The Black Lion Inn

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Jim Britt argued that one determined individual could do much; energy wisely employed would overcome mere numbers. He cited the ferocious instance of a dim relative of his own, a vivacious person yclept Turner, who because of injuries fancied or real, hung for years about the tribal flanks of the Comanches and potted their leading citizens. This the vigorous Turner kept up until he had corralled sixty Comanche top-nots; and the end was not yet when the Comanches themselves appealed to their agent for protection. They said they couldn’t assemble for a green corn dance, or about a regalement of baked dog, without the Winchester of the unauthorized Turner barking from some convenient hill; the squaws would then have nothing left but to wail the death song of some eminent spirit thus sifted from their midst. When they rode to the hill in hunt of Turner, he would be miles away on his pony, and adding to his safety with every jump. The Comanches were much disgusted, and demanded the agent’s interference.

Upon this mournful showing, Turner was brought in and told to desist; and as a full complement of threats, which included among their features a trial at Fort Smith and a gibbet, went with the request, Turner was in the end prevailed on to let his Winchester sleep in its rack, and thereafter the Comanches danced and devoured dog unscared. The sullen Turner said the Comanches had slain his parent long ago; the agent expressed regrets, but stuck for it that even with such an impetus a normal vengeance should have run itself out with the conquest of those sixty scalps.

Jim Britt told this story of Turner to Samantha; and then he argued that as the Comanches were made to feel a one-man power by the industrious Turner, so would he, Jim Britt, for all he stood alone, compel Congress to his demands. He would take that right of way across the Indian Territory from between their very teeth. He was an American citizen and Congress was his servant; in this wise spake Jim Britt.

“That’s all right,” argued the pessimistic Samantha; “that’s all right about your drunken Turner; but he had a Winchester. Now you ain’t goin’ to tackle Congress with no gun, Jim Britt.”

Despite the gloomy prophecies of Samantha, whom Jim Britt looked on as a kind of Cassandra without having heard of Cassandra, our would-be railroad builder wound up the threads and loose ends of his Last Chance businesses, and having, as he described it, “fixed things so they would run themselves for a month,” struck out for Washington. Jim Britt carried twenty-five hundred dollars in his pocket, confidence in his heart, and Samantha’s forebode of darkling failure in his ears.

While no fop and never setting up to be the local Brummel, Jim Britt’s clothes theretofore had matched both his hour and environment, and held their decent own in the van of Last Chance fashion. But the farther Jim Britt penetrated to the eastward in his native land, the more his raiment seemed to fall behind the age; and at the last, when he was fairly within the gates of Washington, he began to feel exceeding wild and strange. Also, it affected him somewhat to discover himself almost alone as a tobacco chewer, and that a great art preserved in its fullness by Last Chance had fallen to decay along the Atlantic. These, however, were questions of minor moment, and save that his rococo garb drove the sensitive Jim Britt into cheap lodgings in Four-and-one-half Street, instead of one of the capital’s gilded hotels, they owned no effect.

This last is set forth in defence against an imputation of parsimony on the side of Jim Britt. He was one who spent his money like a king whenever and wherever his education or experience pointed the way. It was his clothes of a remote period to make him shy, else Jim Britt would have shrunk not from the Raleigh itself, but climbed and clambered and browsed among the timberline prices of its grill-room, as safe and satisfied as ever browsed mountain goat on the high levels of its upland home. Yea, forsooth! Jim Britt, like a sailor ashore, could spend his money with a free and happy hand.

Jim Britt, acting on a hint offered of his sensibilities, for a first step reclothed himself from a high-priced shop; following these improvements, save for the fact that he appalled the eye as a trifle gorgeous, he might not have disturbed the sacred taste of Connecticut Avenue itself. In short, in the matter of garb, Jim Britt, while audible, was down to date.

With the confidence born of his new clothes—for clothes in some respects may make the man—Jim Britt sate him down to study Congress. He deemed it a citadel to be stormed; not lacking in military genius he began to look it over for a weak point.

These adventures of Jim Britt now about a record, occurred, you should understand, almost a decade ago. In that day there should have been eighty-eight senators and three hundred and fifty-six representatives, albeit, by reason of death or failure to elect, a not-to-be-noticed handful of seats were vacant.