Yet Jim was what you 'd call a good fellow—not that he was fair to look upon, for he was not; he was swarthy and heavy-featured and hulking; but he was a fair-speaking man, and he was always ready to help out the boys when they went broke or were elsewise in trouble. Yes, take him all in all, Jim Woppit was properly fairly popular, although, as I shall always maintain, he would never have been elected city marshal over Buckskin and Red Drake and Salty Boardman if it had n't been (as I have intimated) for the backing he got from Hoover, Jake Dodsley, and Barber Sam. These three men last named were influences in the camp, enterprising and respected citizens, with plenty of sand in their craws and plenty of stuff in their pockets; they loved Miss Woppit, and they were in honor bound to stand by the interests of the brother of that fascinating young woman.
I was not surprised that they were smitten; she might have caught me, too, had it not been for the little woman and the three kids back in the states. As handsome and as gentle a lady was Miss Woppit as ever walked a white pine floor—so very different from White River Ann, and Red Drake's wife, and old man Edgar's daughter, for they were magpies who chattered continually and maliciously, hating Miss Woppit because she wisely chose to have nothing to do with them. She lived with her brother Jim on the side-hill, just off the main road, in the cabin that Smooth Ephe Hicks built before he was thrown off his broncho into the gulch. It was a pretty but lonesome place, about three-quarters of a mile from the camp, adjoining the claim which Jim Woppit worked in a lazy sort of way—Jim being fairly well fixed, having sold off a coal farm in Illinois just before he came west.
In this little cabin abode Miss Woppit during the period of her wooing, a period covering, as I now recall, six or, may be, eight months. She was so pretty, so modest, so diligent, so homekeeping, and so shy, what wonder that those lonely, heart-hungry men should fall in love with her? In all the population of the camp the number of women was fewer than two score, and of this number half were married, others were hopeless spinsters, and others were irretrievably bad, only excepting Miss Woppit, the prettiest, the tidiest, the gentlest of all. She was good, pure, and lovely in her womanliness; I shall not say that I envied—no, I respected Hoover and Dodsley and Barber Sam for being stuck on the girl; you 'd have respected 'em, too, if you 'd seen her and—and them. But I did take it to heart because Miss Woppit seemed disinclined to favor any suit for her fair hand—particularly because she was by no means partial to Three-fingered Hoover, as square a man as ever struck pay dirt—dear old pardner, your honest eyes will never read these lines, between which speaks my lasting love for you!
In the first place, Miss Woppit would never let the boys call on her of an evening unless her brother Jim was home; she had strict notions about that sort of thing which she would n't waive. I reckon she was right according to the way society looks at these things, but it was powerful hard on Three-fingered Hoover and Jake Dodsley and Barber Sam to be handicapped by etiquette when they had their bosoms chock full of love and were dying to tell the girl all about it.
Jake Dodsley came a heap nearer than the others to letting Miss Woppit know what his exact feelings were. He was a poet of no mean order. What he wrote was printed regularly in Cad Davis' Leadville paper under the head of "Pearls of Pegasus," and all us Red Hoss Mountain folks allowed that next to Willie Pabor of Denver our own Jake Dodsley had more of the afflatus in him than any other living human poet. Hoover appreciated Jake's genius, even though Jake was his rival. It was Jake's custom to write poems at Miss Woppit—poems breathing the most fervid sentiment, all about love and bleeding hearts and unrequited affection. The papers containing these effusions he would gather together with rare diligence, and would send them, marked duly with a blue or a red pencil, to Miss Woppit.
The poem which Hoover liked best was one entitled "True Love," and Hoover committed it to memory—yes, he went even further; he hired Professor De Blanc (Casey's piano player) to set it to music, and this office the professor discharged nobly, producing a simple but solemn-like melody which Hoover was wont to sing in feeling wise, poor, dear, misguided fellow that he was! Seems to me I can hear his big, honest, husky, voice lifted up even now in rendition of that expression of his passion:
Turrue love never dies—
Like a river flowin'
In its course it gathers force,
Broader, deeper growin';
Strength'nin' in the storms 'at come,
Triumphin' in sorrer,
Till To-day fades away
In the las' To-morrer.
Wot though Time flies?
Turrue love never dies!
Moreover, Three-fingered Hoover discoursed deftly upon the fiddle; at obligates and things he was not much, but at real music he could not be beat. Called his fiddle "Mother," because his own mother was dead, and being he loved her and had no other way of showing it, why, he named his fiddle after her. Three-fingered Hoover was full of just such queer conceits.
Barber Sam was another music genius; his skill as a performer upon the guitar was one of the marvels of the camp. Nor had he an indifferent voice—Prof. De Blanc allowed that if Barber Sam's voice had been cultured at the proper time—by which I suppose he meant in youth—Barber Sam would undoubtedly have become "one of the brightest constellations in the operatic firmament." Moreover, Barber Sam had a winsome presence; a dapper body was he, with a clear olive skin, soulful eyes, a noble mustache, and a splendid suit of black curly hair. His powers of conversation were remarkable—that fact, coupled with his playing the guitar and wearing plaid clothes, gave him the name of Barber Sam, for he was not really a barber; was only just like one.
In the face of all their wooing, Miss Woppit hardened her heart against these three gentlemen, any one of whom the highest lady in the land might have been proud to catch. The girl was not inclined to affairs of the heart; she cared for no man but her brother Jim. What seemed to suit her best was to tend to things about the cabin—it was called The Bower, the poet Jake Dodsley having given it that name—to till the little garden where the hollyhocks grew, and to stroll away by herself on the hillside or down through Magpie Glen, beside the gulch. A queer, moodful creature she was; unlike other girls, so far as we were able to judge. She just doted on Jim, and Jim only—how she loved that brother you shall know presently.