Heart of the Sunset, Rex Beach [best fiction books of all time txt] 📗

id="id00613">"She's as pretty as a blue-bonnet flower," her father agreed. "And she runs me around something scandalous. I 'ain't got the freedom of a peon." Blaze sighed and shook his shaggy head. "You know me, Dave; I never used to be scared of nobody. Well, it's different now. She rides me with a Spanish bit, and my soul ain't my own." With a sudden lightening of his gloom, he added: "Say, you're going to stay right here with us as long as you're in town; I want you to see how I cringe." In spite of Blaze's plaintive tone it was patent that he was inordinately proud of Paloma and well content with his serfdom.

Jonesville proved to be a typical Texas town of the modern variety, and altogether different to the pictured frontier village. There were no one-storied square fronts, no rows of saloons with well-gnawed hitching-rails, no rioting cowboys. On the contrary, the larger buildings were of artificial stone, the sidewalks of concrete, and the store fronts of plate-glass. Arc-lights shed a bluish-white glare over the wide street-crossings, and all in all the effect was much like that of a prosperous, orderly Northern farming town.

Not that Jonesville would have filled an eye for beauty. It was too new and crude and awkward for that. It fitted loosely into its clothes, for its citizens had patterned it with regard for the future, and it sprawled over twice its legitimate area. But to its happy founder it seemed well-nigh perfect, and its destiny roused his maddest enthusiasm. He showed Dave the little red frame railroad station, distinguished in some mysterious way above the hundred thousand other little red frame railroad stations of the identical size and style; he pointed out the Odd Fellows Hall, the Palace Picture Theater, with its glaring orange lights and discordant electric piano; he conducted Law to the First National Bank, of which Blaze was a proud but somewhat ornamental director; then to the sugar-mill, the ice-plant, and other points of equally novel interest.

Everywhere he went, Jones was hailed by friends, for everybody seemed to know him and to want to shake his hand.

"SOME town and SOME body of men, eh?" he inquired, finally, and Dave agreed:

"Yes. She's got a grand framework, Blaze. She'll be most as big as Fort
Worth when you fatten her up."

Jones waved his buggy-whip in a wide circle that took in the miles of level prairie on all sides. "We've got the whole blamed state to grow in. And, Dave, I haven't got an enemy in the place! It wasn't many years ago that certain people allowed I'd never live to raise this town. Why, it used to be that nobody dared to ride with me—except Paloma, and she used to sleep with a shot-gun at her bedside."

"You sure have been a responsibility to her."

"But I'm as safe now as if I was in church."

Law ventured to remark that none of Blaze's enemies had grown fat in prosecuting their feuds, but this was a subject which the elder man invariably found embarrassing, and now he said:

"Pshaw! I never was the blood-letter people think. I'm as gentle as a sheep." Then to escape further curiosity on that point he suggested that they round out their riotous evening with a game of pool.

Law boasted a liberal education, but he was no match for the father of Jonesville, who wielded a cue with a dexterity born of years of devotion to the game. In consequence, Blaze's enjoyment was in a fair way to languish when the proprietor of the Elite Billiard Parlor returned from supper to say:

"Mr. Jones, there's a real good pool-player in town, and he wants to meet you."

Blaze uttered a triumphant cry. "Get him, quick! Send the brass-band to bring him. Dave, you hook your spurs over the rung of a chair and watch your uncle clean this tenderfoot. If he's got class, I'll make him mayor of the town, for a good pool-shooter is all this metropolis lacks. Why, sometimes I go plumb to San Antone for a game." He whispered in his friend's ear, "Paloma don't let me gamble, but if you've got any dinero, get it down on me." Then, addressing the bystanders, he proclaimed, "Boys, if this pilgrim is good enough to stretch me out we'll marry him off and settle him down."

"No chance, Uncle Blaze; he's the most married person in town," some one volunteered. "His wife is the new dressmaker—and she's got a mustache." For some reason this remark excited general mirth.

"That's too bad. I never saw but one woman with a mustache, and she licked me good. If he's yoked up to that kind of a lady, I allow his nerves will be wrecked before he gets here. I hope to God he ain't entirely done for." Blaze ran the last three balls from a well-nigh impossible position, then racked up the whole fifteen with trembling eagerness and eyed the door expectantly. He was wiping his spectacles when the proprietor returned with a slim, sallow man whom he introduced as Mr. Strange.

"Welcome to our city!" Blaze cried, with a flourish of his glasses.
"Get a prod, Mr. Strange, and bust 'em, while I clean my wind-shields.
These fellow-townsmen of mine handle a cue like it was an ox-gad."

Mr. Strange selected a cue, studied the pyramid for an instant, then called the three ball for the upper left-hand corner, and pocketed it, following which he ran the remaining fourteen. Blaze watched this procedure near-sightedly, and when the table was bare he thumped his cue loudly upon the floor. He beamed upon his opponent; he appeared ready to embrace him.

"Bueno! There's art, science, and natural aptitude! Fly at 'em again, Mr. Strange, and take your fill." He finished polishing his spectacles, and readjusted them. "I aim to make you so comfortable in Jonesville that—-" Blaze paused, he started, and a peculiar expression crept over his face.

It seemed to Law that his friend actually turned pale; at any rate, his mouth dropped open and his gaze was no longer hypnotically following the pool-balls, but was fixed upon his opponent.

