"No, the camp don't do nothin'; the word gets passed 'round that old Rucker's gone prospectin' an' that he will recur in our midst whenever thar's a reg'lar roll-call. As for Missis Rucker, personal, from all we can jedge by lookin' on—for thar's shore none of us who's that locoed we ups an' asks—I don't reckon now she ever notices that Rucker's escaped.
"Yere's how it is the time when Faro Nell, her heart bleedin' for the sufferin's of dumb an' he'pless brutes, employs Dan Boggs in errants of mercy an' Dan's efforts to do good gets ill-advised. Not that Dan is easily brought so he regyards his play as erroneous; Enright has to rebooke Dan outright in set terms an' assoome airs of severity before ever Dan allows he entertains a doubt.
"'Suppose I does retire that Greaser's hand from cirk'lation?' says Dan, sort o' dispootatious with Enright an' Doc Peets, who's both engaged in p'intin' out Dan's faults. 'Mexicans ain't got no more need for hands than squinch owls has for hymn books. They won't work; they never uses them members except for dealin' monte or clawin' a guitar. I regyards a Mexican's hands that a-way, when considered as feachers in his makeup, as sooperfluous.'
"'Dan, you shore is the most perverse sport!' says Enright, makin' a gesture of impatience an' at the same time refillin' his glass in hopes of a ca'mer frame. 'This ain't so much a question of hands as it's a question of taste. Nell's requests is right, an' you're bound to go about the rescoo of said chicken as the victim of crooelties. Where you-all falls down is on a system. The method you invokes is impertinent. Don't you say so, Doc?'
"'Which I shore does,' says Peets. 'Dan's conduct is absolootely oncouth.'
"Dan lays the basis for these strictures in the follow-in' fashion: It's a fieste with the Mexicans—one of the noomerous saint's days they gives way to when every Greaser onbuckles an' devotes himse'f to merriments—an' over in Chihuahua, as the Mexican part of the camp is called, the sunburnt portion of Wolfville's pop'lation broadens into quite a time. Thar's hoss races an' monte an' mescal an' pulque, together with roode music sech as may be wrung from primitive instruments like the guitar, the fiddle, an' tin cans half filled with stones.
"Faro Nell, who is only a child as you-all might say, an' ready to be engaged an' entertained with childish things, goes trippin' over to size up the gala scene.
"Thar's a passel of young Mexicans who's Ridin' for the Chicken's Head. This yere is a sport something like a Gander Pullin', same as we-all engages in on Thanksgivin' days an' Christmas, back when I'm a boy in Tennessee. You saveys a Gander Pullin'? Son, you don't mean sech ignorance! Thar must have been mighty little sunshine in the life of a yooth in the morose regions where you was raised for you-all never to disport yourse'f, even as a spectator, at a Gander Pullin'! It wouldn't surprise me none after that if you ups an' informs me you never shakes a fetlock in that dance called money-musk.
"To the end that you be eddicated,—for it's better late than never,"—I'll pause concernin' Boggs an' the Mexicans long enough to eloocidate of Gander Pullin's.
"As I su'gests, we onbends in this pastime at sech epocks as Christmas an' Thanksgivin.' I don't myse'f take actooal part in any Gander Pullin's. Not that I'm too delicate, but I ain't got no hoss. Bein' a pore yooth, I spends the mornin' of my c'reer on foot, an' as a hoss is a necessary ingreedient to a Gander Pullin', I never does stand in personal on the festival, but is redooced to become a envy-bitten looker-on.