The Argosy, Vol. 82 No. 2 — page 107: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE: OLD WEST him move at all, the Forty-Niners found themselves at sundown beside a water-hole in an otherwise arid plain. Here they went into camp, all tired and most of them ill-tempered and thinking of their special train with sorrow and regret. The animals were watered, fed and picketed. Ah Sin and Sing Lee made a fire of greasewood tops, set ‘with two stones on either side of it, crossed them with iron bars and so had a makeshift stove on which they prepared supper. The meal left something to be desired, but it was hot and substantial, and under its spell the drooping spirits of the Forty-Niners revived. “YT know it’s a hard pull, ladies and gentle- men,” said Robbins, when the meal was fin- ished and pipes and cigars were going, “but at the Notch you’ll all find comfortable places prepared for you. Some time to- morrow afternoon we'll be where we're bound for, so keep a stiff upper lip and don’t get discouraged.” “Tf you ever tried to ride in an old cata- maran like that stage coach, Mr.. Robbins,” mourned Colonel Hungerford, rubbing his bruises, ‘“you’d appreciate the difficulties of this sort of traveling. It’s no~ democrat wagon, let me tell you.” “Ay de mi!” mumbled the don. ‘“Tt’s hotter than Tophet in that old ark, and the way she pitches is somethin’ ter- rible,” said Golshaw. “You fellers don’t gi’me no room,” re- marked little Perdue. “If it’s the same the rest of the way as it has been so far, blamed if I don’t get up on top with Cal and the chinks—or else walk.” “Thunder!” growled Ezra _ Bobbett; “say, you all ort to be piled into the ‘schooner’ with them trunks if you want real ridin’. I don’t know how ma and the senorita stands it. Me, I’m tough and good for anything, same’s Pop Handy.” ‘When it comes to hard traveling,” put in Lafe Smedders, ‘‘ain’t no one got a thing on the Ute. Think of bein’ chained to a ba’r and ridin’ a jack-rabbit at the same time! Shoo! If Hot Tamale set down and stopped Old Jack and Dynamite onct, he ‘done it a dozen times. I’m tellin’ you that if the ba’r hadn’t been muzzled he’d made a meal off’n Jack and the burro.” ‘Them in the democrat wagon and on the hosses has the best of it,” said Cata- mount Cal. “But what’s the odds! It’s all in the day’s work.” Evening brought with it a most refresh- 7 A PER CONTRACT, 289 ing coolness. The stars twinkled against a velvety, blue-black sky, and presently a round moon lifted itself above the dim hori- zon and trailed its glory across the forlorn plain and the ugly hills. Reeves and Lady Ann strolled away from the camp and found a place littered with boulders, where they sat and listened to coyotes howling in the distance. “Ugh!” murmured the girl with a shiver; ‘this would be beautiful if it wasn’t for that howling.” “It is beautiful in spite of the coyotes, Miss Bobbett,” returned Reeves. ‘‘Any place on earth, I think, would be wonder- ful with those stars, and the moonlight— and you.” “Why, Marty,” said Lady Ann, “you’re a poet!” ‘“‘No, Lady Ann, poets are out of place among these Forty-Niners. You are out of place among them, too. Didn’t you ever think so?” The girl stirred uneasily on the boulder. Her wide-brimmed straw hat lay on her knees, and the moonbeams shimmered on the brown tresses brushed back from her brow. “There are two of us, Marty, when you come to that,” said she, after a time. ‘I’ve wondered and wondered why you joined the Camp. You’re so different from the rest of them.” “I’m an Easterner, you know,” explained Reeves, ‘and this is my first visit to the West. I guess I thought I’d find the Old West, with money easy to come at and no difficulty in getting ahead; but the West is only the East, Lady Ann, with a geographi- cal difference. “I hunted for the Old West all the way to San Francisco, without discovering it. At the Golden Gate I found myself out of pocket and took the first job that came handy. Castle wanted a ‘tenderfoot’ and I filled the bill. But I feel like a square peg in a round hole, and that’s a fact. “It’s good fun, though, trailing around with the Forty-Niners; and I must say that they come nearer my foolish ideas of the Old West than I had dreamed of finding. But it’s a pose, a stage play.. I’m with the crowd because I need the money. This scheme of Robbins’s appeals to me—al- though I can’t understand the move and I am afflicted with doubts.” “Doubts?” queried the girl curiously. “Yes. What’s the idea back of it all? CORMICLIOOKS (E@)