“Got down fifteen thousand. Won one hundred and five thousand,” reads James of the Beads from Rand’s telegram sent from the track. James of the Beads is in his offices; he has just finished a victorious day, at once heavy and tumultuous with the buying and the selling of full three hundred thousand shares of stocks. “They should have wagered the full one hundred thousand and let the odds look after themselves,” he says. Then James of the Beads begins to caress the gypsy chain. “You knew,” he murmurs; “of course, you knew!” There is a note of devotion in the tones. The bead-worship goes on for a silent moment. “Only one hundred and five thousand!” ruminates James of the Beads. “I suppose Rand was afraid!”
“That is indeed a curious story,” observed the Jolly Doctor, when the Red Nosed Gentleman, being done with James of the Beads, was returning to his burgundy; “and did it really happen?”
“Of a verity, did it,” returned the Red Nosed Gentleman. “I was Rand.”
Conversation fluttered from one topic to another for a brief space, but dealt mainly with those divers superstitions that folk affect. When signs and omens were worn out, the Jolly Doctor turned upon the Old Cattleman as though to remind that ancient practitioner of cows how it would be now his right to uplift us with a reminiscence.
“No, I don’t need to be told it none,” said the Old Cattleman. “On the principle of freeze-out, it’s shore got down to me. Seein’ how this yere snow reminds me a heap of Christmas, I’ll onload on you-all how we’re aroused an’ brought to a realisin’ sense of that season of gifts once upon a time in Wolfville.”
CHAPTER VI.—THAT WOLFVILLE CHRISTMAS.
This yere can’t be called a story; which it can’t even be described none as a sketch. Accordin’ to the critics, who, bein’ plumb onable to write one themse’fs, nacherally knows what a story ought to be, no story’s a story onless she’s built up like one of these one-sided hills. Reelation must climb painfully from base to peak, on the slope side, with interest on a up-grade, say, of one foot in ten; an’ then when you-all arrives safely at the summit, the same bein’ the climax, you’re to pitch headlong over the precipice on the sheer an’ other side, an’ in the space of not more’n a brace of sentences, land, bing! bang! smash!—all broke up at the bottom. That, by what you-all might call “Our best literary lights,” would be a story, an’ since what I’m about to onfold don’t own no sech brands nor y’ear-marks, it can’t come onder that head.
This partic’lar o’casion is when little Enright Peets Tutt—said blessed infant, as I sets forth former, bein’ the conj’int production of Dave Tutt an’ his esteemable wife, Tucson Jennie—is comin’ eight years old next spring round-up. Little Enright Peets is growin’ strong an’ husky now, an’ is the pride of the Wolfville heart. He’s shed his milk teeth an’ is sproutin’ a second mouthful, white an’ clean as a coyote’s. Also, his cur’osity is deeveloped powerful an’ he’s in the habit of pervadin’ about from the Red Light to the New York Store, askin’ questions; an’ he is as familiar in the local landscape as either the Tucson stage or Old Monte, the drunkard who drives it.