Wolfville Days [61]
he's headed back with Texas an' the balance of the band.
"'Give us your hand, pard,' says Texas, a heap effoosive, as he comes up to the Signal party; 'I learns from our common friend, Dave Tutt, that this yere's a mistake, an' I tharfore forgives you freely all the trouble you causes. It's over now an' plumb forgot. You're a dead game sport, an' I shakes your hand with pride.'
"'Same yere,' says Doc Peets, also shakin' of the Signal party's hand, which is sort o' limp an' cheerless.
"However, we rips off his hobbles, an' then the outfit steers over to the Red Light to be regaled after all our hard work.
"'Yere's hopin' luck an' long acquaintance, stranger,' says Texas, holdin' up his glass to the Signal party, who is likewise p'lite, but feeble.
"'Which the joyous outcome of this tangle shows,' says Dan Boggs, as he hammers his glass on the bar an' shouts for another all 'round, 'that you-all can't have too much talk swappin', when the objects of the meetin' is to avert blood. How much better we feels, standin' yere drinkin' our nose-paint all cool an' comfortable, an' congrat'latin' the two brave sports who's with us, than if we has a corpse sawed onto us onexpected, an' is driven to go grave-diggin' in sech sun-blistered, sizzlin' weather as this.'
"'That's whatever,' says Dave Tutt; 'an' I fills my cup in approval, you can gamble, of them observations.'"
CHAPTER XIII
Death; and the Donna Anna.
"Locoweed? Do I savey loco?" The Old Cattleman's face offered full hint of his amazement as he repeated in the idiom of his day and kind the substance of my interrogatory.
"Why, son," he continued, "every longhorn who's ever cinched a Colorado saddle, or roped a steer, is plumb aware of locoweed. Loco is Mexicano for mad--crazy. An' cattle or mules or ponies or anythin' else, that makes a repast of locoweed--which as a roole they don't, bein' posted instinctif that loco that a-way is no bueno--goes crazy; what we-all in the Southwest calls 'locoed.'
"Whatever does this yere plant resemble? I ain't no sharp on loco, but the brand I encounters is green, bunchy, stiff, an' stands taller than the grass about it. An' it ain't allers thar when looked for, loco ain't. It's one of these yere migratory weeds; you'll see it growin' about the range mebby one or two seasons, an' then it sort o' pulls its freight. Thar wont come no more loco for years.
"Mostly, as I observes prior, anamiles disdains loco, an' passes it up as bad medicine. They're organized with a notion ag'inst it, same as ag'inst rattlesnakes An'as for them latter reptiles, you can take a preacher's hoss, foaled in the lap of civilization, who ain't seen nothin' more broadenin' than the reg'lar church service, with now an' then a revival, an' yet he's born knowin' so much about rattlesnakes in all their hein'ousness, that he'll hunch his back an' go soarin' 'way up yonder at the first Zizzz-z-z-z.
"Doc Peets informs me once when we crosses up with some locoweed over by the Cow Springs, that thar's two or three breeds of this malignant vegetable. He writes down for me the scientific name of the sort we gets ag'inst. Thar she is."
And my friend produced from some recess of a gigantic pocketbook a card whereon the learned Peets had written oxytropis Lamberti.
"That's what Peets says loco is," he resumed, as I handed back the card. "Of course, I don't go surgin' off pronouncin' no sech words; shorely not in mixed company. Some gent might take it personal an' resent it. But I likes to pack 'em about, an' search 'em out now an' then, jest to gaze on an' think what a dead cold scientist Doc Peets is. He's shorely the high kyard; thar never is that drug-sharp in the cow country in my day who's fit to pay for Peets' whiskey. Scientific an' eddicated to a feather aige, Peets is. "You-all oughter heard him lay for one of them cliff-climbin', bone-huntin' stone c'llectors who comes out from Washin'ton for the Gov'ment. One of these yere deep people strikes Wolfville on one of them rock- roundups he's makin', an' for a-while it looks
"'Give us your hand, pard,' says Texas, a heap effoosive, as he comes up to the Signal party; 'I learns from our common friend, Dave Tutt, that this yere's a mistake, an' I tharfore forgives you freely all the trouble you causes. It's over now an' plumb forgot. You're a dead game sport, an' I shakes your hand with pride.'
