Bill Nye and Boomerang. Or, The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary Gems
Some broncos have formed the habit of bucking. They do not all buck. Only those that are alive do so. When they are dead they are more subdued and gentle.
A bronco often becomes so attached to his master that he will lay down his life if necessary. His master's life, I mean.
When a bronco comes up to me and lays his head over my shoulder, and asks me to scratch his chilblain for him, I always excuse myself on the ground that I have a family dependent on me, and furthermore, that I am a United States Commissioner, and to a certain extent the government hinges on me.
Think what a ghastly hole there would be in the official staff of the republic if I were launched into eternity now, when good men are so scarce.
Some days I worry a good deal over this question. Suppose that some unprincipled political enemy who wanted to be United States Commissioner or Notary Public in my place should assassinate me!!!
Lots of people never see this. They sec how smoothly the machinery of government moves along, and they do not dream of possible harm. They do not know how quick she might slip a cog, or the eccentric get jammed through the indicator, if, some evening when I am at the opera house, or the minstrel show, the assassin should steal up on me, and shoot a large, irregular aperture into my cerebellum.
This may not happen, of course; but I suggest it, so that the public will, as it were, throw its protecting arms about me, and not neglect me while I am alive.
PUMPKIN JIM; OR THE TALE OF A BUSTED JACKASS RABBIT
CHAPTER I. – PUMPKIN JIM
It was evening in the mountains. The golden god of day was gliding slowly adown the crimson west. Here and there the cerulean dome was flecked with snowy clouds.
The flecks were visible to the naked eye.
Meanwhile the golden god of day, hereinbefore referred to, continued to glide adown the crimson west, with about the same symmetrical glide. It had done so on several occasions previous to the opening of this story.
The katydid was singing sleepily in the long grass, and the grizzly bear was trilling between eleven trills on the still air.
It was a spot where the foot of man had never trod, and the undisturbed temple of nature with its hallowed hush and never ending repose. The lofty pines were swaying softly to and fro in the gentle breeze of evening, and the babbling brook went babbling along down its rocky bed in the bottom of the canon, with a merry bab.
All at once, like a flash of dazzling light, a noble youth came slowly down the mountain side, riding an ambling palfrey of the narrow-guage variety, with a paint-brush tail on him – (that is the palfrey, of course.) The palfrey was a delicate buckskin color, with high, intellectual ears and Roman nose.
In crossing the stream the palfrey stubbed his toe, and fell on his noble rider, breaking the man's leg in three places, and jamming one of his ribs through the liver and into the ground, thus pinning him to the earth, and preventing him from rising.
The buckskin palfrey, with almost human foresight, and wonderful intelligence, found a soft place in the grassy bottom, and lay down.
There, in the slanting rays of the declining sun, and stretched out upon the sedgy brink of the clear mountain stream, far from the reach of man and miles beyond the outer line of civilization, lay Pumpkin Jim, the Yipping, Yelling Yahoo of Dirty Woman's Ranch.
He lav there partially submerged in the stream and partially in the clear, bracing atmosphere. Wild-eyed and beautiful he lay there, looking up into the glad realms of space, with that murderous glitter in his eye that wins a woman's love, and the sympathy of kind hearted philanthropists.
Occasionally he would raise his broken limb and try to use it, but it generally wilted and drooped like the leg of a rag doll.
Then he would struggle to raise himself up and drag his body out upon the bank, but the broken rib would tear out large chunks of his liver, and make him feel wretched and unhappy.
"Curses upon thee, thou base and treacherous mule!" he murmured, brokenly. "By my beard, thou hast poorly repaid me for my unremitting kindness to thee. Ah, alack, alack, alack – "
He was just about to alack some more, when a mellow, girlish voice came floating down the gulch and fell in large fragments near where he lay.
He gathered up some of the chunks of melody to see what the song might be. It was that wonderful masterpiece of Mozart's, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."
Then he swooned.
The gurgling brook still continued to gurg. We will let it gurg.
CHAPTER II. – GERALDINE CARBOLINE O'TOOLE
The melodious voice referred to in the preceding chapter was owned and operated by Geraldine Carboline O'Toole, the heroine of this classic tale.
