"I am assured by Senator Whaley's private secretary," says he, "who is a classmate of mine, that there would be great dissatisfaction among the Indians, owing to certain tribal traditions and racial peculiarities--"
"You bet!" says I, f'r he seemed to be gettin' wound up an' cast in it, "that's the exact situation!"
"Would be dissatisfaction," he went on, "if cattle of the type which in the great markets is considered best, were furnished here. And I have great confidence in his judgment."
"So've I," I says. "He's one of the judgmentiousest fellers you ever see."
"So let that phase of the question pass," says he, "for the present. But there's a clause in this contract--"
"Don't let that worry you," says I. "There's claws in all of 'em if you look close."
He never cracked a smile, but unfolded it, and went on.
"Here's a clause," says he, "calling for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot, for the dairy herd, I presume."
"Cavvs at what?" says I.
"At foot," says he, p'intin' at a spot along toward the bottom. "Right there!"
"It's impossible!" says I. "They don't wear 'em that way."
He studied over it quite a while, at that, an' I begun to think I'd won out, but at last he says: "That's the way it reads, an' while I shall not insist upon any particular relation of juxtaposition in offspring and dam-"
"Whope!" says I, "back up an' come ag'in pardner."
"It seems to be my duty to insist upon the one hundred and fifty cows and calves. Now the point is, I don't find any such description of creatures among the--the bunches in seeming readiness for delivery."
"O!" says I, "that's what's eating yeh, is it? W'l don't worry any more.
The cow kindergarten's furder up the river. We didn't want to put the tender little devils where they'd be tramped on by them monstrous big oxen you noticed around the corrals. This caff business is all right, trust us!"
Whaley's man was waitin' fer me down at the saloon, an' when I told him about the cavvs, he shrunk into himself like a collapsed foot-ball, an'
wilted.
"Hain't yeh got 'em?" says I.
"Huh!" says he, comin' out of it. "Don't be a dum fool, Aconite. This is the first I understood of it, an' whoever heared of an inspector readin'
a contrack? And there ain't them many cavvs to be got by that time in all Dakoty. Le's hit the wires f'r instructions!"
The telegrams runs something like this:
To Senator Patrick Whaley, Washington, D. C.:
Contract calls for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot.
What shall I do?
REDDY.
To Reddy Withers, Chamberlain, S. D.:
Wire received. Calves at what? Explain, collect.
WHALEY.
Hundred and fifty cows and calves. What do you advise?
REDDY.
See inspector.
WHALEY.
Won't do. Inspector wrong.
REDDY.
Fix inspector or get calves.
WHALEY.
I'd got about the same kind of a telegram to Mr. Elkins, addin' that the Whaley crowd was up in the air. I sent it by Western Union to Sturgis, and then up Wolf Nose Crick by the Belle Fourche and Elsewhere Telephone Line. The O. M., as usual, cuts the melon with a word. His wire was as follows.
Take first train Chicago. Call for letter Smith & Jones Commission merchants Union Stock Yards.
ELKINS.
This was sure an affliction on me, f'r I had fixed up a deal to go with Miss Ainsley an' her friends on a campin' trip, lastin' up to the day of the issue. She'd been readin' one of Hamlin Garland's books about a puncher who'd scooted through the British aristocracy, hittin' only the high places in a social way, on the strength of a gold prospect an' the diamond hitch to a mule-pack. She wanted to see the diamond hitch of all things. There orto be a law ag'inst novel-writin'. I got Reddy to learn me the diamond hitch so I could make good with Gladys, an' here was this mysterious caff expedition to the last place in the world, Chicago, a-yankin' me off by the night train.
I went over to tell her about it. First, I thought I'd put on the clo'es I expected to wear to Chicago, a dandy fifteen dollar suit I got in town. An' then I saw how foolish this would be, an' brushed up my range clo'es, tied a new silk scarf in my soft roll collar, an' went. Here's my diagram of the hook-up: Any o' them mortar-board-hat, black-nightie fellers she had pitchers of, could probably afford fifteen dollar clay-worsteds; but it was a good gamblin' proposition that none of 'em could come in at the gate like a personally-conducted cyclone, bring up a-stannin' from a dead run to a dead stop's if they'd struck a stone wall, go clear from the bronk as he fetched up an' light like a centaur before her, with their sombrero in their hand. Don't light, you say?
Wal, I mean as a centaur would light if he took a notion. You'd better take a hike down to see how the steed's gettin' along, Bill, 'r else subside about this Greek myth biz. It helps on with this story--not!
The p'int is, that gals and fellers both like variety. To me, the "y" in her name, the floss in her hair, the kind of quivery lowness in her voice, the rustle of her dresses as she walked, the way she looked like the pitchers in the magazines an' talked like the stories in 'em, all corroborated to throw the hooks into me. An' I s'pose the nater's-nobleman gag went likewise with her. Subsekent happenin's--but I must hold that back.
We sot in the hammock that night--the only time Aconite Driscoll ever was right up against the real thing in ladies' goods--an' she read me a piece about a Count Gibson a-shooting his lady-love's slanderers so full o' holes at a turnament that they wouldn't hold hazel-brush. They was one verse she hesitated over, an' skipped.
I ast her if she thought she--as a supposed case--could live out in this dried-up-an'-blowed-away country; an' she said the matter had really never been placed before her in any such a way as to call for a decision on her part. Purty smooth, that! Then she read another piece that wound up with "Love is best!" from the same book, an' forgot to take her hand away when I sneaked up on it, an'--Gosh! talk about happiness: we never git anything o' quite that kind out here! I never knowed how I got to the train, 'r anything else ontil we was a-crossin' the Mississippi at North McGregor. Here the caff question ag'in unveiled its heejus front, to be mulled over till I reached the cowman's harbor in Chicago, the Exchange Building at the Yards, an' found Jim Elkins' instructions awaitin' me. They read:
"DEAR ACONITE: