[The MS. ends here.]
“Which I puts it up as how you ain’t never
heard about that time that Hardenberg and Strokher—the
Englisher—had a friendly go with bare knuckles—ten
rounds it was—all along o’ a feemale
woman?”
It is a small world and I had just found out that
my friend, Bunt McBride—horse-wrangler,
miner, faro-dealer and bone-gatherer—whose
world was the plains and ranges of the Great Southwest,
was known of the Three Black Crows, Hardenberg, Strokher
and Ally Bazan, and had even foregathered with them
on more than one of their ventures for Cyrus Ryder’s
Exploitation Agency—ventures that had nothing
of the desert in them, but that involved the sea,
and the schooner, and the taste of the great-lunged
canorous trades.
“Ye ain’t never crossed the trail o’
that mournful history?”
I professed my ignorance and said:
“They fought?”
“Mister Man,” returned Bunt soberly, as
one broaching a subject not to be trifled with, “They
sure did. Friendly-like, y’know—like
as how two high-steppin’, sassy gents figures
out to settle any little strained relations—friendly-like
but considerable keen.”
He took a pinch of tobacco from his pouch and a bit
of paper and rolled a cigarette in the twinkling of
an eye, using only one hand, in true Mexican style.
“Now,” he said, as he drew the first long
puff to the very bottom of the leathern valves he
calls his lungs. “Now, I’m a-goin’
for to relate that same painful proceedin’ to
you, just so as you kin get a line on the consumin’
and devourin’ foolishness o’ male humans
when they’s a woman in the wind. Woman,”
said Bunt, wagging his head thoughtfully at the water,
“woman is a weather-breeder. Mister Dixon,
they is three things I’m skeered of. The
last two I don’t just rightly call to mind at
this moment, but the first is woman. When I meets
up with a feemale woman on my trail, I sheers off
some prompt, Mr. Dixon; I sheers off. An’
Hardenberg,” he added irrelevantly, “would
a-took an’ married this woman, so he would.
Yes, an’ Strokher would, too.”
“Was there another man?” I asked.
“No,” said Bunt. Then he began to
chuckle behind his mustaches. “Yes, they
was.” He smote a thigh. “They
sure was another man for fair. Well, now, Mr.
Man, lemmee tell you the whole ‘how.’
“It began with me bein’ took into a wild-eyed
scheme that that maverick, Cy Ryder, had cooked up
for the Three Crows. They was a row down Gortamalar
way. Same gesabe named Palachi—Barreto
Palachi—findin’ times dull an’
the boys some off their feed, ups an’ says to
hisself, ‘Exercise is wot I needs. I will
now take an’ overthrow the blame Gover’ment.’
Well, this same Palachi rounds up a bunch o’
insurrectos an’ begins pesterin’
an’ badgerin’ an’ hectorin’
the Gover’ment; an’ r’arin’
round an’ bellerin’ an’ makin’
a procession of hisself, till he sure pervades the
landscape; an’ before you knows what, lo’n
beholt, here’s a reel live Revolution-Thing
cayoodlin’ in the scenery, an’ the Gover’ment
is plum bothered.
