Ma Pettengill

by Harry Leon Wilson

I sent the letter to Ben, not wishing him to rest in false security. But I wrote Ed firmly that I couldn't see my money's worth in his proposition. I told him Ben was keeping in splendid condition, having the glow of health in his cheeks and a grip like an osteopath, and I'd be darned if I was going to back a three-time loser in the same old fight. I said he wasn't the only sensitive person in the world. I was a little fussy myself about what people might think of my judgment. And I gave him some good advice which was to forget his nonsense and settle down to something permanent before he died of penury.

He wrote a kind, forgiving answer. He said he couldn't blame me for turning against him after his repeated failures to lick Ben, but his nature was one I should never understand. He said he would amass the money by slow grinding toil, and when he next come North and got through handling Ben I would be the very first to grasp him by the hand and confess that I had wronged him. It was as nutty a letter as Ed ever wrote; which is some tribute. I sent it on to Ben and I believe it was right after that he ordered one of these exercising machines put up in his bedroom, with a book showing how to become a Greek god by pulling the weights five minutes, morning and evening.

But this time come silence so long that I guess even Ben forgot he had a doom hanging above his head by a single hair. I know I did. Let's see. It must of been a good five years before I hear from Ed again. It was another hard-luck letter. He had just worked a whole season for a contractor that blew up and left him with one span of mules in place of his summer's wages; which was a great disappointment, because he had been looking forward to an active reunion with Ben. How was Ben, anyway? And did he show the ravages of time?

And no one had wanted these mules, because they was inferior mules; but when he was on the point of shooting them to stop their feed bill along come two men that had a prospect over in the Bradshaw Mountains and offered him a one third interest in it for his span. So he had sawed the mules off onto these poor dubs and told 'em all right about the third interest in their claim, and forget it; but they insisted on his taking it. So he did, and was now working in the B.&.B. store at Prescott, selling saddles and jewellery and molasses and canned fruit and lumber, and such things. He didn't care much for the life, but it was neck-meat or nothing with him now.

No wonder these men that cheated him out of his mules had made him take a third interest in their claim. It was now taking all his salary to pay assessments and other expenses on it. But he was trying to trade this third interest off for something that wouldn't be a burden to him; then he should have a chance to put his money by and come up to give Ben what he was sooner or later bound to get if there was a just God in Heaven. He spoke as freshly about Ben as if his trouble had begun the day before. You wouldn't think twelve years had gone by. He was now saying Ben had put a stigma on him. It had got to be a stigma by this time, though he probably hadn't any idea what a stigma really is. He'd read it somewhere.

Then the waves closed over the injured man for about three years more. This time it looked as if he'd gone down for good, stigma and all. Ben thought the same. He said it was a great relief not to be looking forward any more to these brutal affrays that Ed insisted on perpetrating. And high time, too, because he was now in line for general manager, and how would it look for him to be mixed up in brawls?

And everything was serene till the papers broke out into headlines about a big strike made in the Bradshaw Mountains of Arizona by three partners, of whom one was named Steptoe. They seemed to have found all the valuable minerals in that claim of theirs except platinum. Ben tried first to believe it was someone else named Steptoe; but no such luck. We read that a half interest in the property had been sold to an Eastern syndicate for three million dollars and a company organized of which Edward J. Steptoe was president.

"It may be all for the best, anyway," Ben says to me. "Now that he's a big mining man he'll probably have other aims in life than being a thug."

You could see he was hoping to make a separate peace with the new millionaire, who would forget the grudge of his old days when he had to work for what he got, or at least run the risk of getting shot for it. But I wasn't so sure. I reminded Ben that Ed had never yet done anything you'd think a human being would do, so why expect him to begin now, when he had abundant leisure? I advised him to give deep thought to the matter of his defense, and if the battle went against him to withdraw to a position previously prepared, like the war reports say. Ben said a few warm things about Ed, by doggie, that no cousin ought to say of another cousin, and went off, hoping against hope.

And, sure enough, Ed came promptly to the front. It seems he waited only long enough to get a new suit and an assorted lot of the snappiest diamond jewellery he could find. Then he wired me he was coming to right the wrongs of a lifetime. Reaching San Francisco, it occurred to him that he could put it all over Ben in another way that would cut him to the heart; so he there chartered the largest, goldest, and most expensive private car on the market, having boudoirs and shower baths and conservatories and ballrooms, and so on; something that would make Ben's dinky little private car look like a nester's shack or a place for a construction gang to bunk in. And in this rolling palace Ed invaded our peaceful country, getting lots of notice. The papers said this new mining millionaire was looking us over with an eye to investment in our rich lands. Little they knew he merely meant to pull off a brutal fist altercation with a prominent railroad official that was somewhat out of condition.