Anon she came down the valley like a thing of life.
The limber sunbonnet which she wore had drifted to leeward and revealed her Grecian profile and peeled nose.
All at once her fawn-like eyes fell upon the prostrate figure, pale and still, and its toes turned toward the center of the zodiac.
A wild, frightened look came into her starry eyes, and a ghastly pallor overspread her young face, throwing her intellectual freckles into strong relief.
She stole forward and looked at the pale face of Pumpkin Jim as it lay upturned with the rosebud mouth slightly ajar, like the mouth of the Mississippi river.
Then she stooped, and, dipping up some of the clear, cold water in his hat, poured it into the rosy mouth. Slowly it trickled down his throat, and the wild panic and surprise created in his stomach by the novel fluid brought him speedily to consciousness.
"Where am I, and whence cometh this burning sensation in my liver?" faintly murmured Pumpkin Jim. "Methought some new and peculiar beverage didst cool my parching throat."
"Hist!" said Geraldine; "you must not excite yourself. You must brace up. Everything depends upon your keeping quiet instead of tearing up the ground with your broken rib."
"And whence comest thou, O beauteous vision, with the Aurora Borealis hair?"
"Didst I not tell thee," said Geraldine, "that thou mustest not converse, but remain quiet? Let it suffice, however, that I strayed away from a Sabbath school picnic at Cheyenne, and have wandered on carelessly for several hundred miles, wotting not whence I wist."
By this time the day god which we left gliding slowly adown the crimson west, had glode down the crimson west according to advertisement, and the solemn hush of night was coming on, broken anon by the long drawn shriek of the mountain lion, or the pealing of the thunder, which also reverberated anon through the otherwise solemn hush of night.
Darkness came on apace. It would be folly to attempt to prevent it, so we will let it come on apace.
CHAPTER III. – STARTLING REVELATIONS
We will now suppose twenty-four hours to have passed Since the scenes narrated in the last chapter.
The gloaming is beginning to gloam.
It began to look as though if something were not done for Pumpkin Jim pretty previously, he would pass with a gentle, gliding movement up the flume.
He was growing fainter hour by hour, and the extreme torpidity of his liver, gave rise to grave apprehensions on the part of his gentle guardian.
His leg also gave him extreme pain and cause for uneasiness, to say the least. It had swollen to about the size of a flour barrel, and was still swelling as we go to press.
He opened his eyes with a low moan, and looked up into the limber sun-bonnet.
"Beauteous one, with the ethereal brow!" he began, but Geraldine blushed and bade him let up.
"Gentle lady," he began again, "I am aware that the crisis is near. Unless I have help very soon, in some form or other, I shall have clomb the golden stair. Already the circulation is impaired, and the transverse duplex has ceased to vibrate. Dissolution is coming on. My pulse grows feebler hour by hour, and I feel that another morning sun will find only my earthly tenement here. My spirit will have wung its way to the realms of eternal day."
"O, do not talk that way," sobbed Geraldine, filling her apron full of large, irregular fragments of grief. "It cannot, must not be!"
"Do not be over confident," said Pumpkin Jim. "Few men would have lived as I have with a rib running through the centre of the liver, and into the ground for nine or ten inches without great difficulty. The secret of my power of endurance, I will, however, confide to you, as this may be positively my last appearance. My true name is not Pumpkin Jim; that is only a nom de plume. My sure enough name is Jesse James – that is the secret of my longevity. I have been killed a great deal. I have lost my life in almost every State in the Union. At first it used to make me gloomy and taciturn to be killed so much; but latterly I became very much pleased and flattered by this attention. It is sad to think, however, that after being killed by some of our most prominent men, I should at last yield up the ghost in a lonely canon, at the urgent solicitation of a narrow-guage mule. But enough; it is useless to repine. All that I am kicking about is, that after dying in so many different styles, and in such desirable conditions, surrounded by all the comforts of civilization, and getting a large amount of newspaper space, and having a patent medicine portrait of myself published in the papers, I should succumb to the death-dealing jackass, in the solitude of the mountains.
"I cannot die again, however, without telling you of my love. I might occupy your time by telling you of my long and glittering career of crime, but it would take too long. I have nothing to lay at your feet but my untarnished record as a highway robber, and my all consuming love.
