If your ambition is to establish a reputation for courage—going into such a lair of hobos, gamblers and all-round toughs—most people will think it absurdly superfluous in a man—a western man at least—who makes no concealment of the fact, in this fin de siecle era, that he perpetrates poetry and is willing to make his living by it—if he can.
I have no wish to discourage you, Cy, in your present heroic enterprise; but I think, myself, it is wholly unnecessary as an evidence of pluck, after all the poetry you have perpetrated. Everybody knows that a poet—a western poet, especially—takes his life in his hands whenever he approaches a publisher, as recklessly as the man who runs sheep onto a cow range. Of course, no western man would feel any compunction in killing a poet, considering that whatever attention they command in the East makes against our reputation out here for practical horse-sense and energy, and tends to make the underwriters and money-lenders suspicious and raise the rates of interest and insurance.
I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, for I confess I like your poetry myself, but I think you owe the singular immunity you have enjoyed in Denver above other poets who have bit the dust or emigrated eastward, to the openly-expressed admiration and affection of Myron Reed and Jim Belford and a few other reckless cranks who have intrenched themselves against “the practical horse-sense” which is the pride of our people. As, instance: I happened into that gun-store in the Tabor Block yesterday to provide myself with a jointed fishing-rod against what time I should come down to your funeral—for they tell me the Upper Rio Grande swarms with trout, and I thought I might like to cast a fly, even so early, after seeing you planted, and being shown the spot where you fell. For I fancy some of those toughs whose hearts your inspired verses had touched, commiserating my tears, would come to me and take me gently by the hand and lead me down to the coroner’s office to show me the hole in the breast of your coat—for I never have done you the wrong to imagine the hole anywhere but in the breast where the remorseless bullet tore its way to your brave heart. And then the tender-hearted tough, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, should draw me away and lead me up the street “to see where it happened,” and that he should halt at a certain spot in front of a great flourishing saloon and gambling hall, where I should catch a glimpse through the windows, of battered and frowzy girls in dirty, trailing calico “tea-gowns” and thin slippers, drinking at the bar with the cheaper class of the gamblers or with befuddled miners they were preparing to rob, and he should say: “’Twas right here—right where I’m standin’—and poor Cy, he wuz goin’ along and he wuzn’t sayin’ nothin’ to nobody, ’n’ I was standin’ right across the street there, in the door of Minnie Monroe’s place, an’ Min she wuz leanin’ over my shoulder and we wuz both lookin’ right across at the saloon where Soapy Smith wuz standin’ in the door, readin’ a newspaper out loud to Bob Ford an’ a lot o’ them low-down girls that hangs around there after breakfast till they strike a treat; an’ at every word Soapy he was rippin’ out oaths an’ shakin’ his fist, an’ Min, she says to me: ‘Bill, there’s a row on, les’ go over and see what’s up.’ ’N’ jest at that minute along comes poor Cy—mindin’ his own business ’n’ sayin’ nothin’ to nobody—an’ that’s what I’ll swear to ’fore the grand jury, mister, if I’m called, an’ Min, she’ll swear to the same thing. Nothin’ wouldn’t a’ happened, fur everybody’s back wuz turned, only fur one o’ them low-down trollops stuck her head out o’ the door and s’ys, ‘There’s the —— —— ——, now,’ and Bob Ford he looked over his shoulder ’n’ s’ys, ‘Sure ’nough Soapy, there goes your man.’
“Min an’ me heard every word jest as plain as a pin. Cy heard it, too, and he knowed what it meant. He wuz game—I’ll say that fur him—’n’ faced about ’n’ reached fur his gun quicker ’n the jerk of a lamb’s tail in fly time, but Soapy got there first, ’cause he’d rushed out with his gun cocked, and it wuz all day with poor Cy ’fore you could say Jack Robinson.”
“Reached for his gun?” (in imagination I inquire doubtingly)—“then he was—”
“Oh, yes, he was heeled. Cy wuzn’t no chump. He knowed he was takin’ his life in his hands when he jumped that gang an’ began to roast them in his paper. He knowed they’d lay fur him an’ do him up if they ever got the drop on him ’fore he could draw. But oh, say, if poor Cy had just had a show—or even half a show—wouldn’t he shot the everlastin’ stuffin’ out o’ that crowd quicker ’n a cat could lick her ear! That’s what he would, mister, fur he was game an’ he could handle a gun beautiful. But” (in my fancy your worthy tough always draws his sleeve across his face at this juncture) “I suppose it had to be—prob’ly it was God’l Mighty’s will. There’s the pole over yander front o’ Min’s place we strung Soapy and Bob to, an’ there wuzn’t no inquest on them—not much there wuzn’t, for the coroner himself helped at the lynchin’—everybody helped ’ceptin’ that pigeon-livered cad of a preacher. He wanted to deliver a lecture to the crowd on the majesty of the law an’ that kind o’ thing, but he got left on his little game that time. Oh, he’s too slow for this camp, mister. The preacher that can’t keep up with the band wagon, ain’t got no business monkeyin’ around a live mining camp like Creede.”
