Plain Mary Smith Part 9

Mary smiled just enough to make the dimples count. They were best of the dimple family--not fat dimples, but little spots you'd like to own.

She wasn't the girl to take gaiety from a stranger; but, somehow, Jim showed for what he was--a clean heart, if frolicsome.

Mary was a match for him, all right. She made him as deep a bow, gave him a look, and in a mock-earnest way, with her hand on her heart, said:

"Am I to suppose myself the cause of so much joy?"

"You're not to suppose--you're to know," says Jim.

"Well," says Mary, with another flying look at him, "it doesn't seem possible; but the evidence of such very truthful and very blue, blue eyes"--she stopped and looked at the eyes--"is, of course, beyond questioning."

That knocked Jimmy. Underneath his dash, he was a modest fellow, and to have his personal appearance remarked openly rattled him. Mary'd got the war on his territory in two seconds. He looked at her, dumb; until, seeing her holding back her laughter by means of a row of the whitest of teeth set into the most interesting of under lips, he laughed right out and offered his hand.

"I'll simply state in plain English," he says, not wanting to quit whipped, "that you are the best use those eyes have ever been put to."

"That's entirely satisfactory," says Mary. "I'd have a bad disposition not to be contented with that--and, Mr. Holton, here's a friend of mine--Mr. Saxton."

Saxton was the only one who hadn't drawn entertainment out of the previous performance. He and Holton shook hands without smiles. It was more like the hand-shake before "time" is called. But they looked each other square in the eye--honest enemies, at least--not like the durned brute--well, he comes later.

There they stood; fine, graceful, upstanding huskies, both; each as handsome as the other, in his own way; each as able as the other, in his own way; one black and poetic-looking; the other fair and romantic-looking. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Sax knew more of books; Jim knew more of men. Sax knew the wild lands of music and such; Jim had slept with an Injun or two watching out to be sure he wasn't late for the office the next morning. Either one was plenty durn good enough to make a girl fix her hair straight.

And there stood Mary, the cause of the look each man put upon the other.

She'd brought down Jim in one stroke--he was a sudden sort of jigger.

Well, there she stood; and if there's anything in having a subject worth fighting for, those two fellers ought to have been the happiest of men.

I'm glad I can add this: Mary didn't _want_ any man to fight about her--not much! She was the real, true woman; the kind that brings hope in her hand. Of course she had some vanity, and if two fellows got a little cross when she was around, that wouldn't break her heart; but to arouse any deep feeling of anger between two men--why, I honestly believe she'd rather they'd strike her than each other. Oh, no! She stood for nothing of that kind. She stood heart and soul for light and fun and kindness. If she made mistakes, it was from a natural underrating of how the other party felt, or, like her worst mistake, through some twisted idea of duty. There's a saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that's particularly true of women.

When a good woman gets hold of half a fact, she can raise the very devil with it.

That two felt disposed to glare put restraint on conversation, and after some talk, in which Jim fished for an invitation to call on Mary in Panama, and got what you might call a limited order--"I shall be very glad to see you, sometime, Mr. Holton"--he turned and treated me to a view of Western methods.

"Pack your turkey and come with me, Bill," he says.

"What--_now_?" says I.

"Well, I'll wait, if you want me to," he says. "But what's your reason?"

"Not any," says I, and skipped for my truck. Isn't it surprising how people, even boys, that ain't much troubled about fixed rules, will keep on going the same old way; not because there's sense, comfort, nor profit in it, but simply because it is the same old way? I've known folks to live in places and keep at jobs, hating both, could quit easily, yet staying on and on, simply because they were there yesterday.

I've got so that if people start talking over an act, I feel like saying, "For Heaven's sake! Let's try it and then we'll _know_," while at the same time it happens that their talk is so good, I feel bashful about cutting in. Give me the Western idea. People that get an action on, instead of an oration. That is, if they're the right kind of people.

Yet I dearly love to talk. It's a strange world!

Jimmy was the Western idea on two legs. The moment he thought of a thing, he grew busy. And when work was over, I'd talk him against any man I ever met. Perhaps the chief difference between the Western man's way and the Eastern man's way is that the Westerner says it's fun and believes it, whilst the Easterner says it's a great and holy undertaking he's employed in, and wastes lots of time trying to believe it. We all do the things we like to do, and we might as well admit it, cheerful.

I hadn't much more than time to say good-by all around, and find out where Sax and Mary were going to stay, before I was off on the new deal.

"Have you ever ridden a horse?" Jim asks me, when we hit sh.o.r.e.

"Never," says I.

"Well," says he, rubbing his head, "we _can_ go across on the railroad, but I'd like to stop here and there. It wouldn't be so bad if the good critters hadn't been all hired out or bought this last rush. As it is, you stand to get on to something that don't want you. My Pedro'd eat you alive if you laid a hand on him, or I'd trade with you--you got to learn sometime, Bill, but you'll get a tough first lesson here--suppose we take the train, eh?"

Now, I hadn't come to the Isthmus of Panama to exhibit all the things I was afraid of. I didn't like the thought of playing puss-in-the-corner with a horse I'd never met before, a little bit, and I liked the idea of backing out still less.