"It would ease the pain of my dying hour if you were to say to me that you returned my love."
Our hero then fell back upon the mossy bank and gasped for breath, while to all appearances the last moments of Pumpkin Jim had come.
It was a trying time for a young thing like Geraldine to pass through. She stooped over him and fanned him with her sun bonnet and whispered a few low musical words in his ear.
That did the business.
CHAPTER IV. – ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
The magic words that Geraldine emptied into Pumpkin James' ear roused him, and his eyes opened with their old diabolical light. A slight grating sound was heard. It was the broken bone of our hero's off-limb coming back into its place and reuniting.
Then his rib came back out of the ground and waltzed into him, his liver healed up, and he arose and sat in the moonlight.
His first words were, "Ah, Geraldine, you have brought me back to life. Now would you please look around and see if there is any cold pie in the house, my very ownest own?"
This seemed to indicate that he had not fully recovered his mental faculties, as the most accessible cold pie was 327 miles from where they then were, and in a direct line.
Geraldine, however, set herself at once about procuring food for her soul's idol. Taking some salt she went out along the wooded slope to find a jack-rabbit on whose tail she could throw the salt, thus securing him as an easy prey.
She soon scared up one with a broken leg.
Most all of my gentle, refined, and intellectual readers of the Rocky mountains have frightened from his lair, at some time or other, a jack-rabbit with a broken leg. Jackrabbits with shattered limbs are very common in the West.
Geraldine followed hopefully on. Up hill and down, over low parks covered with hunch-grass, across little mountain streams, through long stretches of greasewood and sagebrush, starting the owl from some blasted pine tree, or frightening the smiling coyote from his course, onward and ever onward she flew like a hunted fawn.
Her every motion was grace and poetry itself. The limber sun bonnet flopped to and fro with a merry Runic flop, but the crippled John rabbit did not tarry. For an invalid, he seemed to make very fair time.
Occasionally he would look around over his shoulder, and laugh a merry, taunting laugh. Then he would give his attention to getting over the ground.
Geraldine got mad, and resolved to overtake her game and mete out to him a horrible death.
Now and then she would wildly throw a lump of salt in the direction of the fleeing rabbit; but it always failed to connect.
It was, indeed, an exciting chase, and, in fact, is yet, for as we go to press, Geraldine is still madly pursuing the ostensibly disabled jack-rabbit with a handful of common table salt poised in the air, ready to throw upon the tail of her rapidly retreating adversary.
Jesse James, alias Pumpkin Jim, waited a reasonable length of time for the return of Geraldine; but as she cometh not he said, he arose, and bestriding his narrow guage mule, he rode away.
He readily laid down his life again wherever he went, and although he died a miserable death in almost every corner of the earth, he never more met Geraldine Carboline O'Toole, the Italian Countess, to whom he was betrothed.
It is thought that she chased the crippled jack-rabbit into the realms of space.
WILLIAM NYE AND THE HEATHEN CHINEE
The subject of agriculture, which really lies nearest my heart of anything I can think of, naturally brings to the front the oriental buckwheater.
The Chinaman, as an agriculturalist, is generally successful in a small way, and I love to watch him work. Whenever I get bilious and need exercise, I go over to the southend of town and vicariously hoe radishes for an hour or two till the pores are open, and I feel that delightful languor and the chastened sense of hunger and honesty which comes to the man who is not afraid to toil.
There is a feeling now too prevalent among our American people that the Chinaman should be driven away, but I do not join in the popular cry because I enjoy him too much, and he soothes me and cheers me when all the earth seems filled with woe.
My favorite oriental onion-promoter is called Tue Long. This, however, was a piece of side-splitting mirth on the part of his parents, for, as a matter of fact, he is too short.
He is considerably bronzed by the action of the sun and his out-of-door pursuits, so that his complexion has that radiant olive tinge that we see on the canvas-covered ham.
I go over to Tue Long's farm, in Sherrod's alkali addition to Laramie, when I feel that office work does not give me the physical exercise that I need, and I lean over the fence and tell Tue Long my experience with club-footed parsnips and early-fried potatoes. At first he used to listen to me with his mouth open, so that you could throw a Mason & Hamlin organ into it, but now he don't seem to pay much attention to what I say to him.
