“La-A-A-dies an’ gen’l’mun”
All through the exhibition the two sat unmoved; yet
on the whole it was the best Wild West show that ever
stirred sawdust in Madison Square Garden and it brought
thunders of applause from the crowded house. Even
if the performance could not stir these two, at least
the throng of spectators should have drawn them, for
all New York was there, from the richest to the poorest;
neither the combined audiences of a seven-day race,
a prize-fight, or a community singing festival would
make such a cosmopolitan assembly.
All Manhattan came to look at the men who had lived
and fought and conquered under the limitless skies
of the Far West, free men, wild men—one
of their shrill whoops banished distance and brought
the mountain desert into the very heart of the unromantic
East. Nevertheless from all these thrills these
two men remained immune.
To be sure the smaller tilted his head back when the
horses first swept in, and the larger leaned to watch
when Diaz, the wizard with the lariat, commenced to
whirl his rope; but in both cases their interest held
no longer than if they had been old vaudevillians watching
a series of familiar acts dressed up with new names.
The smaller, brown as if a thousand fierce suns and
winds had tanned and withered him, looked up at last
to his burly companion with a faint smile.
“They’re bringing on the cream now, Drew,
but I’m going to spoil the dessert.”
The other was a great, grey man whom age apparently
had not weakened but rather settled and hardened into
an ironlike durability; the winds of time or misfortune
would have to break that stanch oak before it would
bend.
He said: “We’ve half an hour before
our train leaves. Can you play your hand in that
time?”
“Easy. Look at ’em now—the
greatest gang of liars that never threw a diamond
hitch! Ride? I’ve got a ten-year kid
home that would laugh at ’em all. But I’ll
show ’em up. Want to know my little stunt?”
“I’ll wait and enjoy the surprise.”
The wild riders who provoked the scorn of the smaller
man were now gathering in the central space; a formidable
crew, long of hair and brilliant as to bandannas,
while the announcer thundered through his megaphone:
“La-a-a-dies and gen’l’mun!
You see before you the greatest band of subduers and
breakers of wild horses that ever rode the cattle ranges.
Death defying, reckless, and laughing at peril, they
have never failed; they have never pulled leather.
I present ‘Happy’ Morgan!”
Happy Morgan, yelling like one possessed of ten shrill-tongued
demons, burst on the gallop away from the others,
and spurring his horse cruelly, forced the animal
to race, bucking and plunging, half way around the
arena and back to the group. This, then, was a
type of the dare-devil horse breaker of the Wild West?
The cheers travelled in waves around and around the
house and rocked back and forth like water pitched
from side to side in a monstrous bowl.
