[ CHAPTER XXIV. CRAWFISH JIM. ]
PREFACE.
These tales by the Old Cattleman have been submitted to perhaps a
dozen people. They have read, criticised, and advised. The advice
was good; the criticism just. Some suggested a sketch which might in
detail set forth Toffville; there were those who wanted something
like a picture of the Old Cattleman; while others urged an
elaboration of the personal characteristics of Old Man Enright, Doc
Peets, Cherokee Hall, Moore, Tutt, Boggs, Faro Nell, Old Monte, and
Texas Thompson. I have, how-ever, concluded to leave all these
matters to the illustrations of Mr. Remington and the imaginations
of those who read. I think it the better way-certainly it is the
easier one for me. I shall therefore permit the Old Cattleman to
tell his stories in his own fashion. The style will be crude,
abrupt, and meagre, but I trust it will prove as satisfactory to the
reader as it has to me.
A. H. L.
New York, May 15,1897.
CHAPTER I. WOLFVILLE'S FIRST FUNERAL.
"These yere obsequies which I'm about mentionin'," observed the Old Cattleman, "is the first real funeral Wolfville has."
The old fellow had lighted a cob pipe and tilted his chair back in a fashion which proclaimed a plan to be comfortable. He had begun to tolerate—even encourage—my society, although it was clear that as a tenderfoot he regarded me with a species of gentle disdain.
I had provoked the subject of funeral ceremonies by a recurrence to the affair of the Yellowhouse Man, and a query as to what would have been the programme of the public-spirited hamlet of Wolfville if that invalid had died instead of yielding to the nursing of Jack Moore and that tariff on draw-poker which the genius of Old Man Enright decreed.