This shows that the Chinaman cannot keep pace with the rapid strides now being made by American agriculture.
One day last week I had lost my appetite, and needed active bodily exertion, so I strolled over to the rat-eater's rural retreat, to watch Tue Long a few hours, and see if I couldn't get up an appetite.
The wind was blowing pretty fresh, as it sometimes does in this lovely clime, and Tue Long was trying to hold down some vulcanized rubber beets, and moss-agate asparagus. He wasn't succeeding very well, for just as he would get the beets driven into the ground securely, the zephyr would spring up from the south and blow the moss-agate asparagus all over the military reservation. Then while he would be giving his attention to the asparagus, the wailing winds would blow down his fence, and turn the tail of Tue Long's morning wrapper over his head, and leave his spinal column sticking up into the summer sky.
It seemed to be a bad day for agriculture, and Tue Long would alternately uncork some brocaded profanity, and then chase his hat, or do up his hair in a fresh Grecian coil I leaned over the fence, and laughing a low gurgling laugh, I said:
"Tue Long, you must learn to control your fiendish temper. Agriculture requires patience and serenity of disposition. You must always be cheerful and gentle. Always be pleasant and amiable in your home life. When the mountain wind uncoils your back-hair, and you cannot hold down the flap of your dressing sacque, you must not get mad and swear; but fill the air with merry laughter, just as Confucius used to do. Be a philosopher, and frown down these little annoyances."
Now, when I was propagating my Scotch-plaid summer squashes, the squash-bugs got in one morning before breakfast, and ate the vines. Soon after that I tried a new kind of fire-proof squash, with a hunting-case on it; but the squash-bugs took a spade and pried open the hunting-case, and ate the supreme stuffing out of every individual squash. I then tried the Bessemer-steel squash, with plaster of Paris works inside, but the irrigation was defective, and it never matured.
But, did I forget myself and swear like a Guinea hen, the way you do? Did I break forth into petulant remarks, and lower myself in the estimation of my neighbors?
Not to any remarkable degree.
I went to the stockholders of the Pioneer Canal Company and said, "Here, gentlemen, I am an inexperienced agriculturalist, and I do not succeed. Nothing grows under my watchful care but the speckled squash-bug, and the fresh water cut worm. You are old, horny-handed sons of toil, and practical tillers of the soil; what shall I do?"
Then the secretary called a meeting of the stockholders, and the matter was discussed. The general custodian of peculiar seeds and rare bulbs was ordered to select certain seeds from the bureau, and give them to me for trial. Among these were the seeds of the early dwarf salad oil vine, the Northern spy horse radish, the black and tan Lima bean, the non-explosive codfish ball, the soda water melon, the grammatical sugar beet, and the anti-cut worm asbestos string bean.
These have all grown well and thrived when my neighbors, who were too proud to ask advice, have failed. I shall this year raise, no doubt, enough of the non-explosive codfish ball alone to place me far beyond the reach of want. But Tue Long is a thousand years behind the great irresistible tide of progress, and will cling to his celluloid beets and cottonwood cucumbers for ages yet to come.
HONG LEE'S GRAND BENEFIT AT LEADVILLE
It will be remembered about nine months ago Hong Lee resolved to establish a branch laundry and shirt-destroying establishment – at Leadville, with the main office and general headquarters at Laramie. All at once he came back, and seemed to be satisfied at the old stand. So I would ask him his opinion of the future of the carbonate camp.
Hong Lee had just tied his hair up in a Grecian coil and secured it in a mass of shining braids, as I came in, and was giving some orders as to the day's work. One employe was just completing his devotions to a cross-eyed god in one corner, and another was squirting water out of his mouth like an oriental street sprinkler over the spotless front of a white shirt.
Hong Lee asked me to sit down on the ironing table and make myself at home. I asked him how trade was, and a few other unimportant questions, and then asked him what he thought of Leadville. I cannot give the conversation in the exact language in which it was given, as I am not up in pigeon English. He said he went over to Leadville, thinking that at $4.25 per dozen he could work up a good business and wear a brocaded overshirt with slashed sleeves and Pekin trimmings. Trade was a little dull here and he had more Chinamen than he could use, so he had concluded to establish a branch outfit at Leadville and make some scads.
