Red Saunders: His Adventures West & East

by Henry Wallace Phillips

Miss Mattie looked at him with her slow smile. "What is it?" she asked.

Red swallowed his question whole. "I—I wanted a little hot water to shave with," said he. Then a fury took hold of him. "What the devil am I lying like this for?" he thought. He exhorted himself to go on and say what he had to say like a man; but the other Red Saunders refused to do anything of the sort. He took the cup of hot water most abjectly and fled from the house. He had to shave then, and in his hurry and indignation he turned the operation into a clinic. "Oh Jiminy! Look at that!" he cried, as the razor opened up another part of the subject. "There's a slit an inch long! If I keep on at this gait, I won't have face enough to say good morning, let alone what I want to do. What ails me? What ails me? Why should I be scart of the nicest woman God ever built? Now by all the Mormon Gods! I'll post right into the house and say my little say as soon as these cuts stop bleeding!"

Cob-webs stopped the cuts, and other cob-webs stopped Red Saunders, late of the Chanta Seechee ranch; two hundred and fifty pounds of the very finest bone and muscle. And the cob-webs held him, foaming and boiling with rage and disgust, calling himself all the yaller pups he could think of, but staying strictly within the safe limits of the barn. It was a revelation to the big man, and not a pleasant one. How was he to know that the most salient point of his apparent cowardice was nothing less worthy than respect for the woman's purity? That if he would stop swearing long enough to get at the springs of his action, he would find that he hesitated because the new light on the matter made huge shadows of the slips in the career of a strong, lawless, untrained but sorely tempted man? He knew nothing of the sort, and the funniest of comedies took place in the barn. He would reach the sensible stage. "Pah! All foolishness. Go? Of course he'd go, and this very minute, and have the thing done with, good or bad"; he was quite amused at his former conduct—until he reached the door. Then he'd skip nimbly back again, with a hot feeling that somebody was watching him, although a careful inspection through the crack of the door revealed no one.

Red discovered another thing that afternoon, which was that the more nervous you are the more nervous you get. He groaned in perfect misery: "Ohoho! That I should have seen the day when I was afraid to ask anybody anything. What's come over me anyhow? It's this darn country, I believe—'tain't me," then he stopped short. "What you saying, Red?" he queried. "Why don't you own up like a man!" The fact that it had a funny side struck him, and he laughed, half forlornly, and half in thorough enjoyment. He suddenly sobered down. "She's worth it, anyway," said he. "She's the best there is, and I ought to feel kind of leery of the outcome—Well—Now, I guess I won't say anything till there's a downright good chance. I see I didn't savvy this kind of business like I thought I did. 'Twouldn't be no kind of manners to step up to a lady and shout, 'I'd like to have you marry me, if you feel you've got the time!' That don't go no more than a Chinaman on roller-skates. Your work is good, Red, but it's a little lumpy in spots; them two left feet bother you; you're good in your place, but you'd better build a fence around the place—damn the luck! Smotheration! I think she likes me, all right, but when it comes to more'n that—oh, blast it, I'll just have to wait for a real good chance; now come, old man, get four feet on the ground and don't roll your eyes, take it easy till the chance comes."

Little he knew the chance was coming up the street at that moment. He only saw Miss Mattie step out into the bed of flowers, her face looking unusually pretty and youthful under the big straw hat, and start to reduce the weeds to order. She glanced around as though in search of some one, and Red felt intuitively that the one was himself.

"Here's where I ought to act as if I wore long pants," said he; "now, what's to hinder me from going out there and get a-talking?" And then he sat down hastily, more disgusted than ever, and smote the air with his fist. "You'd think the nicest, quietest woman that ever lived was a wild beast, the way I act; yes sir, you would!"

Meantime the chance drew nearer. It was not a pleasant looking opportunity. Its eyes, full of dread and dreadful, peeped out from beneath a brush of matted hair; a tough, ropy foam hung from its mouth. If you put as much of that foam as would go on the point of a pin in an open cut, you would have an end that your worst enemy would shudder at. For this was the most horrifying of dangerous animals—a mad dog. Poor brute! As he came shambling down the road, he was the grisly mask of tragedy.

It was near noon, intensely hot, and the street of Fairfield was deserted. No one saw the dog, and if his occasional rattling, strangling howl reached any ears, they were dead to its meaning. He was unheeded until he lurched through the gate which Lettis had left open, as usual, and spinning around in a circle gave voice to his cry.

It brought Miss Mattie to her feet in an unknown terror; it brought Red from the barn in a full cognizance—he had heard that sound before, when a mad coyote landed in a cabin-full of fairly strong nerved cowmen, and set them screeching like hysterical women before a chance shot ended him.

Red saw the brute jump toward Miss Mattie. Instantly his hand flew to his hip, and as instantly he remembered there was nothing there. Then with great, uneven leaps he sprang forward. "Keep your hands up, Mattie, and don't move!" he screamed. "Let him chew the dress! For God's sake, don't move!"