It is wonderful how much a smile, or even a grin, will do for a disconsolate lover. Bowles woke suddenly to the beauties of nature and the wild joy of living; and that evening, instead of dropping into his blankets like a dead man, he tarried by the fire. A chill wind swept in from the frigid north, and the smoke guttered and flurried from the burning logs; but the cowboys sat about in their shirt-sleeves and blinked patiently when they caught the smoke. Inside the bunk-house the noise of the perpetual pitch game told where battles were being lost and won, a secret understanding that every game was worth a quarter on pay-day being the contributing cause for the excitement, since Henry Lee allowed no gambling among his punchers. But outside everybody was either broke or in the hole, and so there was nothing but peace and amity and long-winded arguments.
The talk for the moment was centered upon "ring-tail" in horses, a subject upon which Brigham Clark claimed to be an authority, although Bowles had never even heard of it before.
"No, sir," asserted Brigham, addressing the company at large; "you show me a ring-tailed hawse, and I'll show you a hawse with weak kidneys, every time. Now, I don't say how he gits them weak kidneys, y'understand; he may git 'em from bein' rode too young, the way Uncle Joe claims; or he may git 'em from drinkin' bad water, like folks; or he may jest be born that way. But that ain't the point—when you take a nice young hawse and turn him up a hill, and he quits and goes to ringin' his tail around—that hawse is weak, I say, or he wouldn't quit. A ring-tailed hawse is a weak hawse, and you might jest as well give 'im to the kids to play with—he'll never be no good fer a cow-pony."
Coming as this did at the end of a long and technical argument, it was allowed to pass by the company. A quiet fell, and three or four men to leeward got up to avoid the smoke; but all the time Brigham Clark sat on the box he had captured, his big black hat pushed back on his head, his hand held out to the fire, and his shrewd eyes twinkling as he gazed down into the flames. Then he shook with silent laughter, and they knew he was off on another one.
"Heh, heh, heh!" he chuckled. "Speakin' of ring-tails reminds me of a ring-tailed monkey I used to have to take care of when I was on the road. He was the orneriest little brat you ever see in yore life—a little, spider-legged proposition, with a long, limber tail, and big eyes that he'd always be winkin' and a-blinkin' while he was figurin' out some new kind of devilment—and all the time he'd be sneezin' and cuddlin' and snugglin' up ag'inst you like he loved you more'n his mammy. The boss's wife kept the little snifter fer company-like, and she'd pet and coddle and talk foolish to 'im until the boss would nigh have a fit. Jest like when a woman keeps a lap-dog, I reckon—kinder makes a man want to kill 'im, to keep her from muchin' 'im all the time.
"Well, this here lady was shore foolish about that monkey, and every mornin' when we were in a town I had to take 'im out fer a walk. Leastways, somebody had to do it; and rather than not see the town at all I'd take him along under my arm. If I'd had a hand-organ I'd shore made a lot of money that trip—but I was thinkin' about the time I took the ring out of his tail. Every time we'd come to a tree, or a fire-escape, or something like that, the little devil would begin to hook up at it with his tail; and this time I'm speakin' of we was goin' through a little park, and I'm a son-of-a-gun if he didn't git away on me. Jest reached out with his tail where it was hangin' down behind, and grabbed a limb, and slipped the collar on me.
"Yes, sir! And then he begun doin' circus stunts through them trees. First he'd climb up one, and then another, and then he hooked on to a fire-escape, and I chased him clean over a house. Policeman came along and wanted to arrest me, but I give 'im a talk and kept travelin', because I knew if I didn't ketch that monkey I didn't need to go back to the tent. Well, I chased him till my tongue hung out, but about the time I'd reach out to ketch 'im he'd swing off with his tail and git into the next tree; so I went over to a fruit store and tried to ketch 'im with bananas. Last chance I had, and I was gittin' pretty mad. All the kids was there to tease me, the policeman was tellin' me to move on—and that cussed monkey kept hangin' down by his tail and makin' faces at me, until, by grab, I reached down and took up a rock.
"'Now, hyer,' I says, holdin' up the banana, 'you'd better come down before I git hot and soak you with this,' and I showed him the size of that pavin' stone.
"'Etchee-etchee-etchee!' he says, swingin' up for a limb; and then I let 'im have it. They wasn't any ring in his tail when he come down, believe me; and when I showed the remains to the missus she like to tore my hair out. Boss he fired me—mad as the devil—then when she wasn't lookin' he slipped me a twenty, and told me to go back to Coney. There was a happy man, fellers, but he had to let on different—married, you know. So I took the twenty and went back to old Coney, where they shoot the chutes and loop the loops, and any man that's got a dime is as rich as John G. Rockefeller. Big doin's back there, fellers—you don't know what you're missin'."
An abashed silence followed this remark, calculated as it was to reduce his hearers to a proper state of humility; and then, to add to its effectiveness, the Odysseus of the cow camps turned to Bowles.