I asked him why he did not remain at the camp and go through the pro – gramme.
He said that the general feeling in Leadville was not friendly to the Chinaman. The people did not meet him with a brass band, and the mayor didn't tender him the freedom of the city. On the contrary, they seemed cold and distant toward him. By and by they clubbed together and came to call on him. They were very attentive then. Very much so. Some had shot-guns to fire salutes with, and others had large clotheslines in their hands. Hong Lee felt proud to be so much thought of, and was preparing an impromptu speech on orange paper with a marking brush, when the chairman came and told him that a few American citizens had come, hoping to be of use to him in learning the ways of the city.
Then they took him out to the public square where Hong Lee supposed that he was to make his speech, and they proceeded to kick him into the most shapeless mass. They kicked him into a globular form and then flattened him out after which they knocked him into a rhomboid. This change was followed by thumping him into an isosceles triangle. When he looked more like a bundle of old clothes than a Chinaman, they took him with a pair of tongs, and threw him over the battlements.
Hono-Lee returned to consciousness, and murmured, "Where am I?" or words to that effect. A noble mule-skinner passing by, touched him up with the hot end of his mule whip, and showed him the route to Denver.
Hong Lee says now, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
YOU FOU
She is rather below the medium height, and her gait is the easy gliding movement of a club-footed Guinea pig. She has a mouth like a whippoorwill, and when she laughed at some little bon mot, such as I am always getting off, her upper lip was thrown back over her head, till it caught on a large Celestial hair-pin, and her attendant had to go up there with a monkey-wrench and unfasten it. It was the most heavenly smile I ever saw. It had so much depth and soul to it. I felt flattered, of course, but I was more guarded in my remarks after that. The Chinese, as a nation, cannot grapple with our American style of joke. They are not strong enough.
You Fou was held here on a telegram from Denver, until Monday, when she was released on writ of habeas corpus. I went up to see how the writ would work on a China woman. At first it 'didn't seem to catch on, but after awhile it began to work on her all right; and eventually turned her loose. But I wouldn't be a habeas corpus for $2 per day and board.
After being released on the writ, there being no warrant at that time, counsel told Ah Say, who had You Fou in charge, that the best thing for him to do would be to light out with great vehemence for some foreign strand, as the Denver officer would be here Monday evening with the required documents to take You Fou back to Denver. She was therefore taken to the palatial residence of Hong Lee, on Second, near A street, where she was rigged up in man's attire; but Sheriff Boswell stepped in, and through the gauzy disguise he discovered You Fou.
He arrested her. She was bathed in tears. It was the first bath she ever had. He took her and held her, figuratively speaking, until another telegram announced that the requisition of the Governor was countermanded, and You Fou lit out for her destination.
I shall write a little novelette next summer with this tale as a foundation, and it will be a good thing. I am having the cuts made now at a shoemaker shop here in town.
THE LOP-EARED LOVERS OF THE LITTLE LARAMIE
CHAPTER I. – A TALE OF LOVE AND PARENTAL CUSSEDNESS
The scene opens with a landscape. In the foreground stands a house; but there are no honeysuckles or Johnny-jump-ups clambering over the door; there are no Columbines or bitter-sweets, or bachelors-buttons, clinging lovingly to the eaves, and filling the air with fragrance. The reason for this is, that it is too early in the spring for Columbines and Johnny-jump-ups, at the time when our story opens, and they wouldn't grow in that locality without irrigation, anyway. That is the reason that these little adjuncts do not appear in the landscape.
But the scene is nevertheless worthy of a painter. The house, especially, ought to be painted, and a light coat of the same article on the front gate would improve its appearance materially. In the door of the cottage stands a damsel, whose natural lovliness is enhanced 30 or 40 per cent, by a large oroide chain which encircles her swan-like throat; and, as she shades her eyes with her alabaster hand, the gleam of a gutta percha ring on her front finger tells the casual observer that she is engaged.
