The man with glasses had not winced at the plain language, nor apologised as the medium had done. He looked up and said:
“All right, pardner, if you’ll stand for it, I’ll tell you the truth, right out.” And with this he began
THE STORY OF THE HERO OF PAGO BRIDGE
My name is Admeh Drake. Mine ain’t a story-book yarn like yours, pardner, or a tale of spooks and phantoms, like yours. You can get away from ghosts when there’s other people around or it’s daylight, but there’s some things that you can’t get away from in a thousand years, daylight or dark.
A fellow that I knew from the PL outfit loaned me a story-book once by “The Duchess,” that said something like this, only in story-book language:
“A woman is the start and finish of all our troubles.”
I always remembered that. It was a right nice idea. Many and many’s the time that, thinking over my troubles and what brought me to this elegant feed—say, I could drink a washtub full of that new-fangled coffee—I’ve remembered those sentiments. Susie Latham, that is the finest lady in the White River country, she was the start and finish of my troubles.
Ever since we were both old enough to chew hay, Susie and I travelled as a team. The first time that ever I shone in society, I did it with Susie by my side. It was right good of her to go with me, seeing that I was only bound-boy to old man Mullins, who brought me up and educated me, and Susie’s father kept a store. But then we were too little to care about such things, me being eleven and Susie nine. It was the mum social of the First Baptist Church that I took her to. You know the sort? When the boss Sunday-school man gives the signal, you clap the stopper on your jaw-tackle and get fined a cent a word if you peep. Susie knew well enough that I had only five cents left after I got in, so what does she do but go out and sit on the porch while the talk is turned off, so that she wouldn’t put me in the hole. When they passed the grab-bag, I blew in the nickel. I got a kid brass ring with a red glass front and gave it to her. I said that it was for us to get married when we grew up.
“Why, Admeh Drake, I like your gall,” she said, but she took it just the same. After that, Susie was my best girl, and I was her beau. I licked every fellow that said she wasn’t pretty, and she stuck out her tongue to every girl that tried to joke me because I was old Mullins’s bound-boy. We graduated from Striped Rock Union High-school together. That was where I spent the happy hours running wild among the flowers in my boyhood’s happy home down on the farm. After that, she went to teaching school, and I struck first principles and punched cattle down on old Mullins’s XQX ranch. Says I to myself, I’ll have an interest here myself some time, and then married I’ll be to Susie if she’ll but name the day. I had only six months before I was to be out of bound to old Mullins.
Being a darn-fool kid, I let it go at that, and wrote to her once in a while and got busy learning to punch cattle. Lord love you, I didn’t have much to learn, because I was raised in the saddle. There were none of them better than me if I did have a High-School education. My eyes had gone bad along back while I was in the High-school, calling for spectacles. When I first rode in gig-lamps, they used to josh me, but when I got good with the rope and shot off-hand with the best and took first prize for busting broncos Fourth of July at Range City, they called me the “Four-eyed Cow-puncher,” and I was real proud of it. I wish it was all the nickname I ever had. “The Hero of Pago Bridge”—I wish to God——