“About eight months. And I confess that my duties—at first in the bank and afterwards here, have kept me pretty close, except for a trip or two to Juarez. But why?”
“Why enough!” returned Jeff. “Young man, young man! I see the finger of fate in this. It is no blind chance that brought me here while Hibler was away. It was predestined from the foundations of earth that I was to come here at this very now to explain to you about cowboys. I have the concentrated venom of about twenty-one years stored away to work off on somebody, and I feel it in my bones that you are the man. Come with me and I will do you good—as it says in mournful Numbers. You’ve been led astray. You shouldn’t believe all you read and only half what you see.
“In the first place, take the typical cowboy. There positively ain’t no sich person! Maybe so half of ’em’s from Texas and the other half from anywhere and everywhere else. But they’re all alike in just one thing—and that is that every last one of them is entirely different from all the others. Each one talks as he pleases, acts as he pleases and—when not at work—dresses as he pleases. On the range though, they all dress pretty much alike.—Because, the things they wear there have been tried out and they’ve kept only the best of each kind—the best for that particular kind of work.”
“They ‘proved all things and held fast that which was good,’” suggested Aughinbaugh.
“Exactly. For instance, that handkerchief business. That isn’t meant as a substitute for a necktie. Ever see a drought? If you did, you probably remember that it was some dusty. Well—there’s been a steady drought out here for two hundred and eight million years come August. And when you drive two, three thousand head of cattle, with four feet apiece, to the round-up ground and chouse ’em ’round half a day, cutting out steers, the dust is so thick a horse can’t fall down when he stumbles. Then mister cowboy folds his little hankie, like them other triangles that the ladies, God bless ’em, with their usual perversity, call ‘squares,’ ties the ends, puts the knot at the back of his neck, pulls the wide part over his mouth and up over the bridge of his nose, and breathes through it! Got that? By heavens, it’s a filter to keep the dust out of your lungs, and not an ornament! It’s usually silk—not because silk is booful but because it’s better to breathe through.”
“Really, I never dreamed——” began Aughinbaugh. But Jeff waved him down.
“Don’t speak to the man at the wheel, my son. And everything a cowboy uses, at work, from hat to boots, from saddle to bed, has just as good a reason for being exactly what it is as that handkerchief. Take the high-heeled boots, now——”
“Dad,” said Aughinbaugh firmly. “I am faint. Break it to me easy. I was once an interior decorator of some promise, though not a professional. Let me lead you to a restaurant and show you a sample of my skill. Then come round to my rooms and tell me your troubles at leisure. Maybe you’ll feel better. But before you explain your wardrobe I want to know why you don’t say ‘You all’ and ‘that-a-way,’ ‘plumb’ and ‘done gone,’ and the rest of it.”
“I do, my dear, when I want to,” said Bransford affectionately. “Them’s all useful words, easy and comfortable, like old clothes and old shoes. I like ’em. But they go with the old clothes. And now, as you see, I am—to use the metropolitan idiom—in my ‘glad rags’ and my speech naturally rises in dignity to meet the occasion. Besides, associating with Beebe—he’s one of them siss—boom—ah! boys—has mitigated me a heap. Then I read the signs, and the brands on the freight cars. And I’ll tell you one more thing, my son. A large proportion—I mean, of course, a right smart chance—of the cowboys are illiterate, and some of them are grand rascals, but they ain’t none of ’em plumb imbeciles. They couldn’t stay on the job. If their brains don’t naturally work pretty spry, things happen to ’em—the chuck-wagon bunts ’em or something. And they all have a chance at ‘the education of a gentleman’—‘to ride, to shoot and to speak the truth.’ They have to ride and shoot—and speakin’ the truth comes easier for them than for some folks, ’cause if speaking the aforesaid truth displeases any one they mostly don’t give a damn.”
“Stop! Spare me!” cried Aughinbaugh. He collapsed in his chair, sliding together in an attitude of extreme dejection. “My spirits are very low, but——” He rose, tottered feebly to his desk and took therefrom a small bottle, which, with a glass, he handed to Bransford.