LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2248, 12 May 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

HOBNSWOGQLBD. A Western Plant. ("From "London Society.”] ( Concluded .) * I ain’t going to say nothing to hurt the minister, nor yet the lady, but I’ll raise that slab-faced galoot’s hair, sure as you’re born, if ever I strikes his trail agin. Yon can bet your bottom dollar on that, colonel. I’d been out for a conple of year on the Yellow Stone, tradin’ along with a half-breed from Pembina, and I’d made a matter of six hundred dollar or tharebouts. I come in last fall making for Chicago. I’d put a one side a few dollars for a bit of a bend at St. Paul, me and that half-breed Joe Bonrinet, and the rest was a-goiug to my gal at Chicago ; she was to school there along of a convent, and a-going to be married to a young chap. They was a-going to move West a piece, and set up store, and the old man was a-going to do it for them. I hankered after this ail the time I was out tradin’ with them Sioux, for I han’t seen her better’n six year; and I was almighty fixed on this hero idee of mine. I was a going to whoop it np lively for them, you'd better bet, and the old man was to be the big toad in the puddle too. Well, I come along np the river with Joe, and crossed at the Forks np here, and oomo on down till I struck this here railroad. Joe, he got into a nines with a fellow at the Forks, and got hurt; so I had to leave him to be looked after by the man as runs the shanty at the crossing ; but I come across a chop who made himee’f sweep as syrup. He was np the valley buying wheat to ship east to Chicago, ha was, and he’d been out a little way on the plains, he had, to see something of the Indians on their native plains, and it gave him great satisfaction to meet a man as had lived years with them. There wom’t nothing pleased him so much as meeting me, the measly-faced son of Judas Iscariot; and ho fooled this here blamed old idiot as is telling you till he couldn’t keep his blamed old tongue still, but got talking about his trading and what he’d realised. When I thinks of it I gets madder’n a hunted buffalo. Well, colonel, wo travelled along together, settln’ side by side in one of these hero car-seats ; and he brings ont a small bottle of brandy—what you gjtat the hotels wasn’t good enough for him—and nothin’ wouldn’t do him but I must tell him all about my life amonng the Tetons, for he was a-going to make a book, he was, to show np the rascality of them Indian agents. We sot down to dinner together at one of the stations along hero, and got to be as friendly as a conple of prairie dogs; and when we got to St. Paul, nothing would do but I must stop along of him at his hotel. He had a small oak box bound with iron with him, and he kept this between his feet all the time, and took it in to dinner with him, and wouldn’t let the conductor nor no one handle it. One time he went into the baggage-oar to find the boy with the cigars ho left the box with me, and told mo to be all-fired partio’lar that no one else didn’t touch it, for it was filled with money as he was using, buying np wheat for shipment to Chicago. No woman with her fust baby worn’fc so partic’lar as he were about that box. When wo gets to the hotel and clicked ourselves down some, he says, •My friend, I want you come along with me to the bank, while I take this box and deposit of it there. I don’t know but what, out West here, some evil-disposed person might not attack me In the street, if they saw me carrying it. If you are with me it will be safe.’ I waited outside while he took the box in ; and after a while he come ont and said that was all right, and his mind was easy. Then he went back to the hotel to eat, and he said he was a-going ont. ‘l’ve got to see the freight-agent of the railroad,’ he says, the lying scalawag; he didn’t want no Ireightagent. ‘l’m going to see him to make arrangements for the shipment of some carloads of wheat I have down here to the depot, to go through by the freight-train tonight. When I've fixed that I’ll come back, and we’ll go together to the show up here, to the theatre,’ 4 Hally for you,’ says I, for I thought he was a little on the minister side of the trail, and didn’t go to no shows, leastways not to that kind, as the pictures was about all over the walls : gals whooping It up, yon know, colonel—reg’lar out-and-out show. Waal, I waited about an hour, having a drink or two with the boys round, for they had a fust-rate elegant bar down to that hotel, when back come my friend all of a lather, as if he’d been running afore a war party. * What’s the matter ? ’ says I. ‘ It’s real bad,’ he says, 4 1 must find that bank cashier somehow ; the freightagent won’t let the wheat go on to-night to bo paid on delivery. He wants the freightcharges paid in advance or else the wheat can’t go ; and it’s got to go, for it’s sold for delivery.’ ‘ And then he stood thinking, a-gathering his brows, and then fignring on a slip of paper, and mattering aboat dollars and cents and car-loads, and every once in a while saying as it was too provoking he hadn’t lelt his money with the hotel clerk instead of taking it to the bank, ‘ Why, in thunder, don’t you take it out of the bank again ?’ 1 asked him.

