His name was Jefferson Adams, I believe; I know his initials were J. A., for you may see them yet deeply whittled on the right-hand upper panel of our smoking-room door. He left us this legacy, and also some artistic patterns done in tobacco juice upon our Turkey carpet; but beyond these reminiscences our American story-teller has vanished from our ken. He gleamed across our ordinary quiet conviviality like some brilliant meteor, and then was lost in the outer darkness. That night, however, our Nevada friend was in full swing; and I quietly lit my pipe and dropped into the nearest chair, anxious not to interrupt his story.
“Mind you,” he continued, “I hain’t got no grudge against your men of science. I likes and respects a chap as can match every beast and plant, from a huckleberry to a grizzly with a jaw-breakin’ name; but if you wants real interestin’ facts, something a bit juicy, you go to your whalers and your frontiersmen, and your scouts and Hudson Bay men, chaps who mostly can scarce sign their names.”
There was a pause here, as Mr. Jefferson Adams produced a long cheroot and lit it. We preserved a strict silence in the room, for we had already learned that on the slightest interruption our Yankee drew himself into his shell again. He glanced round with a self-satisfied smile as he remarked our expectant looks, and continued through a halo of smoke:
“Now, which of you gentlemen has ever been in Arizona? None, I’ll warrant. And of all English or Americans as can put pen to paper, how many has been in Arizona? Precious few, I calc’late. I’ve been there, sirs, lived there for years; and when I think of what I’ve seen there, why, I can scarce get myself to believe it now.
“Ah, there’s a country! I was one of Walker’s filibusters, as they chose to call us; and after we’d busted up, and the chief was shot, some on us made tracks and located down there. A reg’lar English and American colony, we was, with our wives and children, and all complete. I reckon there’s some of the old folk there yet, and that they hain’t forgotten what I’m agoing to tell you. No, I warrant they hain’t, never on this side of the grave, sirs.
“I was talking about the country, though; and I guess I could astonish you considerable if I spoke of nothing else. To think of such a land being built for a few ’Greasers’ and half-breeds! It’s a misusing of the gifts of Providence, that’s what I calls it. Grass as hung over a chap’s head as he rode through it, and trees so thick that you couldn’t catch a glimpse of blue sky for leagues and leagues, and orchids like umbrellas! Maybe some on you has seen a plant as they calls the ’fly-catcher,’ in some parts of the States?”
“Dianœa muscipula,” murmured Dawson, our scientific man par excellence.
“Ah, ’Die near a municipal,’ that’s him! You’ll see a fly stand on that ’ere plant, and then you’ll see the two sides of a leaf snap up together and catch it between them, and grind it up and mash it to bits, for all the world like some great sea squid with its beak; and hours after, if you open the leaf, you’ll see the body lying half-digested, and in bits. Well, I’ve seen those fly-traps in Arizona with leaves eight and ten feet long, and thorns or teeth a foot or more; why, they could—But darn it, I’m going too fast!
“It’s about the death of Joe Hawkins I was going to tell you; ’bout as queer a thing, I reckon, as ever you heard tell on. There wasn’t nobody in Montana as didn’t know of Joe Hawkins—’Alabama’ Joe, as he was called there. A reg’lar out and outer, he was, ’bout the darndest skunk as ever man clapt eyes on. He was a good chap enough, mind ye, as long as you stroked him the right way; but rile him anyhow, and he were worse nor a wild-cat. I’ve seen him empty his six-shooter into a crowd as chanced to jostle him a-going into Simpson’s bar when there was a dance on; and he bowied Tom Hooper ’cause he spilt his liquor over his weskit by mistake. No, he didn’t stick at murder, Joe didn’t; and he weren’t a man to be trusted further nor you could see him.
“Now, at the time I tell on, when Joe Hawkins was swaggerin’ about the town and layin’ down the law with his shootin’-irons, there was an Englishman there of the name of Scott—Tom Scott, if I rec’lects aright. This chap Scott was a thorough Britisher (beggin’ the present company’s pardon), and yet he didn’t freeze much to the British set there, or they didn’t freeze much to him. He was a quiet, simple man, Scott was—rather too quiet for a rough set like that; sneakin’ they called him, but he weren’t that. He kept hisself mostly apart, and didn’t interfere with nobody so long as he were left alone. Some said as how he’d been kinder ill-treated at home—been a Chartist, or something of that sort, and had to up stick and run; but he never spoke of it hisself, an’ never complained. Bad luck or good, that chap kept a stiff lip on him.