and the lullaby out of ‘Ermine.’ Well, sir, that cinched it. ’Twasn’t two days before 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 eamp.’ -v ' -

“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 gallows artists of three States. “Finally here comes Bailey over to my shack with a face on him Jong as Sundance Butte.

“ ‘Heffren.’ says he. ‘my outfit is powerful short-handed. I’m p’intedly being exterminated,’ he says. “Too bad, says I. chuckling sideways. ‘What do you reckon the cause of this here emigration movement?’ “ ‘I suspicion the dago,’ says he. “ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘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 stuck on it.’ ' ’ ' . •

. “Right' theie .I, smelled Injun, and I reared up aiul -had -a secret conference with that fiddler behind Bailey’s corral. “.‘But where’ll I go to?’ he “ That ain’t my business.. Ignatius,’ says I; 'but you - must go before I whale that hide off’n you.’

“ ‘I ain’t got a cent,’ says he. ‘Maybe, you ean stake me, Mr. Heffren.’ ~ “I was flat broke myself, with , buying candy and diamond rings and such kedidoes'for the blue-eyed marvel. Ignatius, he snivels. “ ‘Don’t weep,’ says 1, ‘for it’s plumb neuseating. Me and you will pull off a musical swarry down to the schoolhouse, and you can pass the hat and accumulate stage U rf ‘’. “ ’Good,’ says Ignatius. ‘Now it is time for me to give Miss Ada her musie lesson.*

“‘Nary lesson,’.! says, collaring him. ‘You’ll go back with me td»my tepee, and l’ir>urn a 'key,piff - lf>oll ever speak to Miss Ada again,’you’ll be shy considerable epidermis, my Norwegian nightingale!’ “I brought him home with me and ' locked him up, and then I harnessed my old fiddle and went into private training. Nobody knew I was hot eakes 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, so’s he wouldn’t be in' the same reservation with me when it come to a show-down on fiddling. I calculated just to use that Ignatius for a pacemaker. “Tlie town of Lueky Bottom wasn’t . more’n a wide place in the road, but it was the most daneingest 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 af the door. “ ‘Watch out Ignatius doesn’t talk none to Ada,’ says I.

“Bailey give a wink. ‘You bet,’ he says. ‘l’ll stick to Ada eloser’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. Hats off!’

“The dago hopped the platform and lit in. ’Peared to me. 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 eow. Even old man Bailey and Ada begun to paw and look restless. I laughed. This was going to be easy. I could make medicine with a fiddle that would hold the bunch indoors till sun-up, if I needed. “And did I? You ean speculate I did. I knew what them Lucky Bottomers wanted. Those'- shorthorns' - didn’t warit no ‘Cliiekadde Polka,’ but- ’ The Maiden's . Prayer,’ and that internie-zzo-wliat-a-pity o’irt of'‘Rust ic-ana.’- -Thesta’sctlie gboils when you really, aim to > throw people: ‘ I swells out *my bosom and says I 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 tighter’n 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 20, 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 1, bearing down till the catgut screamed murder. ‘This is where I bury Ig so deep the prairie dogs will be upstairs to him!’

“You wouldn’t V blamed me if yosflt saw the schoolroom. Ttie whole nd Luet* Bottom that night was dangling op the end of my fiddle bow; We’d ’a’ been there yet "if a string hadn’t burst in the ! fiddle of ’Weep No More My Lady.’ But it was thirty-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 Kraus.

“I jumps up on a ebair. ‘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 waterpitcher in sympathetic silence. “Eloped?” I ventured.

John nodded. "There was a letter for me pinned onto the schoolhouse door» w lie continued. “It read: ‘Dear Friend—Would say that you sure ean hold an audience. No more at present from yours till death, Ignatius. " P. B. Ada sends love.’ ”

He replaced the pitcher with elaborate care, and slouched across our bedroom to the window.

“They’d drove off our horses,” he said. “They must ’a’ been doing that about the time I was enchanting the old man and the rest into innocuous desuetude with ‘The Last Rose of Summer.’ Well, they was over the Little Smoky before we eatehed ’em, and by that time thej was married. It turned out all right. The professor’s 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 violin.' Heffren grabbed his pistol from the table, but I protested. “One measly shot!” he begged. “I despise ’em so!” I was obdurate. “If you could ’a’ tasted Ada’s tarts!** sighed John Heffren. r Edward BoMwood.