Humorous stories; Washington (State) -- Fiction; Western stories
"I guess Pete's b'other-in-law, as he calls him, won't come into these
parts again. He had a kind of narrow squeak this last time. Pete done
something pretty raw, even for this liberal-minded community. He got
scared about it himself and left the country for a couple of
months--looking for his brother-in-law, he said. He beat it up North and
got in with a bunch of other Injins that was being took down to New York
City to advertise a railroad, Pete looking like what folks think an
Injin ought to look when he's dressed for the part. But he got homesick;
and, anyway, he didn't like the job.
"This passenger agent that took 'em East put 'em up at one of the big
hotels all right, but he subjects 'em to hardships they ain't used to.
He wouldn't let 'em talk much English, except to say, 'Ugh! Ugh!'--like
Injins are supposed to--with a few remarks about the Great Spirit; and
not only that, but he makes 'em wear blankets and paint their faces--an
Injin without paint and blanket and some beadwork seeming to a general
passenger agent like a state capitol without a dome. And on top of these
outrages he puts it up with the press agent of this big hotel to have
the poor things sleep up on the roof, right in the open air, so them jay
New York newspapers would fall for it and print articles about these
hardy sons of the forest, the last of a vanishing race, being stifled by
walls--with the names of the railroad and the hotel coming out good and
strong all through the piece.
"Three of the poor things got pneumonia, not being used to such
exposure; and Pete himself took a bad cold, and got mad and quit the
job. They find him a couple of days later, in a check suit and white
shoes and a golf cap, playing pool in a saloon over on Eighth Avenue,
and ship him back as a disgrace to the Far West and a great common
carrier.
"He got in here one night, me being his best friend, and we talked it
over. I advised him to go down and give himself up and have it over;
and he agreed, and went down to Red Gap the next day in his new clothes
and knocked at the jail door. He made a long talk about how his
brother-in-law was the man that really done it, and he's been searching
for him clear over to the rising sun, but can't find him; so he's come
to give himself up, even if they ain't got the least grounds to suspect
him--and can he have his trial for murder over that afternoon, so he can
come back up here the next day and go to work?
"They locked him up and Judge Ballard appointed J. Waldo Snyder to
defend him. He was a new young lawyer from the East that had just come
to Red Gap, highly ambitious and full of devices for showing that
parties couldn't have been in their right mind when they committed the
deed--see the State against Jamstucker, New York Reports Number 23,
pages 19 to 78 inclusive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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