The only drawback to a visit to Dodge lurked in this that it would compel the Lone Wolf to speak English. Surely, he had learned English at Carlisle; but knowing, as know all Indians, that to speak the white man’s language brings misfortune and sickness and death, he had had the wit to discontinue the practice. Likewise and at the same time he laid aside his paleface clothes as being extremely “bad medicine.” Of course, there was also a commonsense side to the latter move, since anyone who sticks to coat and trousers when, without shaking his position, he may be freely comfortable in breech-clout and blanket, is an unimaginable ass. Yes; in Dodge the Lone Wolf would be driven to speak English. However, it would not last for long, and in the desolate pitch of his fortune, what mattered it what he spoke? It would mean companionship, and therefore a kind of comfort; for your Indian is as gregarious as a prairie dog, and the Lone Wolf—who had not spoken to buck or squaw or pappoose since he lost his “medicine”—was beginning to feel as solitary and as lonesome as a good man in Chicago.
Six months before the Lone Wolf lost his “medicine” in the Beaver, there had come to the Dodge Opera House that dramatic organization known as the Red Stocking Blondes. The advent of this talented combination was hailed with local delight, for it had ever been a favourite in Dodge.
The first violin of the Red Stocking Blondes, on this particular occasion, was not the individual whom Mr. Wagner roped on a former memorable evening. This first violin was thoroughly the artist. What he couldn’t coax from a fiddle in the way of melody would have to be developed by an Ole Bull.
Once, Cimarron Bill, after listening to several of the first violin’s most unstudied performances, had asked:
“Can you play the Bootiful Bloo Danyoob? I hears it ’leven years ago in St. Looey, an’ have been honin’ for it ever since.”
The artist, thus appealed to, played that swelling piece of waltz music, and when he finished, the emotional Cimarron, eyes a-swim with tears of ecstasy, grasped his hand.
“Pard!” exclaimed the worthy Cimarron, in a gush of hyperbole, “you could play a fiddle with your feet!” However, this is in advance of the story.
The first violin of the Red Stocking Blondes was named Algernon Pepin, albeit this may have been a nom de theâtre. Mr. Pepin was small, lean, shy, silent, timid, with a long, sad, defeated face. His back was humped, as were the backs of Aesop, Richard of Gloster, the poet Pope, and many another gentleman of genius. He had rakehandle arms, and skinny fingers like the claws of a great bird.
Of all who marched with the banners of the Red Stocking Blondes, Mr. Pepin, when they came into Dodge, was the only one troubled of spirit. The rest showed as gay as larks; for the troupe was on the road to Broadway, and six weeks more would find its members in Rector’s, Shanley’s, Brown’s and Lüchow’s, relating their adventures to guileless ones who had never crossed the Hudson. It was that thought of Broadway to pale the sallow, anxious cheek of Mr. Pepin. And the reason of the terror which tugged at his soul was this:
Two years rearward Mr. Pepin, by several fortunate strokes and the aid of a legacy, had made himself master of an opera company. It was one of those terrible opera companies that sing Wagner and are both fashionable and awful to hear.