City and town life -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
are charged with the murder of the two surveyors, and has given each
cow-man a deed to a corner lot on the public square of the prospective
Balderson town. Deputy Sheriff Crosby from this place went over to
arrest Balderson, charged with killing D. V. Sherman of the Jingle-bob
property, and, after asking for his warrant, Balderson took it, put it
in his pocket, advised the deputy to hurry home, and, if he found any
coyotes or jack-rabbits that couldn't get out of his way fast enough,
not to stop to kill them, but shoo them off the trail and save time."
They say in Colorado that Balderson became an irrigation king. It is
certain that he raised half a million dollars in New York for his dam
and ditches. He built the "Look Out Opera House," and decorated it in
gilded stucco and with red plush two inches deep. Morrison contributed
this anecdote to the office Legend of Balderson: "He was in Florida in
his private car when they finished the opera house. When he came back
and saw a plaster bust of Shakespeare over the proscenium arch, he waved
his cane pompously and exclaimed: 'Take her down! Bill Shakespeare is
all right for the effete East, but out here he ain't deuce high with the
little corporal of Company B.'" So in Shakespeare's niche is a
plaster-cast of a soldier's face with the slouch-cap, the military
moustache, and the goatee of great pride, after the picture that once
adorned the columns of the _Statesman_. For a time they talked of
Balderson for United States Senator, and, at the laying of the
corner-stone of the capitol, the Denver papers spoke of the masterly
oration of former Governor Balderson of Kansas, whose marvellous
word-painting of the Battle of Look Out Mountain held the vast audience
spellbound for an hour. A few months later a cloudburst carried away the
Big Burro dam, and times went bad, and the stockholders in Balderson's
company, who would have rebuilt the dam, could not find Balderson when
they needed him, and certain creditors of the company, hitherto unknown,
appeared, and Balderson faded away like a morning star.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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