A SERIO-COMEDY OF LIGHT FINGERS AND HEAVY BOOTS

Zeke Scraggs had been working out on the dry patch, where it was a long ways between drinks, and lukewarm water from a canteen no particular comfort. He complained, and I produced a discovery in the shape of a tin-foil-wrapped package of chewing-gum marked “Lily Sweet.”

“If you chew a piece of that when you’re dry, Scraggy,” I said, “it will stave off thirst for some time.”

Mr. Scraggs received the offering in his large palm, and poked it with the forefinger of his other hand.

“Yaas,” he said; “y-a-a-s. But it’s dangerous.”

215 “Dangerous?”

“Horrible. You don’t ketch me minglin’ myself with no ‘Lily Sweets.’ I consider the lily of the field how she grows. You wouldn’t believe that anything that sounds so innercent could be the tee-total ruin of a large, dark-complected tin-horn, with a pair of musstaches like Injun-polished buffler horns, would you?”

Like almost anybody else would have done, I said I wouldn’t.

“Well, it was,” said Zeke. “If you could see that gam, and compare him to this here package of choon’-gum, you wouldn’t ever guess that either one could do much of anything to t’other; yet I can a tale relate of that combination that would make each particler hair stand up-ended, like the squills of the frightful porkypine.”

“Rats!” said I, being but a youth.

“You got any hairs that’s particler by nature?216 No? Well, then, I’ll spread this terrific osculation of the connimgulated forces of Nature befo’ you, as Charley says. My kind of narrative is the plain, unvarnished tale. Folks that tell a varnished tale is apt to sit on the varnish before it’s dry, and they’ll stick to it, come cold fact or red-hot argyment; whilst I’m always willin’ to prune, cross-harrer, revise or alter accordin’ to my victim’s feelin’s. That is, of course, if they go to corner me, which, between gentlemen, is a low-cut outrage. But this business about the gam is dead straight. I had relinquished all amusements and was livin’ quiet in order to save money, before I got acquainted with the facts.

“First place, comes a female missionary out to the ranch, and she was a corkin’ fine-lookin’ nice young woman, too, who tackled me on the subject of chewin’ terbackker. She had me all tangled up in my own rope and double217 left-sided front and back before the clock struck one.

“I tried to arger that nobody wouldn’t care whether I chewed terbackker or grass, so long’s I was happy and doin’ no harm. But that turned out not to be true. She said so.

“Then I tried to reach her womanly compassion by tearfully expoundin’ how I’d miss my cut of plug a day; I never touched her. Hers was a new religion. It had a different figger on the back from any I’d had dealt to me before. Seems it weren’t a sin to chew, but it was the control I’d lost over myself that put me in the hole. I had just to git command of my mind and everything would come at me, like a North Ca’lina town’s nigger’s dogs chasin’ a three-legged cat up an alley.

“‘But ma’am,’ say I, ‘I’ve knocked off before; an’, as for control over my mind, durin’ the hull spell me an’ Star Plug was separated,218 friends had to hold me to prevent me goin’ in an’ robbin’ my own grip. Control of my mind,’ says I, fightin’ noble, ‘why, you could ’a’ sicked a burglar on me, an’ he couldn’t have found no such thing on my person. I didn’t have no mind. I walked up an’ down, day and night, in that man’s town, like a ravin’ maniac stupefied by his halloocinashuns. All that passed beneath my shinin’ dome was: “Oh for a chew! Oh for a chew! Oh for a choo-choo-choo-choo! Whoeep! Brakes!” And when the cars went over the switch or a cayuse cantered up, they said: “Terbackker, terbackker, terbackker,” to my famished ears. All I wished was that the houses was built of plug, and all I thought of was that I could get earnest with an ax. That’s all I could think—all!’

“‘But you must use the control!’ says she, eager.
“‘I will not use terbackker,’ says little Zekey Scraggs.” Page 219

“‘You mean, ma’am,’ I says, ‘that I must219 seek out a quiet place, clench my fists, grind my teeth to a feather-edge and strain my suspenders to the bustin’ point in one calamitous effort to think I’m not thinking?’

“‘Precisely!’ says she, victorious. ‘You Western men have such a ready grip on essentials that it is a delight to be your guide.’

“‘Well, Uncle Tom and the dogs a-bitin’ him!’ says I to myself. ‘Lead on!’ I took off my hat aloud and bowed to within two of my noses to the ground. ‘To be able to foller so gentle and able a guide straight to perdition is a joy,’ says I. ‘I quit the class of roominants for two weeks. I will not use terbackker. No!’ says little Zekey Scraggs. ‘There’s my hand on it, ma’am.’

“And she just turned pink with joy. She was an awful nice little gal. Only she was so jam-full of knowledge that it was hard for her to understand things.

“Having put up this job on myself, I went220 to our storekeep’ and called for my time. I knew I’d need bright lights and excitement for a while. I begun to feel already that a chew wouldn’t go bad.

“There was the storekeep’ gazin’ fixedly at a book; his lips was movin’, but he seemed in a kind of rapture. When I hollered to him, he jumped all over and barked at me like a dog. At the same time he grabbed up a cigareet, stuck it in his mouth, took it out, looked at it and fired it down again.

“A light broke on me. ‘So she got you, too?’ says I.

“‘Hooppitty Hoppitty Hippitty Yer-hoop!’ says he. ‘That’s just what she’s done! I’m three days out. Not a smell of smoke in three days! My soul has gone away and won’t have any more truck with me. I don’t know who I am, nor why. I’ve been trying for an hour to find out how much three and221 two make. Take your money and leave me to my fate.’

“With this picture in my mind I broke for town. Half-way there I was chawin’ a latigo-strap like a wolf. When I hit the street, I jumped through the drug-store door.

“‘What you got for a man that’s quit chewin’?’ I gasps to the boss.

“‘Franky Frenchman’s Fool-Killer,’ says he—and with that he turns his head and expectorates satisfactorily into the spittoon.

“Seeing him, I near died of a broken heart.

“‘The next crack will be at your expense,’ I told him. ‘You hike out somethin’ for my case,’ I says. He shoved me out a package, just like that.”

Mr. Scraggs poked my gift.

“Just like that. I put the whole bizzee in my trap and chomped on it like a lion. I walked around the town, chompin’ on it. I222 waved my jaws till my face ached. Seemed to me like I’d never done anythin’ in all my life but bite Injy-rubber. And then I pushed madly for the first stud-poker game.

“When I got there, nothin’ was movin’. This here tin-horn I mention was polishing his muss-tache with both hands, whilst he talked to a few hangers-on.

“I became ashamed of that choon’-gum and I stuck it under the table, very sly and surreptishus. I felt like a man again.

“‘Fire the engine up!’ says I. ‘Gimme five stacks to practise on.’

“The gam hopped gleeful toward the table and give the drawer a yank. She stuck. He cussed and pulled harder. She came open with a jerk and a kind of a long, sticky s-m-aaa-ack, followed the strings of gray.

“The gam arose from where he’d sot on his backbone and looked at the drawer.

223 “‘We’re not doin’ any business to-day,’ says he, showing me my little eagle-bird.

“‘What’s happened to the trade?’ says I.

“He simply p’inted to the hunk of gum (which I had most unforchinit jammed ag’in’ the drawer).

“‘My wildest fancies have got exceeded,’ says he. ‘Do you want to hear a weird and wilful tale of woe?’

“‘Of course not,’ I says.

“‘All right,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you.’

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘here’s the way she come up. I’m a lost one in the wilderness out at a telegraph station. I see where I get my talents buried in a napkin made of sole-leather, hence I get handy with a deck of cards in front of the lookin’-glass. My work is so good after a while that I lose my whole salary to myself, and yet watchin’ careful all the time in the lookin’-glass. I’m fit to handle the224 steamboat trade, but I aims higher: I buy me a ticket to Noo York and hunt up a place where they hew to the line, let the chips fall where they will.

“‘“What’s your noo box o’ tricks?” says the Murphy that run the joint.

“‘“Well,” says I, “nothin’ new, but the good old reliable line. The world is my oyster, as Hamlet says, and I’ve got openers.”

“‘“H’m,” says he, makin’ a fat man’s shift in his chair and pushin’ his seegar into the other corner of his face. “I want you to understand this is a dead-straight game run here, my bucko—yet you look good—s’pose I’ve come in an’ laid thirty cents or so on the king, coppered. Lift the joker out of that deck an’ le’s see what happens.”

“‘He threw me a pack and I riffled and boxed ’em.

“‘“Why, you lose,” says I, much surprised as the king came out open on the turn.

225 “‘“And not so worse,” says he. “Play on!”

“‘I slid ’em out of the box to the last card. “You only lost your footin’ once,” says he. “The way you beat my corner play was a little obvious. Exercise your little finger till it’s soopler. You can handle a roll to-night. But mind this,” says he as he grunted himself on his feet, “this is a dead-straight house. If anybuddy ketches you bein’ technical, we jump you, from me to the cop on watch. You get five per cent.”

“‘Well, sir, that was the loveliest little bower of rosebuds you ever smelt! Checks was joolry. We didn’t have change for nothin’ below a fifty-dollar bill............