RED MIKE
"Mebby you-all recalls about that Polish artist person?" suggested the old cattleman, tentatively; "him I speaks of former?" My gray old campañero was measuring out what he called his "forty drops," and, since this ceremony necessitated keeping one eye on his glass, while he endeavored to keep the other eye on me, the contradictory effort resulted in a wavering and uncertain expression, not at all in harmony with his usual positive air. By way of helping conversation, I confessed to a clear remembrance of the "Polish artist person," and wound up by urging him to give the particulars concerning that interesting exile.
"Well," he cautiously returned, "thar ain't nothin' so mighty thrillin' in his Wolfville c'reer. You see he ain't, for the most, no pop'lar figure––him bein' a furriner, that a-way, an' a artist, an' sufferin' besides from conceit 221 in so acoote a form as to make it no exaggeration to say he's locoed. On account of these yere divers an' sundry handicaps, he don't achieve no social success, an' while he's with us, you'd hardly call him of us.
"Not that I objects to this deescendant of Warsaw's last champion, personal. Which I'm a heap like Enright in sech reespects, an' shore tol'rant. I finds out long ago that the reason we-all goes fault-findin' about people, mostly is because we don't onderstand concernin' them folk's surroundin's. Half the things we arches our necks over, an' for which mebby we feels like killin' 'em a whole lot, they can't he'p none. If we only savvys what they're reely up ag'inst, it's four for one we pities 'em instead.
"It's like one time 'way back yonder, when me an' Steve Stevenson has a sudden an' abrupt diffukulty with a buffalo bull. We're camped out on the edge of the Rockies near the Spanish Peaks, an' me an' Steve, in the course of a little passear we're takin', is jest roundin' a bunch of plum bushes when, as onexpected as a gun play in a Bible class, that devil's son an' heir of a bull––who's been hid 222 by the bushes––ups an charges. Which you should have seen me an' Steve scatter! We certainly do onbuckle in some hasty moves! He's bigger 'n a baggage wagon, an' as we leaves our guns ten rods away in camp, thar's nothin' for it but to dig out.
"Nigh whar I'm at is a measley pinon tree, an' the way I swarms aloft among that vegetable's boughs an' branches comes mighty clost to bein' a lesson to mountain lions. Steve, who's the onluckiest sport west of the Missouri, an' famed as sech, ain't got no tree. The best he can do is go divin' into a hole he sees in some rocks, same as if he's a jack-rabbit with a coyote in hot pursoote.
"Me an' Steve both bein' safe, an' reegyardin' that bull as baffled, I draws a breath of relief. That is, to be ackerate, I starts to draw it; but before I so much as gets it started, yere that inordinate Steve comes b'ilin' out of his hole ag'in like he ain't plumb satisfied about that bull. The bull's done give him up, too, an' switchin' his tail some thoughtful has started to go away, when, as I tells you, that fool Steve comes surgin' out upon his reetreatin' hocks.
"Nacherally, what could any se'f-respectin' bull do but wheel an' chase Steve back? It's no use, though; Steve won't have it. No sooner does the bull get him hived that a-way, an' make ready to reetire to private life ag'in, than, bing! yere Steve comes bulgin' like a cork out of a bottle. An' so it continyoos, a reg'lar see-saw between Steve an' the bull. Steve'll go into his cave of refooge, prairie-dog fashion, a foot ahead of the bull's horns, only to be a foot behind the bull's tail as that painstakin' anamile is arrangin' to deepart.
"Which sech wretched strategy arouses my contempt.