When East met West

START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74958
A Complete Novelette
By W. C. Tuttle
Author of “Hidden Blood,” “The Lovable Liar,” etc.
Some poetical person once wrote:
For East is East and West is West.
And never the twain shall meet.
He was all wrong, that feller—all wrong. And I’ll tell you how I know he was wrong.
I ain’t no pessimist. Not by a danged sight, I ain’t. If a little kid burns his fingers on a red-hot stove and keeps away from the fire from that time on, you don’t call him a pessimist. That’s me—burnt to a caution.
All the Harper tribe, as far back as I can figure out, was cautious. We bred more runners than we did fighters. Of course there ain’t as many of us as there is Smiths. Smiths predominate, as it were. Anyway, the Smith tribe ain’t got nothin’ to do with this.
I ain’t been in Piperock for several weeks. Me and “Dirty Shirt” Jones has been prospectin’ back in the Whisperin’ Creek hills, with our usual good luck—of gettin’ back before all our food was gone. And we finds my pardner, “Magpie” Simpkins, settin’ at the table in our shack, wearin’ his Sunday clothes.
Magpie is so danged tall that it takes him all day to find out whether a certain pain is indigestion or inflammation of the kneecaps. He’s solemn, Magpie is. And when that elongated, pious-faced cross between a scientific lecture and a — fool statement gets pouches under his eyes and droops his eyelids like a blood-hound—caution cometh to me.