“You can’t tell by looks, young man,” she asserted, 18 still suspicious, “Maybe you’re on spec’, then, in some other way.”
“I am seeking health in the West, is all, where the climate is high and dry.”
“My Gawd!” she blurted. “High and dry! You’re goin’ to the right place. For all I hear tell, Benton is high enough and dry enough. Are your eye-teeth peeled, young man?”
“My eye-teeth?” I repeated. “I hope so, madam. Are eye-teeth necessary in Benton?”
“Peeled, and with hair on ’em, young man,” she assured. “I guess you’re a pilgrim, ain’t you? I see a leetle green in your eye. No, you ain’t a tin-horn. You’re some mother’s boy, jest gettin’ away from the trough. My sakes! Sick, too, eh? Weak lungs, ain’t it? Now you tell me: Why you goin’ to Benton?”
There was an inviting kindness in her query. Plainly she had a good heart, large in proportion with her other bulk.
“It’s the farthest point west that I can reach by railroad, and everybody I have talked with has recommended it as high and dry.”
“So it is,” she nodded; and chuckled fatly. “But laws sakes, you don’t need to go that fur. You can as well stop off at North Platte, or Sidney or Cheyenne. They’ll sculp you sure at Benton, unless you watch out mighty sharp.”
“You’re certainly green,” she apprised. “Benton’s roarin’—and I know what that means. Didn’t North Platte roar? I seen it at its beginnin’s. My old man and me, we were there from the fust, when it started in as the railroad terminal. My sakes, but them were times! What with the gamblin’ and the shootin’ and the drinkin’ and the high-cockalorums night and day, ’twasn’t no place for innocence. Easy come, easy go, that was the word. I don’t say but what times were good, though. My old man contracted government freight, and I run an eatin’ house for the railroaders, so we made money. Then when the railroad moved terminus, the wust of the crowd moved, too, and us others who stayed turned North Platte into a strictly moral town. But land sakes! North Platte in its roarin’ days wasn’t no place for a young man like you. Neither was Julesburg, or Sidney, or Cheyenne, when they was terminuses. And I hear tell Benton is wuss’n all rolled into one. Young man, now listen: You stop off at North Platte, Nebrasky. It’s healthy and it’s moral, and it’s goin’ to make Omyha look like a shinplaster. I’ll watch after you. Maybe I can get you a job in my man’s store. You’ve j’ined some church, I reckon? Now if you’re a Baptist——?”