A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other Stories, Bill Nye [best mobile ebook reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Bill Nye
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So it took time to get square-toed justice ready and arm the sheriff with the proper documents.
In the meantime the Salvation army was[Pg 158] fully half way to Clugston's ranch. They had started out, as they said, "to see that Esau didn't get away." They were also going to see that Esau was brought into town.
What happened after they got out there I only know from hearsay, for I was not a member of the Salvation army at that time. But I learned from one of those present, that they found Esau down in the sage brush on the bottoms that lie between the abrupt corner of Sheep mountain and the Little Laramie river. They captured him but he died soon after, as it was told me, from the effects of opium taken with suicidal intent. I remember seeing Esau the next morning, and I thought I noticed signs of ropium, as there was a purple streak around the neck of the deceased, together with other external phenomena not peculiar to opium.
But the grand difficulty with the Salvation army was that it didn't want to bring Esau into town. A long, cold night ride with a person in Esau's condition was disagreeable. Twenty miles of lonely road with a deceased[Pg 159] murderer in the bottom of the wagon is depressing. Those of my readers who have tried it will agree with me that it is not calculated to promote hilarity.
Mr. Whatley hadn't gone more than half a mile when he heard the wild and disappointed yells of the Salvation army (Page 159)
So the Salvation army stopped at Whatley's ranch to get warm, hoping that some one would steal the remains and elope with them. They stayed some time and managed to "give away" the fact that there was a reward of $5,000 out for Esau, dead or alive. The Salvation army even went so far as to betray a good deal of hilarity over the easy way it had nailed the reward or would as soon as said remains were delivered up and identified.
Mr. Whatley thought that the Salvation army was having a kind of walk away, so he slipped out at the back door of the ranch, put Esau into his own wagon and drove off to town. Remember, this is the way it was told to me.
Mr. Whatley hadn't gone more than half a mile when he heard the wild and disappointed yells of the Salvation army. He put the buckskin on the back of his horse without[Pg 160] mercy, urged on by the enraged shouts and yells of his infuriated pursuers. He reached town about midnight, and his pursuers disappeared. But what was he to do with Esau?
He drove around all over town trying to find the official who signed for the deceased. He went from house to house like a vegetable vender, seeking sadly for the party who would give him a $5,000 check for Esau. Nothing could be more depressing than to wake up one man after another out of a sound sleep, and invite him to come out to the buggy and identify the remains. One man went out and looked at him. He said he didn't know how others felt about it, but he allowed that anybody who would pay $5,000 for such a remains as Esau's could not have very good taste.
Gradually it crept through Mr. Whatley's wool that the Salvation army had been working him, so he left Esau at the engine house and went home. On his ranch he nailed up a large board, on which had been painted in[Pg 161] antique characters, with a paddle and tar, the following:
Vigilance Committees, Salvation Armies, Morgues, or young physicians who may have deceased people on their hands, are requested to refrain from conferring them on to the undersigned.
People who contemplate shuffling off their own or other people's mortal coils will please not do so on these grounds.
The Salvation Army of the Rocky Mountains is especially hereby warned to keep off the Grass! James Whatley.
[Pg 162]
A PLEA FOR JUSTICE XVIITo the Honorable Mayor of New York:
Sir—I suppose you are mayor of this whole town, and if so you are the mayor of the hosspitals as well as of the municipality of New York. I am a citizen of this place that has always been square towards every man and paid my bills as they accrewed. I now ask you, in return for same, to intervene and protect me in my rights. The millishy has never been called out to suppress me. I have never been guilty of rebellyun or open difyance off the law, and yet I am unable to get a square deal and I write this brief note and enclose a two-cent stamp, to ascertain whether, as mayor, you are for me or agin me.
Three years ago I entered your town from a westerly direction. I done so quietly and[Pg 163] I presume that few will remember the sircumstans, yet such was so. I had not been here two weeks when I was run into, knocked over and tromped onto by the bay team of a purse-proud producer of beer. I was dashed to earth and knocked galley west on Broadway st. looking north by sed horses and I was wrecked while peasably on my way to my place of business. When I come to myself I was in a large, cool hosspital which smelt strong of some forrin substans. The hed doctor had been breathing on me and so I come too. When I looked around me I decided to murmur "Where am I at?" which I did.
