"'Yere, you!' says French, who's the Wells-Fargo agent, a-callin'
after Old Monte, 'come back an' either plant your game or pack it
with you. I'm too busy a gent to let you or any other blinded
drunkard go leavin' a fooneral at my door. Thar's enough to do here
as it is, an' I don't want no dead Injuns on my hands.'
"'Don't put him up thar an' go sp'ilin' them mail-bags,' howls Old
Monte, as French an' a hoss-hustler from inside the corral lays hold
of the Navajo to throw him on with the baggage.
"'Then come down yere an' ride herd on the play yourse'f, you
murderin' sot!' says French.
"An' with that, he shore cuts loose an' cusses Old Monte frightful;
cusses till a cottonwood tree in front of the station sheds all its
leaves, an' he deadens the grass for a hundred yards about.
"'Promotin' a sepulcher in this rock-ribbed landscape,' says French,
as Jack Moore comes up, kind o' apol'gisin' for his profane voylence
at Old Monte; 'framin' up a tomb, I say, in this yere rock-ribbed
landscape ain't no child's play, an' I'm not allowin' none for that
homicide Monte to put no sech tasks on me. He knows the Wolfville
roole. Every gent skins his own polecats an' plants his own prey.'
"'That's whatever!' says Jack Moore, 'an' onless Old Monte is
thirstin' for trouble in elab'rate forms, he acquiesces tharin.'
"With that Old Monte hitches the Navajo to the hind axle with a
lariat which French brings out, an' then the stage, with the savage
coastin' along behind, goes rackin' off to the No'th. Later, Monte
an' the passengers hangs this yere remainder up in a pine tree, at
an Injun crossin' in the hills, as a warnin'. Whether it's a warnin'
or no, we never learns; all that's shore is that the remainder an'
the lariat is gone next day; but whatever idees the other Injuns
entertains of the play is, as I once hears a lecture sharp
promulgate, 'concealed with the customary stoicism of the American
savage.'
"Most likely them antipathies of mine ag'in Injuns is a heap
enhanced by what I experiences back on the old Jones an' Plummer
trail, when they was wont to stampede our herds as we goes drivin'
through the Injun Territory. Any little old dark night one of them
savages is liable to come skulkin' up on the wind'ard side of the
herd, flap a blanket, cut loose a yell, an' the next second thar's a
hundred an' twenty thousand dollars' worth of property skally-
hootin' off into space on frenzied hoofs. Next day, them same
ontootered children of the woods an' fields would demand four bits
for every head they he'ps round up an' return to the bunch. It's a
source of savage revenoo, troo; but plumb irritatin'. Them Injuns
corrals sometimes as much as a hundred dollars by sech treacheries.
An' then we-all has to rest over one day to win it back at poker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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