‘I can’t/ he says; ‘the bank’s closed, and I can’t get it till the morning.’ And then he began walking up and down the room again, and muttering all about figures and bushels and snchllke, and once and again looking over at mo. At last he says, ‘lf you’ll wait here for me, I’ll go up to that bank cashier’s private residence ana explain the case. Mebbe he’ll come down to the office and let me have that box out again this evening ; for get it I must, or I’m clean busted on that wheat.’

* That’s all right, pard/ I says ; ‘ step right up to the cuss's shanty and bring him right along. I'll come with yon ; and if he won't come, by thunder, it wouldn’t bo much of a job for yon and I to handle him ourselves.’

* No, no, no ; that won’t do,’ he says. ‘ If he saw another person ha might think we meant no good, and might refuse to open the bank till the clerks did it in the morning. I’ll go alone, if you’ll wait for mo here.’

‘ Waal, I was agreeable, and so I stepped down and set ’em up again with the boys at the bar; and then it come over me, why, in thunder, I didn’t lend him the money till the morning instead of fooling away tho time after that cashier, when we might have been having a high old time at the show. So when he come back in half-an hour, looking as if he’d seen all bla relations clean scalped before bis eyes, and said that the

bank cashier had gone into the country for the night, and that if he couldn’t get that wheat on he was a ruined man, cos wheat had risen ten cents a bushel, owing to some scalawags concerning it, I says right off, ‘ How much does that freight-man want ?' 'Let me tee,’says he, looting as bright as a new dollar, ‘ six car-loads, sack freight, to Chicago.’ And then he got to figuring again, and says at last—

‘ With what I have in my pocket-book I guess I can fix it with four hundred and eighty dollars. It’s a new proprietor to this hotel, or I guess I could have borrowed it at the office till the morning. I’ve beat part of a thousand dollars left in that box up at the bank ’

‘ Four hundred and eighty,’ says I ; ‘ well, I’ll let you have It till the morning,' for I know’d he’d got the money, for I'd handled that iron-bound box myself; ‘ and then we’ll git right away and sen that nhow.’ I took out a bear-skin pouch I had, and counted out what money 1 had left. There was five hundred and sixty dollais rolled up there, and I asked him if four hundred and eighty would fix it up. • Beo >' he says, ‘four hundred and eighty,’ and thou he began to figure again. ‘ Yob, that is more than enough, with what I have. Pour hundred and seventyfive will do. I need only keep enough to pay the theatre, because in the morning I eh 11 go to the bank at once.’

* Waal, gentlemen,’ he continued, addressing us all collectively, including the conductor and the boy that sold the cigars, apples, books, &c , on the train, * I counted out four hundred and seventy-five to that everlasting thief; and when ha had jaw’d his thanks for my timely aid, and told me to wait a quarter of an hour while he paid the freight bill at the depot, he went off. Wait! I waited, I guess I did, I waited until I felt a kind of cold sweat over me when he didn’t come back; and I wont down, pale and trembling as weak as a calf just born, to the office, for I thought if anything goes wrong with this here business, my gal’s chance is busted. I kinder staggered up to the office, and told the olerk I was afeared something had happened to my friend. Then he asked me the particulars, and got to looking mighty cross as I told him.’

‘ 1 guess you'll not see him again,' said the clerk. ‘ There's always some galoot going through the greenhorns in this hotel. Why, in thunder, they don’t try the other house, I don’t know. Haro, put on yonr hat,’ said he, madder'n a Texan cow, 4 and came along with me.’ There was a bit of a crowd had gathered round the counter, and one of the boys wanted me to have a drink to set me np a bit, for I felt pretty bad, but I hadn’t no heirt to drink.

4 He ain’t got no time to drink now,’ said t v e clerk, as he came out of the side door- ‘ Hero, hurry up, and we’ll go to the depot first.’

