"Mark my words; that lad was never cut out for a railroad man," says Ben. "He lets his emotions excite his head too much. Oh, I give him a good talking to, by doggie! I says to him: 'Why, you poor little hopeless, slant-headed, weak-minded idiot, you'—you know I always talk to Ed like he was my own brother—'what did you expect?' I says. 'I'm quite sorry for your injuries; but that was the first chance I'd ever had to make a report and I couldn't write one of these continuous stories about you. You ought to see that.' And what does he do but revile me for this commonsense talk! Tightminded—that's what he is; self-headed, not to say mulish, by doggie! And then pestering round me to have a fist altercation till I had to give in to keep him quiet, though I'm not a fighting character. I settled him, all right. I don't know where he is now; but I hope he has three doctors at his bedside, all looking doubtful. That little cuss always did contrary me."
I told him Ed had gone with this circus side show. "Side show!" he says. "That's just where he belongs. He ought to be setting right up with the other freaks, because he's a worse freak than the living skeleton or a lady with a full beard—that's what he is. And yet he's sane on every subject but that. Sometimes he'll talk along for ten minutes as rational as you or me; but let him hear the word accident and off he goes. But, by doggie, he won't bother me again after what I give him back of the Wallace freight shed." "He solemnly promised he would," I says, "when I saw him last. He was still some turbulent."
And he did bother Ben again, late that fall. When the circus closed he travelled back a thousand miles in a check suit and a red necktie, just to get another good licking. Ben must of been quite aggravated by that time, for he wound up by throwing Ed into the crick in all his proud clothes.
Ed was just as honest about it as before. He says Ben licked him fair. But it hadn't changed his mind. He felt that Ben's report had knocked his just celebrity and he was still hostile.
"Mebbe you can't lick Ben," I says to him again. "I can keep on doing my endeavours," he says. "I had to come off in a friend of mine's coat because my own was practically destroyed; but I'll be back again before Ben has clumb very high on that ladder of his career."
The adventurer was interned at my house for ten days, till his bruises lost their purple glow and he looked a little less like a bad case of erysipelas. Then he started out again, crazy as a loon! I didn't hear from him for nearly two years. Then I got a letter telling about his life of adventure down on the Border. It seems he'd got in with a good capable stockman down there and they was engaged in the cattle business. The business was to go over into Mexico, attracting as little notice as possible, cut out a bunch of cattle, and drive 'em across into the land of the free. Naturally what they sold for was clear profit.
Ed said he was out for adventure and this had a-plenty. He said I wouldn't believe how exciting it could be at times. He wanted to know what Ben was promoted to by this time, and was he looking as hearty as ever? Some day he was coming back and force Ben to set him right before the world.
About a year later he writes that the cattle business is getting too tame. He's done it so much that all the excitement has gone. He says I wouldn't believe how tame it can be, with hardly any risk of getting shot. He says he wouldn't keep on running off these Mexican cattle if it wasn't for the money in it; and, furthermore, it sometimes seems to him when he's riding along in the beautiful still night, with only God's stars for companions, that there's something about it that ain't right.
But it's another year before he writes that he has disposed of his stock interests and is coming North to lick Ben proper. He does come North. He was correct to that extent. He outfitted at the Chicago Store in Tucson, getting the best all-wool ready-made suit in Arizona, with fine fruit and flower and vegetable effects, shading from mustard yellow to beet colour; and patent-leather ties, with plaid socks—and so on. He stopped off at Red Gap on his way up to do this outrage. His face was baked a rich red brown; so I saw it wouldn't show up marks as legibly as when he was pale.
He said Ben wasn't a right bad fellow and he had no personal grudge against him, except he needed to have his head beat off on account of his inhumanity.