The contract read that everything Charlie painted or modeled for one
year was to be the property of this man and he wanted him to work from
early morning until night. Charlie argued with him that there was some
difference between painting and sawing wood and told him the deal was
off.
He hunted up a fellow he knew and borrowed ten dollars and paid this
fellow that had advanced the money to him. Charlie said he wouldn’t work
under pressure so they split up and Charlie started out for himself.
He put in with a bunch of cowboys (I was one of them), a roundup cook,
and a broken-down prize fighter. We rented a shack on the south side of
town. Our bill of fare was very short at times as Charlie was the only
one that made any money and that was very little. We christened the
shack and gave it the name of Red Onion. We had some queer characters as
guests. Broken gamblers, cowboys, horse thieves, cattle rustlers, in
fact, everybody that hit town broke seemed to find the Red Onion to get
something to eat. Among them all it was hard to get anyone to cook or
wash the dishes but at meal time we always had a full house. Along about
spring time I got a job in a cow outfit and I told Charlie. So he said
if I was going away he had an announcement to make to the gang—and in
effect it was that the Red Onion would be closed and go out of business.
I believe it was the Spring of 1889 we met at Philbrook in the Judith
Basin for the Spring roundup and a lot of the boys were celebrating at
the Post Office and store. The postmaster told us someone had sent him a
piece of limburger cheese through the mail. He didn’t know what to do
with it as he didn’t know anyone civilized enough to eat it, so he gave
it to the cowboys who put in a lot of their time rubbing it on door
knobs, the inside of hat bands and drinking cups. They had the whole
town well perfumed. When someone noticed an old timer that had come to
town to tank up on joy juice and had got so overloaded he went to sleep
in the saloon, his heavy drooping moustache gave one of the boys an
idea. A council was held and it was agreed that he should have his share
of the limburger rubbed into his moustache under his nose. Being
unconscious, old Bill slept like a baby in a cradle while the work was
done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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