THE QUEST FOR QUIET ON THE PART OF THE HUMAN CONCERTINA
“The peaceful season has come around again,” said Mr. Scraggs. “It does that every year. It is a good thing to have a certain date to be peaceful on; you prepare for it, put all troublesome things away, and wind up, as I usually do, with four friends trying to hold me down because I feel so light in the head.
“Peace is one of the finest things on earth, but the makin’ of it will never be confined to one of these here monopolies. Listen! What better could a man do than go into a home being tore wide open by the dissensions and discussions of one husband and one wife,239 using such domestic articles as flat-irons, coal-scuttles, brooms and the like of that, upon each other, and extract from the dust one large, smooth, round, white hunk of peace? It is nice to think of.
“I remember Long John. He was a feller built on the concertina plan. When he sat down in a chair he didn’t look like a man more’n seven feet high, but when he got up, and up, and more up, he was that kind of build that made little Bill holler, the first time he saw the ack, ‘How much more of you is there down cellar?’ And Bill said to me on the quiet: ‘Old Gabe will have to play an oncore if he expects John to get up before the resurrection is all over.’
“But John had a disposition that couldn’t be beat. He was for peace all the time. Bits of men that wouldn’t more’n come up to his waist used to talk to him as rough as they liked240 and John wouldn’t give them one word back. He simply hit them a slam, and then there was peace, you bet your life.
“But it was done out of pure good-natur. ‘They got no business to talk like that to nobody,’ says John, ‘and I can correc’ them without it looking anything like a fight. Ain’t you noticed that that stops ’em from being sassy?’ It sure did, but I lived in fear and tremblin’ some feller would be an inch nearer than John cal’lated and would remain quiet for several million years. That would have broke his heart.
“Well, John put in a solid eight months without ever pinting a foot toward town. Then he collected and went off for a little quiet trip on his own hook. He said that nobody could ask for a better people than we were, yet we was kind of rough in our ways, and he wanted to see domestic felicity, and the soothing inflooence of Woman. That there241 was a strain in his ideas that made him need kind and gentle treatment oncet in so often.
“It ain’t, perhaps, necessary for me to say that I have been exposed to the inflooence of seventy or eighty Mrs. Scraggs for enough number of years to heave a sigh on what was comin’ to John; but I never guessed how complete his whole idea of the way this universe runs would be ruined.
“Off goes Johnny Boy, dressed up in his best black suit, that looked as if it had been made for a statue of a life-sized giant. The sleeves hung down to the middle of his fingers, the pants rolled up six inches at the bottom, and, as he was a ga’nt critter, there was enough stuff in them clothes to make it look as if he could turn right around inside them without attracting attention.
“And he come back.
“This is what happened. He come into the bull-pen slower than usual. He sat down on242 the bunk, with his face completely surrounded by hands, and he never opened his yorp till long after we’d et our supper. Then he took me by the arm, and says, ‘Scraggsy, you been my friend for a long time. Come out till I tell you something.’
“I went out and he smoked his cigareet for another half-hour until I had to say: ‘If you have got anything real to tell me, John, why don’t you do it to-night, while we’re sitting out here so comfortable in the frost?’
“Says he: ‘I got up there all right. It was a nice town. There was swimming. There was peace. There was sidewalks, and fellers wearing strange hats. Everything was there, and I think,’ he says, ‘I was more scared of the things I didn’t know whether they could happen or not than I was of the things I knew could happen.
“‘My soul had all the fuz roped off of it. I was positive I would never more take two243 wraps around a cayuse with them legs of mine, and chase a skitty steer some more. “No,” says I, “cow-punching is a lost art.” A feller gets all broke up and tackled with rheumatism before he’s—he’s—well, I ain’t sixty yet, by a durn sight. Anyhow, a feller gets broke up any time, and I think of those lovely homes and nice beds, and it seemed great.