"Trot your animal out," I says. "I guess, if I get a hold on him, we won't separate for a while."

Jim rubbed his head again.

"I don't want to lose you right in the start," he says. "These mustangs are the most reliable hunks of wickedness on earth--"

"All I need to try and ride is a horse," I says. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "I won't quarrel with that spirit," he says. He spoke to a native in Spanish. The feller looked at me and spread both hands. I scarcely knew there was such a thing as a Spanish language, but I knew that those hands said, "This is the impossible you have shoved down my chimney."

Jim translated. "He says he can't think of but one brute, and he can't imagine you and that one making any kind of combination."

"If you're keeping me here to see my sand run out, you'll make it, all right," I says--"otherwise, get that horse."

Jim spoke to the native and the native looked at me again, shaking his head sorrowful. At last he discarded all responsibility and ambled off.

Here come my gallant steed. His neck had a haughty in-curve; he was bow-legged forrud, and knock-kneed aft. His hips stuck out so far the hair couldn't get the nourishment it needed, and fell out. He had a nose like Julius Caesar, an under lip that hung down three inches, and the eye of a dying codfish. I lost all fear of him at once. Ignorance is the papa of courage. According to instructions, I put my left foot in the stirrup and made ready to board. At that instant my trusty steed whipped his head around like a rattlesnake, gathered a strip of flesh about six inches long, shut his eyes, and made his teeth to approach each other.

I've been hurt several times in my life, but for straight agony give me a horse-bite.

With a yell that brought out every revolutionist in Aspinwall,--which means the town was there,--I grabbed that cussed brute by the windpipe and stopped his draft. Jim and the native made some motions.

"Keep out of this!" I hollered. "This is my fight!"

So then me and my faithful horse began to see who could stand it the longest. There was nothing soul-stirring and uplifting about the contest. He pinched my leg, and I pinched his throat. He kicked me, and I kicked him. We wrastled all over the place, playing plain stick-to-him-Pete. The worst of having a hand-to-hand with an animal is that he don't tire. You get weaker and weaker; they get stronger and stronger. Besides, the pain in my leg almost seemed to stop my heart.

Murder! how it hurt!

At the same time, a horse doesn't do as well without an occasional breath of fresh air, and I had this feller's supply cut off short.

Pretty soon he got frantic, and the way he tore and r'ared around there was a treat. It didn't occur to either one of us to let go. Finally, when I'd ceased to think entirely, there came a staggering sort of fall; hands took hold of me and dragged me away.

Jim lifted my head and gave me a drink of water. He swore at himself ferocious, and by all that was great and powerful, lie was going to shoot that horse.

By this time I was interested in the art of riding. I told him he wasn't going to kill my horse; that I intended to ride that same mustang out of the town of Aspinwall if it took some time and all of my left leg.

"What's the good of being a fool?" says he. "Now, Bill, you be sensible."

"Where's the horse?" says I.

He had to laugh. "United you fell," says he. "I honest think he hadn't a cent the best of it."

I got on my feet and made for Mr. Mustang. As the critter stood there, with his sad lower lip hanging slack, thinking what a wicked world it was, I recalled who he looked like. He was the dead ringer for Archibald Blavelt, back home. Archie was such a mean old cuss that the neighborhood was proud of him--he carried it 'way beyond the point where it was a disgrace. I should have known better than to tackle anything that resembled Archie, but I didn't. Instead, I walked up, club in hand, waiting for the mustang to make a crooked move. He paid no attention, let me put my foot in the stirrup, swing aboard and settle down. Not till then did he toss his head gaily in the air and holler for joy. You see, he'd made out that we were likely to break even, both on the ground, so he tried getting under me. I refuse to say what happened next. I thought I was aboard the _Matilda_ with the tornado on. I saw, in jerks, pale-faced men scrambling right up the sides of houses; women shrieking and dusting away from there, and between thirty and forty thousand dogs, barking and snapping and tumbling out of the way.

I laid two strong hands on Archie's (I called him Archie) mane and wrapped my legs around his barrel and gave myself up for lost. We spent years tearing that section of Aspinwall to pieces, till, all of a sudden, Archie give a jump that landed me on his rump and pulled out for more room. And didn't he go! It was scandalous, the way he flapped them bony legs of his. Once in a while he kicked up behind, and I made a fine bow. Every time that happened some polite Spaniard took off his hat to me, thinking I was a friend he hadn't time to recognize.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I laid two strong hands on Archie's mane"]

I stayed with that mustang, somehow, until we come to a narrow alley. At the end of it a fearful fat Spaniard, with a Panama hat and a green umbrella, was crossing. I hollered to him to get out of the way, but the sight of me and Archie streaming in the breeze surprised him so he stood paralyzed. He made a fat man's hop for safety, too late. When we were fifteen feet from him, Archie threw a hand-spring, and I put my head, like a red b.u.t.tonhole bouquet, plumb in the gentleman's vest.

"a.s.sa.s.sin!" he cries, and fetches me a wipe with the green umbrella before he expires temporarily on the street.