Now there were chapters in the life of Blaze Jones that had never been fully written, and it occurred to Dave that such a one had been suddenly reopened; therefore he prepared himself for some kind of an outburst. But Blaze appeared to be numbed; he even jumped nervously when Mr. Strange missed a shot and advised him that his chance had come.

As water escapes from a leaky pail, so had Jones's fondness for pool oozed away, and with it had gone his accustomed skill. He shot blindly, and, much to the general surprise, missed an easy attempt.

"Can't expect to get 'em all," comfortingly observed Mr. Strange as he executed a combination that netted him two balls and broke the bunch. After that he proved the insincerity of his statement by clearing the cloth for a second time. The succeeding frames went much the same, and finally Blaze put up his cue, mumbling:

"I reckon I must have another chill coming on. My feet are plumb dead."

"Cold feet are sure bad." Strange favored the crowd with a wink.

"I'm sort of sick."

"That's tough!" the victor exclaimed, regretfully. "But I'll tell you what we'll do—we'll take a little look into the future."

"What d'you mean?"

"Simply this: Nature has favored me with second sight and the ability to read fortunes. I foretell good an' evil, questions of love and mattermony by means of numbers, cards, dice, dominoes, apple-parings, egg-shells, tea-leaves, an' coffee-grounds." The speaker's voice had taken on the brazen tones of a circus barker. "I pro'nosticate by charms, ceremonies, omens, and moles; by the features of the face, lines of the hand, spots an' blemishes of the skin. I speak the language of flowers. I know one hundred and eighty-seven weather signs, and I interpet dreams. Now, ladies and gents, this is no idle boast. Triflin' incidents, little marks on the cuticle, although they appear to be the effect of chance, are nevertheless of the utmost consequence, an' to the skilled interpeter they foretell the temper of, an' the events that will happen to, the person bearin' 'em. Now let us take this little deck of common playing-cards—-"

The monologist, suiting the action to the word, conjured a deck of cards from somewhere, and extended them to Blaze. "Select one; any one—-"

"Hell!" snorted Jones, slipping into his coat.

"You are a skeptic! Very well. I convince nobody against his will. But wait! You have a strong face. Stand where you are." Extracting from another pocket a tiny pair of scissors and a sheet of carbon paper, Mr. Strange, with the undivided attention of the audience upon him, began to cut Blaze's silhouette. He was extraordinarily adept, and despite his subject's restlessness he completed the likeness in a few moments; then, fixing it upon a plain white cardboard, he presented it with a flourish.

Blaze accepted the thing and plunged for the open air.

IX A SCOUTING TRIP

"What ails you?" Law inquired as he and Blaze rolled away in the buckboard.

"Serves me right for leaving my six-shooter at home," panted the rancher. "Well, I might have known they'd find me some day."

"'They'? Who?"

"That hombre and his wife—the woman with the mustache. They swore they'd get me, and it looks like they will, for I daresn't raise my hand to protect myself."

This was very mystifying to Dave, and he said so.

"The woman'll recognize me, quick enough," Blaze asserted, and then,
"God knows what Paloma will do."

"Really! Is it that bad?"

"It's a vile story, Dave, and I never expected to tell anybody; but it's bound to come out on me now, so you better hear my side. Last summer I attended a convention at Galveston, and one hot day I decided to take a swim, so I hired a suit and a room to cache my six-shooter in. It was foolish proceedings for a man my age, but the beach was black with people and I wasn't altogether myself. You see, we'd had an open poker game running in my room for three days, and I hadn't got any sleep. I was plumb feverish, and needed a dip. Well, I'm no water-dog, Dave; I can't swim no better than a tarrapin with its legs cut off, but I sloshed around some in the surf, and then I took a walk to dreen off and see the sights. It was right interesting when I got so I could tell the women from the men—you see I'd left my glasses in the bath-house.

"Now I'd sort of upheld the general intemperance of that poker game for three days and nights—but I don't offer my condition as an excuse for what follows. No gentleman ought to lay his indecencies onto John Barley corn when they're nothing more nor less than the outcroppin's of his own orneriness. Liquor has got enough to answer for without being blamed for human depravities. I dare say I was friendlier than I had any right to be; I spoke to strangers, and some of the girls hollered at me, but I wouldn't have harmed a soul.

"Well, in the course of my promenade I came to a couple of fellers setting half-buried in the sand, and just as I was passing one of them got up—sort of on all-fours and—er—facing away from me—sabe? That's where the trouble hatched. I reached out and, with nothing but good-will in my heart, I—sort of pinched this party-sort of on the hip, or thereabouts. I didn't mean a thing by it, Dave. I just walked on, smiling, till something run into me from behind. When I got up and squared around, there was that man we just left cutting didos out of black paper.

"'What d'you mean by pinching my wife?' he says, and he was r'arin' mad.

"'Your WIFE?' I stammers, and with that he climbs me. Dave, I was weak with shame and surprise, and all I could do was hold him off. Sure enough, the man I'd pinched was a long, ga'nt woman with a little black mustache, and here she came!

"We started in right there. I never saw such a poisonous person as that woman. She was coiled, her head was up, and her rattles agoing, and so I finally lit out But I'm sort of fat, and they over-ran me. They bayed me against the sea-wall, and all I had the heart to do was to hold 'em off some more. Soon as I got my wind I shook 'em off a second time and run some more,