The Sheriff of Badger: A Tale of the Southwest BorderlandPattullo, George
General
The Sheriff of Badger: A Tale of the Southwest Borderland
Pattullo, George
Sheriffs -- Fiction; Western stories
Her name was Hetty Ferrier, and Miss Ferrier had exactly eleven dollars
and seventy cents. She had lived in Eau Claire, but went to Chicago to
make a fortune and to marry a rich, handsome youth, as girls starting
out in the world invariably do. There she got a job in a department
store, where they paid her four dollars and a half a week to keep soul
and body together, though subsequently little consideration was shown
for her soul. When she parried the assistant manager's attentions she
was removed from the lace counter to the hardware department, but she
did not care. Then she fell ill; for breakfast foods, wetted with watery
milk and eaten in a room opening on hot, slate roofs, are not a
sustaining diet when one stands all day on one's feet. So she was sent
back home from the hospital. And her parents were miserably poor. Her
father had borrowed the money to bring her home. She began reading
advertisements again, and finally answered one of the matrimonial
variety.
That was all. This man Jackson replied to her, and his letters were very
nice--those of a perfect gentleman, Miss Ferrier assured the sheriff.
Then he sent the money, and she journeyed to El Paso. He was not what
she had expected, but he treated her decently when he met her at the
train. Furthermore, he could be very amusing and "splendid company," she
said; so she went through a ceremony with him. After that he went away
to get tickets, and when he came back, he was drunk. She was frightened
and sat up all night in a day coach, and he went to sleep in a Pullman,
waking up sometimes to order the porter to tell her to go to sleep at
once. When they got out, he said they would take the stage to Badger,
where he had some business to transact, and then go on to Nogales.
The sheriff pressed for fuller information. Had she no friends while
working in the city? Yes, she knew some of the girls, but they were
always scheming for a good time, and she never had any money. The nicest
ones lived at home, but not all of them. Several young men had been kind
to her and had taken her to theaters. But they usually tried to get
fresh, said Miss Ferrier. Some appeared to have heaps of money, but
others worked for it as she did, only they spent it with princely
recklessness on pay night.
There was one--she came to a full stop. Yes, she would tell him about
that one, too. He was very poor. Indeed, he dressed so shabbily that the
girls tittered when he called to meet her at the employes' entrance. No;
he treated her all right and was always respectful. She liked him
because he was very good, and different. He was a student and was
working his way through college by waiting in a dining-hall. They had
hoped to marry some day. Then she got sick and went home. It would have
taken years, anyway. She seemed never to have regarded the prospect
with much hope.
"Uh-huh!" said the sheriff, when she had finished. "And what do you aim
to do now?"
"I don't know. What can I do? Get a job as waitress, I guess."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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