‘Waal, gentlemen, we tried the depot, and fonnd there wam’t no each wheat going through. Wo found the chief of police and told him, and he said he’d set bis crowd on the tracks ; bnt it was a pretty slim chance ; and I went back to the hotel, and hauled myself up them stairs step by step, as if I’d lost the nse of my limbs, and laid down on the bed and cried like a gal whose lover’s gone back on her. ’ln the morning I got that clerk to send the balance of the cash, after paying the bill, to my gal ; for I hadn’t the heart to see her and tell her, and all the while she thinking I was coming with my pocket fall of dollars. When she got the news she told her man, and he behaved like a yaller dog, he did, the blamed car. He made excuses ; said be couldn't leave his situation just then, and that his mother was ill Fast, and he had gone to see her; and finally he backed out of marrying her. And she, poor crittnr, took to crying and sorrowing about it, and got herself ill; and then she wrote to him to come and see her, and he writ back to say as he oooldn’t; and then she started ont to find me, and got ill on the road, and got worse ; and finally the poor little thing passed ’em in, and they planted her way down here on the line.’

The old man’s voice got a little gruff when he told ns so far, and he ceased speaking for a while, luring which time the train began to slow up for the station, and several of the passengers, including the long man that had sat in the next section to ns, rose, and prepared to leave the car. Then the old man suddenly broke out, in a harsh but somewhat suppressed voice, 4 I’ve never met that man since, hut when I do, by the powers—see here!’ he added, suddenly breaking off in bis speech, and showing the handle of a navy Colt revolver underneath his deer-skin shirt. * I’ve carried this here loaded for him ever since ; and when we cross trails again. I'll end that sneaking, prowling, white-livered wolf on the spot where I meet him !' The passengers were getting out to dine at this station, and some of those from onr oar were already on the platform. The long man was stepping off the oar, when the train boy, who had heard all the old man’s story, pulled him by the sleeve, and said something to him.

‘ What's that yon say, sonny ? Him as was setting right there I’ * Yes,' said the boy. * I noticed under hia eye-shade a scar reaching tight back from his left eye. ’ The old man said no more, nor waited to hear any more, but made straight for the door of the car. The same impulse that moved one moved all four of our party ; for, seizing our hand-satchels, we all sprang from our seats and followed the old frontiersman, or rather three of them did ; for, seeing a quicker way, I turned and got out of the door at the other end of the car, outside of ■w hich the car platform was quite clear. By this means I reached the station platform as the old man stepped upon it, I saw him look hurriedly round, as I did myself, in search of the long passenger with the green shade over his eye ; but he did not at first see him. He had left the car hardly a minute before us, but he was not in the small crowd of passengers on the platform. Perhaps he had gone into the dining-room, before the door of which the waiter was striking a gong, while the proprietor was yelling, * This way for dinner! twenty minutes for dinner!’ The old man was moving excitedly about, looking first at one passenger and then at another, when the idea evidently struck him that the man he was seeking had gone to dinner. He had turned to go there, and was nearing the door where the waiter was still hammering the gong, when he saw, as I too saw, for I was following closely, the other passenger moving quickly across an open space at the back of the station, in tho direction of a small board house that stood away out by itself, He looked over his shoulder just as the old Indian trader had leapt from the platform in pursuit, and on the impulse quickened hia pace to a kind of run. But the old man was running hard ; and the other, sesing apparently that ho could not gain the shanty before being overtaken, resumed his former step, and quickly moderated that to a leisurely walk. As his pursuer neared him he stopped, and then turned round, at the same time, as I noticed, quietly slipping his right band behind him. ‘ Stop !' shouted the old man. ‘ Lift that roof off of your eye.' ‘My shade F ‘ said the other. * Excuse me, I have a sore eye,' ‘ It’s his voice,’ said tho old man to himself; then aloud ’ ‘.'ore eye or not, lift!’ ‘ What do you want with me P ’ asked tho other man.

• Want! you wolf-souled thief. I’ll show you what I want! 1 want my daughter’s life, I want what you can’t give. 1 want your black heart out of you ! I'll show yon what I want;’ and es ho spoke he pulled the heavy revolver from beneath his leather dress.

But the other was too quick to be thus dealt with, and his hand now grasping a revolver was round in a second, and as the intention of his enemy was beyond doubt, he levelled his pistol and fired. The bullet hit the old man, but was not fatal, for ho raised his pistol and fired, and then rushed on the other, who had been brought by the shot upon his knoss. Two more shots rang out almost simultaneously, and the old man staggered forward and fell dead upon the corpse of the swindler. A number of people, attracted by the pistol-shots, were hurrying to the spot, and among them were the two Englishmen and the bank-manager. The latter, as ho reached the bodies, stooped and lifted the shade from the eye of the dead man, and after a moment’s examination replaced it, and remarked,

‘ That’s my granger, sure enough. Well, he’ll do no more hornswogsllng now, I’m stopping over hero till to-morrow, and I’ll see them decently burled,*