"'Which I enjoys one of the most mis'rable evenin's of my c'reer,' says Boggs to Faro Nell, when she expresses sympathy at him feelin' so cast down. 'I wouldn't have missed it for a small clay farm.'
"'Yo tambien' says Black Jack, who's keepin' Boggs melancholly company while he weeps. 'Only I reckons the odd kyard in my own case is that, before I'm a man an' in some other existence, I used to be one of these yere ornery little fice dogs, which howls every time it hears a pianny. It's some left-over vestiges of that life when I'm a dog which sets me to bawlin', that a-way, whenever the Mockin' Bird girl sings. I experiences pensive sensations, sim'lar to what comes troopin' over a gent, who's libatin' alone, on the heels of the third drink.'
"The Mockin' Bird looks as sweet as she sings. I mentions long ago about the phil'sophic old stoodent who says, 'They do say love is blind, but I'll be ding-danged if some gents 133 can't see more in their girls than I can.' This yere wisdom don't apply none to the Mockin' Bird. Them wooers of hers, to say nothin' of Turkey Track, possesses jestification for becomin' so plumb maudlin'. Lovely? She's as pretty as a cactus flower, or a sunrise on the staked plains.
"Folks likes her, too. Take that evenin' when a barbarian from over to'ards the Cow Springs cuts loose to disturb the exercises at the Bird Cage Op'ry House with a measly fling or two. The public well nigh beefs him. They'd have shore put him over the jump, only Enright interferes.
"It's doorin' the openin' scene, when the actors is camped 'round in a half-circle, facin' the fiddlers. Huggins, who manages the Bird Cage, an' who's the only hooman who ever consoomes licker, drink for drink, with Monte, an' lives to tell the tale, is in the middle. Bowin' to the Mockin' Bird, an' as notice that she's goin' to carol some, he announces:
"'The world-reenowned cantatrice, Mam'selle Loocinda Gildersleeve, cel'brated in two hemispheres as the Mockin' Bird of Arizona, will now sing the ballad wharwith she ravished 134 the y'ears of every crowned head of Europe, the same bein' that pop'lar air from the op'ry of Loocretia Borgia, "Down in the Valley."'
"At this that oncooth crim'nal from the Cow Springs gets up:
"'The Mockin' Bird of Arizona which you-all is bluffin' about,' he shouts, 'can't sing more'n a burro, an' used to sling hash in a section house over by Colton.'
"'Never the less, notwithstandin',' replies Huggins, who's too drunk to feel ruffled, 'Mam'selle Loocinda Gildersleeve, known to all the world as the Mockin' Bird of Arizona, will now sing "Down in the Valley."'
"Huggins would have let things go at that, but not so the Wolfville pop'lace. In the cockin' of a winchester they swoops down on that Cow Springs outcast like forty hen-hawks on a single quail, an' as I yeretofore observes, if it ain't for Enright they'd have made him shortly hard to find. You can gamble, the Cow Springs savage never does go out on that limb ag'in.