"'Same yere,' says Doc Peets, also shakin' of the Signal party's hand, which is sort o' limp an' cheerless.
"However, we rips off his hobbles, an' then the outfit steers over to the Red Light to be regaled after all our hard work.
"'Yere's hopin' luck an' long acquaintance, stranger,' says Texas, holdin' up his glass to the Signal party, who is likewise p'lite, but feeble.
"'Which the joyous outcome of this tangle shows,' says Dan Boggs, as he hammers his glass on the bar an' shouts for another all 'round, 'that you-all can't have too much talk swappin', when the objects of the meetin' is to avert blood. How much better we feels, standin' yere drinkin' our nose-paint all cool an' comfortable, an' congrat'latin' the two brave sports who's with us, than if we has a corpse sawed onto us onexpected, an' is driven to go grave-diggin' in sech sun-blistered, sizzlin' weather as this.'
"'That's whatever,' says Dave Tutt; 'an' I fills my cup in approval, you can gamble, of them observations.'"
CHAPTER XIII
Death; and the Donna Anna.
"Locoweed? Do I savey loco?" The Old Cattleman's face offered full hint of his amazement as he repeated in the idiom of his day and kind the substance of my interrogatory.
"Why, son," he continued, "every longhorn who's ever cinched a Colorado saddle, or roped a steer, is plumb aware of locoweed. Loco is Mexicano for mad--crazy. An' cattle or mules or ponies or anythin' else, that makes a repast of locoweed--which as a roole they don't, bein' posted instinctif that loco that a-way is no bueno--goes crazy; what we-all in the Southwest calls 'locoed.'
"Whatever does this yere plant resemble? I ain't no sharp on loco, but the brand I encounters is green, bunchy, stiff, an' stands taller than the grass about it. An' it ain't allers thar when looked for, loco ain't. It's one of these yere migratory weeds; you'll see it growin' about the range mebby one or two seasons, an' then it sort o' pulls its freight. Thar wont come no more loco for years.
"Mostly, as I observes prior, anamiles disdains loco, an' passes it up as bad medicine. They're organized with a notion ag'inst it, same as ag'inst rattlesnakes An'as for them latter reptiles, you can take a preacher's hoss, foaled in the lap of civilization, who ain't seen nothin' more broadenin' than the reg'lar church service, with now an' then a revival, an' yet he's born knowin' so much about rattlesnakes in all their hein'ousness, that he'll hunch his back an' go soarin' 'way up yonder at the first Zizzz-z-z-z.
"Doc Peets informs me once when we crosses up with some locoweed over by the Cow Springs, that thar's two or three breeds of this malignant vegetable. He writes down for me the scientific name of the sort we gets ag'inst. Thar she is."
And my friend produced from some recess of a gigantic pocketbook a card whereon the learned Peets had written oxytropis Lamberti.
"That's what Peets says loco is," he resumed, as I handed back the card. "Of course, I don't go surgin' off pronouncin' no sech words; shorely not in mixed company. Some gent might take it personal an' resent it. But I likes to pack 'em about, an' search 'em out now an' then, jest to gaze on an' think what a dead cold scientist Doc Peets is. He's shorely the high kyard; thar never is that drug-sharp in the cow country in my day who's fit to pay for Peets' whiskey. Scientific an' eddicated to a feather aige, Peets is. "You-all oughter heard him lay for one of them cliff-climbin', bone-huntin' stone c'llectors who comes out from Washin'ton for the Gov'ment. One of these yere deep people strikes Wolfville on one of them rock- roundups he's makin', an' for a-while it looks