“‘The gent behind the counter of the hotel shoved a book and a pen at me. I looked at ’em, wonderin’ if it was an autograft album. The little gals uster have ’em when I was young, and you put your John Hancock down and then something about the rose is red and the violets blue—I forget the rest.
“‘I felt queer. It didn’t seem like a man of my size oughter be writing sich sentiments in a large book with lots of people looking on.
“‘Howsumever I done it, and the clerk says to me, “You come from the playful districts, just outlying the land of fun, don’t you?” and244 he added that too much gayety weren’t a good thing.
“‘He came to about ten words about it, when I took the flat of my hand and patted him on the back of his head. His nose bled all over the book, and everybody seemed to think there was a kick comin’.
“‘At last they showed me where I was wrong, and instead of fussing around that pesky hotel, I spent the night in a calaboose. It was one of the pleasantest little jails I ever inhabited—airy, kind of roomy, when I lay on the floor with my head in one corner and my feet in the other—but, toward morning, I got restless and horrible hungry. I hadn’t et the night before, forgetting my supper in the fuss they made about that autograft album, so I shoved my bird-cage door off its hinges and started for grub.
“‘I come upon the jailer eating his midnight meal—pie, cake, eggs—everything. He245 looked at me and reached for his gun. I took hold of him and reached for his lunch. I et that lunch and gave him one iron dollar, handed him the door, and said, “You keep this, so you don’t work any racket on me stealing your property; or, if you like, I will walk around town with it and you can swear your affidavit that I am still behind the jail door—if you only stand in front of me and look.”
“‘He was a nervous kind of critter that wasn’t fit to take care of a bunch of sheep, let alone running a jail. Couldn’t get anything out of him. He was excited, so I spread them bars on the door apart, stuck his head in, let them snap back on his neck and sung him, Come, Birdie, Come and Live With Me!
“‘He certainly was a comic-looking jailer, sitting back there with his head peeking through the door. The other fellers in there laughed to beat anything, and wanted me to246 cut ’em loose, but I couldn’t do that—havin’ come to the town for peace and quiet.
“‘Howsumever, I recovered the goods they took from me, and fed the boys a little out of the thimbleful of high jumps I carried in my behind pocket, until everybody was singing, dancing jigs, and so happy that it did sure look like a little bird-cage filled with the merriest chirpers that ever teetered on a limb.
“‘Come daybreak, I says good-by to the crowd and started out to see the city. I turned into the business district, but the stores wasn’t open yet, so I naturally meandered anywheres my fancy led me.
“‘Some of them nice houses were sending up a curl of smoke for early breakfast, and some of them was tight shut, where the fellers that led easy lives weren’t up yet, but was sleeping peacefully in security, and I felt over-lonesome. Seemed like I hadn’t got what was coming to me, that I couldn’t have a little247 shack with red roses on it, and some nice, kind woman—that would think a durn sight more of me than I was wuth—to keep my feet out of the drafts for the rest of my days.
“‘It was a purty sunrise. It ketched holt of the trees, it scattered red on the window-panes. The chickens was crowin’ and cacklin’ around. The dogs come out and give me a wet wallop on the back of my hand, or chased after me till I had to send them home. And the cats was sitting up on top of the fence-posts waiting for a friendly scratch on the back, and I did feel my life was wasted.
“‘So I hiked out of that to a hill I see in the distance to think things over, and they was more’n plenty. Shaking my head to myself and thinking of what I had lost, I happened to look at my watch and found out I had near lost my lunch, for one thing; so I did the turn back to town at a good, easy lope.
“‘Them young ladies that waited on the248 table took care of me in good shape. They called me “Grandpaw,” but it weren’t in no way sassy, and I give ’em a five-dollar gold-piece to get some of the green, blue, red and yeller flyabout things that gals like; and the men they was nice and polite to me, too, till, by and by, here comes a committee of five to wait on me, and explain I should oughter go back to jail.
“‘Again i............