... I was in a large, cool hosspital which smelt strong of some forrin substans. The hed doctor had been breathing on me and so I come too (Page 163)
I soon learned that I was in a hosspital, and that kind friends had removed one of my legs. I will not take up your time, sir, by touching on my sufferings. Suphice it to say that I went foarth at last a blasted man, with a cork leg that don't look no more like my own once leg which I was torn away from, in spite of the Old Harry. It is too late to repine over a wooden leg, unless it is a pine leg, but I come to you, sir, to interfear on behalf of another matter which I will now[Pg 164] aprooch. Sorrows at that time come on me thick and fast. During that fall I lost my wife and two dogs by deth. This was the third wife I have been called on to bury. It has been my blessed privilidge to mourn the loss of three as good wives as I ever shook a stick at. I have got them all in one cool, roomy toom, with a verse on the door of same and their address, so that they will not delay the resurrection. Under the verse that was engraved on the slab, some low cuss has wrote three verses of poetry with a chorus to each verse which winds up with the words:
Tit, tat, toe, three in a row.
But all this is only introductory. Sir, it has long been my heart's desire that all my beloved dead should repose together. I have a large lot in the semmetery, and last week a movement was placed on foot to inter my late leg by the sides of my deceased wives. I applied to the hosspital for said leg, having got a permit to bury same. I was pleasant and corechus to the authoritis there, saying that my name was Gray and I was there to[Pg 165] procure my leg, whereupon a young meddicle cuss said to the head ampitater:
"Here's de man that wants to plant Gray's l-e-g in a churchyard."
He then laughed a hoarse laugh and went on preserving a polapus in a big glass fruit can with alkohall in it. Wherever I went I met with a general disposition to fool with a stricken and one-legged man. I went from ward to ward, looking at suffering and smelling kloryform till I was sick at heart. I was referred from Dan to Beersheby, from the janiter up to the chief tongue inspector, and one place where I went into they seemed to be picking bone splinters out from among a gentleman's brains. I made bold to tell my business, but with small hopes.
"This is the man I told you about, Doc," said a young man who was filing and setting a small bone handsaw. "This is that matter of Gray, the man who wants his leg."
"Damn your Gray matter," says this doctor, whereupon the rest bust into ribald mirth.
I was insulted right and left for a whole forenoon, and came away shocked and pained.[Pg 166] Will you assist me? There is no reverence among doctors any more and they have none of the finer feelings. Some asked me if I had a check for my leg. Some said they thought it had escaped from the hosspital and gone on the stage, and one feller said that this hosspital would not be responsible for the legs of guests unless deposited in the office safe. I like fun just as well as anybody, Mr. Mayor, but I don't think any one should be youmerous over the cold dead features of a leg from which I have been ruthlessly snatched.
I now beg, sir, to dror this hasty letter to an untimely end, hoping that you will make it hot for this blooming hosspital and make them fork over said leg. Yours, with kindest regards,
A. Pittsfield Gray.
[Pg 167]
A young friend has written to me as follows: "Could you tell me something of the location of the porcelain works in S�vres, France, and what the process is of making those beautiful things which come from there? How is the name of the town pronounced? Can you tell me anything of the history of Mme. Pompadour? Who was the Dauphin? Did you learn anything of Louis XV whilst in France? What are your literary habits?"
It is with a great, bounding joy that I impart the desired information. S�vres is a small village just outside of St. Cloud (pronounced San Cloo). It is given up to the manufacture of porcelain. You go to St. Cloud by rail or river, and then drive over to S�vres by diligence or voiture. Some go[Pg 168] one way and some go the other. I rode up on the Seine, aboard of a little, noiseless, low-pressure steamer about the size of a sewing machine. It was called the Silvoo Play, I think.
The fare was thirty centimes—or, say, three cents. After paying my fare and finding that I still had money left, I lunched at St. Cloud in the open air at a trifling expense. I then took a bottle of milk from my pocket and quenched my thirst. Traveling through France, one finds that the water is especially bad, tasting of the Dauphin at times, and dangerous in the extreme. I advise those, therefore, who wish to be well whilst doing the Continent, to carry, especially in France, as I did, a large, thick-set bottle of milk, or kumiss, with which to take the wire edge off one's whistle whilst being yanked through the Louvre.
St. Cloud is seven miles west of the center of Paris and almost ten miles by rail on the road to Versailles—pronounced Vairsi. St. Cloud belongs to the Canton of S�vres and the arrondissement of Versailles.
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